Lone Star Nation

by H. W. Brands

  Houston’s performance won over the gallery. Junius Brutus Booth, a leading actor of the day (and the father of John Wilkes Booth), rushed up to Houston at the close of his speech, pumped his hand, and declaimed: “Houston, take my laurels!” Yet for all its power, the speech had no effect on the outcome of the trial. The House judged the accused guilty of a breach of its privileges and sentenced him to a reprimand by the speaker, which was duly delivered.

  Despite this victory, Stanberry remained dissatisfied, and he brought criminal charges against Houston. Another trial took place; again Houston was convicted, this time of assault. He was fined five hundred dollars.

  Twice the loser, Houston nonetheless felt vindicated in the court of honor. “I was dying out, and had they taken me before a justice of the peace and fined me ten dollars, it would have killed me,” he said afterward. “But they gave me a national tribunal for a theatre, and that set me up again.”

  In setting Houston up again, his enemies—and Jackson’s—prepared him for Texas. While in the East, Houston made the acquaintance of James Prentiss, a speculator who controlled tens of thousands of acres in the Leftwich grant. More precisely, he controlled the acres on paper; he offered to bring Houston in as a partner in exchange for a money payment and Houston’s commitment to travel to Texas to make the paper claim good. He would finance Houston’s journey and pay other expenses. If Houston succeeded, both men would become rich.

  The prospect fired Houston’s imagination. “So soon as matters can be arranged, I will set out for the land of promise,” he wrote Prentiss in May 1832. Houston’s twin trials in Washington delayed things, as did problems Prentiss encountered in funding Houston’s trip. Houston grew impatient at the delays. “It is important that I should be off to Texas!” he wrote in June.

  The news from Texas compounded Houston’s impatience, even as it revealed that there was more to his project than redeeming land scrip. After passage of the law of April 6, 1830, the chances of Prentiss, Houston, or anyone else winning legal control of land under the terms of the Leftwich grant were vanishingly slim. What was required was some extralegal maneuver—a filibuster, for example. Presumably, an independent or American-affiliated Texas would be more likely to honor the Leftwich claims, but even if it didn’t, the leaders of a successful filibuster would doubtless have other ways of compensating themselves.

  The existence of ulterior motives was clear in Houston’s correspondence with Prentiss. “The land which I bought, to be candid with you, has claimed not much solicitude of me,” he wrote. Yet the land wasn’t insignificant. Houston intended to sell some of it en route to Texas in order to raise money for expenses, but he wouldn’t liquidate it all. “It might be well to have enough with me to form a pretext, when I get there, for moving about.” Prentiss responded by noting that the reports from Texas—of the uprising against the Mexican government—boded well for Houston’s mission. “The more conflict, the more I am convinced of the expediency and practicability of our plans,” he said. Some weeks later, Prentiss urged Houston to make haste west. “The field is now open for a great work in Texas—and you must go and help reap the harvest.”

  Houston left Washington about the end of July and traveled west via Tennessee. The closer he got to Texas, the more excited he became. “I have seen several friends here lately from Texas,” he wrote Prentiss from Nashville, “and all represent it as the most prosperous state, and say it is a lovely region! Thousands would flock there from this country, if the government were settled, but will not venture without it!” Apparently Houston had made contact with people in Texas, or at least they had caught wind of his coming. “Several persons have said to me that I was looked for, and earnestly wished for, by the citizens of Texas,” he told Prentiss.

  Houston might have avoided Tennessee on his way to Texas; the state still held painful memories for him. But Andrew Jackson was summering at the Hermitage, and he wanted to speak to Houston before the younger man left the country. What the two said is unknown, as it wasn’t written down and there were no witnesses—which was the point of the personal, private interview. But apparently Jackson gave Houston five hundred dollars to finance the journey—an essential sum, as Prentiss had run into cash-flow problems and hadn’t fulfilled his front end of the deal. More important, the president gave Houston his blessing for a project that was ambitious and almost certainly illegal—under Mexican and perhaps American law.

