The builders of the American Commonwealth were all great and individual men, but the most grandly picturesque, the most heroic, figure among them, is that of General Sam Houston. Neither modern history, nor the scrolls of ancient Greece or Rome, can furnish a tale of glory more thrilling and stirring than the epic Sam Houston wrote with sword and pen, as a Conqueror of Tyranny and a Liberator of Men.
His life is a romance, and even his antecedents have the grandeur and glamour of military glory, for his ancestors, as "Sons of Old Gaul," had drawn their long swords in every battle for Scottish liberty, and his own father died while on military duty in the Alleghanies. He had also a mother worthy of the son she bore; a grand, brave woman, who put the musket into his boyish hands with the words, "My doors are ever open to the brave, Sam, but are eternally closed to cowards."
This was in the year 1813, when there was promise of a war with England, and Sam was not then twenty years old—a tall, slender, wonderfully handsome youth, with the air and manner of a prince. But nothing of this bearing was due to schools or schoolmasters, he was not of any man's moulding, although he had been educated for his future in a noble manner. For to escape the drudgery of measuring tape and molasses, he fled to the Indians when but a lad, and was adopted by their chief, and with the young braves he learned to run and leap, and hunt and ride, and find his way through pathless woods with all their skill. This was his practical education; he had only one book for mental enlargement, but this was Pope's translation of "The Iliad." He read and re-read this volume till he could recite it from beginning to end; till the words were living, and the spectral heroes were his friends and companions. So that when he joined General Jackson's battalion, he had the heart of a Greek demi-god and the physical skill and prowess of a Cherokee Indian chief.
He made a glorious record in this war, and, being severely wounded, both by arrows and gunshot, he returned to his home to be nursed by his mother. When he was able to rise again peace was assured and he resolved to become a lawyer. He was told that eighteen months' hard study would be necessary, but in six months he passed a searching examination, and was admitted to the bar of Tennessee with éclat. Then honor after honor came as naturally to him as a tree bears fruit or flower—first Adjutant-General of the State with the rank of Colonel; then District Attorney—Major-General—Member of Congress—Governor of the State of Tennessee. All these places and honors were awarded him by large majorities during a period of nine years. Indeed, between A.D. 1818 and 1827, the records of Tennessee read like some political romance, of which the handsome and beloved Sam Houston was the hero.
This was his second school. He was learning during these years those great principles of government which enabled him afterward to legislate so wisely for the land he conquered. And as soon as he was ready for his destiny, an event happened which drove him back again to the wilderness. Concerning this event no human being has the right to speak authoritatively; it was an affair strictly between himself and his bride of hardly three months. But whatever occurred, shattered his life to pieces. He separated from his wife, resigned his office as governor, and in the presence of a vast and sorrowing multitude, bid adieu to all his friends and honors, and set his face resolutely to his Indian father, who was then king of the Cherokees in Arkansas.
He began, in fact, his journey to Texas, the theatre of the great work for which his previous life had been a preparation. The thought of Texas was not a new one to him. No man had watched the hitherto futile efforts of that glorious land for freedom with greater interest; and there is little doubt that Andrew Jackson was a sharer in all Houston's Texan enthusiasms, and that he also quietly encouraged and aided the efforts for its Americanization. Indeed, at that day Texas was a name full of romance and mystery. Throughout the South and West, up the great highway of the Mississippi, on the busy streets of New York, and among the silent hills of New England, men spoke of the charmed city of San Antonio as Europeans in the eighteenth century spoke of Delhi and Agra and the Great Mogul. French traders went there with fancy goods from New Orleans, and Spanish Dons from the wealthy cities of Central Mexico came there to buy. From the villages of Connecticut, from the woods of Tennessee, and the lagoons of the Mississippi, adventurous Americans entered the Spanish-Texan Territory at Nacogdoches, going through the land buying horses, and lending their stout hearts and ready rifles to every effort for freedom which the Texans made. For though the Americans were few in number and much scattered, they were like the salt in a pottage, and men caught fire and the idea of "freedom" from them.
Texas was at this time a territory of the Empire of Mexico, and Mexico was making constant, though as yet ineffectual, efforts to become independent. Twenty years before Houston entered Texas, a number of Americans joined the priest Hidalgo in his struggle to make Mexico free. They were all shot, but this did not hinder Magee and Bernardo, with 1,200 Americans, raising the standard of liberty two years later. This party took San Antonio, and the fame of their deeds brought young Americans by hundreds to their aid; though they received no money, the love of freedom and the love of adventure being their motive and their reward.
But these brave paladins were soon followed by men who bought land and made homes, and in 1821 Austin, with the sanction of the Spanish Viceroy, introduced three hundred families, who received every reasonable guarantee from the Spanish Government. They were scarcely settled ere there was another Mexican revolt against Spain. This time the Mexicans under Santa Anna achieved the independence of their country, and a Mexican Republic was formed, with a constitution so liberal that it was gladly accepted by the American colonists. But its promises were fallacious. For ten years Santa Anna was engaged in fighting for his own supremacy, and when he had subdued all opposition he had forgotten the traditions of freedom for which he first drew his sword, and assumed the authority of a dictator.