Texan independence was won by this victory (although the Mexican government repudiated the treaty negotiated by Santa Anna), and Houston was elected president of Texas (1st of September) and was inaugurated on the 22nd of October. His term expired in December 1838; he was elected again in 1841 and served until 1844. During his first term a newly founded city was named in his honour and this was the seat of government in 1837-39 and in 1842-45. Texas having been admitted as a state of the American Union in 1845, Houston was elected one of its first two United States senators. He served as a stalwart Union Democrat from March 1846 until 1859; he opposed the Kansas-Nebraska bill in an able speech (3rd March 1854), and spoke frequently in defence of the rights of the Indians. In 1859 he was elected governor of Texas and tried to prevent the secession of his state; upon his refusal, in March 1861, to swear allegiance to the Confederacy he was declared deposed. He died at Huntsville, Texas, on the 26th of July 1863. Houston was an able soldier, wary, intrepid and resolute; and was a legislator of rare foresight, cool discrimination and fearless candour.
See A. M. Williams, Sam Houston and the War of Independence in Texas (Boston, 1893); Henry Bruce, Life of General Houston (New York, 1891); and W. C. Crane, Life and Select Literary Remains of Sam Houston (Philadelphia, 1884).
HOUSTON, a city and the county-seat of Harris county, Texas, U.S.A., at the head of deep-sea navigation on Buffalo Bayou, a tributary of Galveston Bay, 50 m. N.W. of Galveston, and about 325 m. W. of New Orleans. Pop. (1880) 16,513; (1890) 27,557; (1900) 44,633, of whom 4415 were foreign-born and 14,608 were negroes; (1910 census) 78,800. The land area in 1906 was 16.02 sq. m.; in 1908, about 20 sq. m. It is served by the Galveston, Harrisburg & San Antonio (Southern Pacific), the Galveston, Houston & Henderson, the Gulf, Colorado & Santa Fe, the Houston & Texas Central (Southern Pacific), the Houston, East & West Texas, the International & Great Northern, the Missouri, Kansas & Texas, the San Antonio & Aransas Pass, the Trinity & Brazos Valley, the St Louis, Brownsville & Mexico, the Texas & New Orleans, and the Houston Belt & Terminal railways, several of which have their headquarters at Houston. The Federal government has greatly improved the natural channel from the city to the Gulf of Mexico, straightening, widening and deepening it to a depth of 25 ft. for the entire distance from the Galveston jetties to the Houston turning basin—where the municipality has constructed free municipal wharves. The city occupies an unusually fine site on both sides of the Buffalo Bayou. Among the principal buildings are a Carnegie library, the Houston Lyceum, the Federal building, the Masonic temple, the city high school, the city hall and market house, the Harris County Court House, the Cotton Exchange, and the First and Commercial National banks. Houston is the seat of the Texas Dental College, of St Thomas College (1903), and of the Houston, Annunciation and St Agnes academies; and the will (1901) of William Marsh Rice provided an endowment (valued in 1908 at about $7,000,000) for the William M. Rice Institute for the Advancement of Literature, Science and Art, of which Dr Edgar Odell Lovett, formerly professor of mathematics (1900-1905) and of astronomy (1905-1908) in Princeton University, was made president in 1908. The city is the most important railway and shipping centre of South Texas, and has a large trade in cotton (the receipts for the year ending Aug. 31, 1907 being 2,967,535 bales), cotton-seed oil, sugar, rice,[1] lumber and citrus fruits. Houston is important also as a manufacturing centre, its factory product being valued at $13,564,019 in 1905, an increase of 81% over the factory product in 1900. There are extensive railway car-shops, cotton-seed oil, petroleum and sugar refineries, cotton gins and compresses, steel rolling mills, car-wheel factories, boiler, pump and engine works, flour mills, rice mills and a rice elevator, breweries, planing and saw-mills, pencil factories, and brick and tile factories. Its proximity to the Texas oil fields gives the city a cheap factory fuel. The assessed valuation of taxable property in the city increased from $27,480,898 in 1900 to $51,513,615 in 1908. The No-Tsu Oh Carnival week each November is a distinctive feature of the city. Houston, like Galveston, adopted in 1905 a very successful system of municipal government by commission, a commission of five (one of whom acts as mayor) being elected biennially and having both executive and legislative powers. The waterworks are owned and operated by the municipality, which greatly improved them from the city’s surplus under the first two years of government by commission. In 1908 extensive improvements in paving, drainage and sewerage were undertaken by the city. The payment of an annual poll-tax of $2.50 is a prerequisite to voting. Houston was settled and laid out in 1836, and was named in honour of General Sam Houston, whose home in Caroline Street was standing in 1908. In 1837-1839 and in 1842-1845 Houston was the capital of the Republic of Texas. About 15 m. E.S.E. of the city is the battleground of San Jacinto, which was bought by the state in 1906 for a public memorial park.
[1] Much rice is cultivated in the vicinity of Houston by Japanese farmers.
HOUWALD, CHRISTOPH ERNST, Freiherr von (1778-1845), German dramatist and author, was born at Straupitz in Lower Lusatia, a son of the president of the district court of justice, on the 28th of November 1778. He studied law at the university of Halle, and on completion of his academic studies returned home, married, and managed the family estates. In 1816 he afforded a home to his friend K. W. S. Contessa (1777-1825), himself a poet, who had met with serious reverses of fortune; Contessa lived with Houwald, assisting and stimulating him in his literary work, for eight years. In 1821 Houwald was unanimously elected syndic for Lower Lusatia, an office which placed him at the head of the administration of the province. He died at Neuhaus, near Lübben, on the 28th of January 1845.
Houwald is remembered as the author of several so-called “Fate tragedies” (see [German Literature]), of which the best known are Das Bild, Der Leuchtturm, Die Heimkehr, Fluch und Segen (all published in 1821). They have, however, small literary value, and Houwald is seen to better advantage in his narratives and books for juvenile readers, such as Romantische Akkorde (publ. by W. Contessa, Berlin, 1817); Buch für Kinder gebildeter Stände (1819-1824); and Jakob Thau, der Hofnarr (1821). Houwald’s collected works, Sämtliche Werke, were published in five volumes (Leipzig, 1851; 2nd ed., 1858-1859). See J. Minor, Die Schicksalstragödie in ihren Hauptvertretern (Frankfurt, 1883), and Das Schicksalsdrama in Kürschner’s Deutsche Nationalliteratur; vol. cli. (Stuttgart, 1884); O. Schmidtborn, C. E. von Houwald als Dramatiker (1909).