  Jackson’s imprimatur helped provide Houston with a cover story more persuasive than land speculation. Continuing west through Arkansas, he obtained a passport from U.S. Army officers there requesting “all the Tribes of Indians, whether in amity with the United States, or as yet not allied to them by Treaties, to permit safely and freely to pass through their respective territories, General Sam Houston, a Citizen of the United States, Thirty-eight years of age, Six feet two inches in stature, brown hair and light complexion; and in case of need to give him all lawful aid and protection.” Houston traveled as an agent investigating troubles among the Indians; to lend credibility to this guise he filed an advance report with the federal Indian commissioner at Fort Gibson, Arkansas. “It has been my first and most important object to obtain all the information possible relative to the Pawnee and Comanche Indians,” Houston wrote. Such information, especially regarding the Comanches, could be gathered only by visiting Texas. “To reach the wild Indians at this season will be difficult, and only practicable by way of St. Antone. . . . It is probable at this time, or by the time I can reach there, that the Comanches may be within a few hundred miles of that place.”

  Having established his cover, Houston made a last visit to Wigwam Neosho. Perhaps Diana had guessed that one day he would leave her; probably he promised to return. But in the event he didn’t, he left her the wigwam, the surrounding property, and the inventory of the trading post.

  Riding south and west, he reached the Red River at Fort Towson, and at the beginning of December 1832 crossed into Texas. He traveled south to Nacogdoches and then southwest to San Felipe. He missed meeting Austin, who was traveling about the colony. But he did meet James Bowie, visiting from San Antonio. Each knew the other by reputation, and as they sized each other up, they doubtless shared intelligence: Bowie about the Indians he had fought on the San Sabá, the Mexicans he had captured on the Angelina, and perhaps the silver mines he still hoped to discover; Houston regarding the attitude of the Jackson administration toward Texas and Mexico. How far Houston tipped his hand in this regard is impossible to say. Bowie would have known that Houston and Jackson had once been close; whether he guessed—or was told—that they were again close, especially regarding Texas, cannot be determined.

  But Bowie and Houston must have shared substantial information, for they shared the long road to San Antonio. The Comanches were a constant threat, and Bowie insisted that he and Houston travel with others and post a guard each night. Apparently the guards weren’t always sober—or at least Houston wasn’t. He came in after a predawn picket and recounted an unnerving experience he had just had. “He said he had been fired at more than a hundred times that morning—in imagination,” remembered one of the other travelers. “He moved his head, and was sure an Indian arrow passed by him.” He moved again. “‘Whiz’ came an arrow.” He moved yet again. “Another hissed by his head.” Finally realizing that something was out of order, Houston looked for the arrows and discovered that the noise was nothing more than his hat brim brushing against the collar of his overcoat. (Either Bowie put Houston very much at his ease or Houston was still drunk, for him to tell this story against himself.)

  At Béxar, Bowie introduced Houston to the Veramendis and other prominent residents of the town. As it happened, some Comanche chiefs—of currently friendly bands—were visiting San Antonio at the same time. Houston conveyed Jackson’s regards and presented them with a medal bearing a likeness of the president. “I found them well disposed to make a treaty with the United States,” he reported to the Indian commissioners in
Arkansas, “and, I doubt not, to regard it truly and preserve it faithfully if made.” If Houston’s Indian mission had been serious, rather than an excuse for him to travel through Texas, he should have followed up this interview by going north from Béxar into the region where the Comanches and their allies were not friendly. But he didn’t.

  Instead he returned to Nacogdoches, where he learned more about the hostility that really interested him: the hostility among the Americans toward Mexico. In the wake of the uprising of the previous summer, the settlers had called a convention to discuss their grievances and petition the Mexican government for redress. The mere calling of the convention reflected the cultural rift between the Americans and the Mexicans, for where the right of assembly and petition was part of the Americans’ English inheritance, it had no counterpart in the Spanish tradition. As a result, the convening itself—regardless of what might be said or done at the convention—connoted sedition to the Mexican authorities and put them on alert.

  Their alert turned to alarm when the convention gathered at San Felipe in April 1833. The delegates numbered somewhat more than fifty (any records kept were subsequently lost) and included Stephen Austin, representing San Felipe, and Sam Houston, representing Nacogdoches, where the settlers had been sufficiently impressed by Houston’s resumé and connections to select him after only a few weeks’ acquaintance. Houston and the other delegates quickly concurred that they should petition the Mexican congress to repeal the anti-immigration clause of the April 6 law, as well as to restore the exemption from tariffs. Only a little more time was required for the convention to conclude that Texas must be allowed to separate from Coahuila and form its own state. The debate on this last point veered at times in a decidedly secessionist direction—with Houston at the helm. “Can Mexico ever make laws for Texas?” he asked the delegates. “No. . . . Mexico is acting in bad faith and trifling with the rights of the people. Plans formed without the assent of Texas are not binding upon Texas.”

  If Houston had any pangs of conscience in speaking this way, just two months after encouraging Jackson to crush the nullifiers of South Carolina, he gave no hint of it. On the contrary, he went further in the direction of separation by chairing a committee that drafted a constitution for a state of Texas. By chance—or very deep design—one of the delegates happened to possess a copy of the constitution of the state of Massachusetts; this provided a model for the convention’s work. That the Massachusetts charter was scarcely adjusted to take account of the radically different setting and circumstances of Texas suggests the delegates wished to make a political statement rather than craft an actual government.

  The statement was clear enough: Texas was determined to govern itself. Many of the delegates would have been happy with self-government within the Mexican federation; others apparently saw separation from Coahuila as a first step toward separation from Mexico, even if they deemed it impolitic at this point to say so. Stephen Austin was the leader of the first, minimalist camp; Sam Houston headed the second, radical group.

  When critics of democracy in the age of Jackson lamented its deficiencies, they typically cited the ignorance of ordinary people regarding matters of state, and the likelihood that the yahoos would send their own to Congress. David Crockett was a case in point. “Colonel Crockett is perhaps the most illiterate man that you have ever met in Congress,” declared an experienced Washington hand on meeting the Tennessee representative. “He is not only illiterate but he is rough and uncouth, talks much and loudly, and is by far more in his proper place when hunting a bear in a cane brake than he will be in the capital.”

  In the late 1820s Crockett was probably the third most famous Tennesseean, after Jackson and Houston. His fame rested on his prowess at hunting; bears were his preferred quarry, and the knife his favorite weapon. The knife, he explained, was silent—an especial advantage “if some skulking red-skin or vagabond should be upon your tracks for mischief”—besides “being a mighty saver of lead and powder.” In the frontier districts of the West, where hunting was both a source of livelihood and a sport, a reputation as a hunter conferred the same kind of aura later enjoyed by successful entrepreneurs and athletes; and, as the aura would later, it often opened doors unrelated to the original success. Crockett, who had served under Jackson during the War of 1812, in turn became a justice of the peace, a town commissioner, a colonel of the Tennessee militia, and an assemblyman in the Tennessee legislature. Siding with the humble against the powerful, he began a career-long quest to make public lands more readily available to settlers. His quest was serious but his manner folksy. One legislator wanted to move the state capital from Murfreesboro to Nashville, complaining, by way of justification, of the miserable food and lodging in the former town. Crockett answered that he had never eaten nor slept so well as at his boardinghouse during the legislative session; the state would save a great deal of money if, rather than moving the capital to Nashville, it moved the complaining legislator to Crockett’s quarters. The same legislator asserted that the inhabitants of Murfreesboro were rude; Crockett replied that, speaking for himself, he hadn’t found this to be so. Even black men in Murfreesboro tipped their hats to him, which was more than he could say for many white people in other parts of the state.

  In 1825 Crockett was drafted by the Jackson machine to run for Congress. He lost, but respectably enough to run again two years later, this time victoriously. “I was, without disguise, the friend and supporter of General Jackson, upon his principles as he laid them down,” he explained after the fact. Two years before Jackson brought the West to the White House, Crockett carried it to Congress, with an accent and an attitude that sometimes made even Old Hickory wince. Crockett talked of hunting “bar” and “coon,” of “taking a horn” (having a drink), of being able to whip his “weight in wild cats.” When a campaign opponent accused him of lying, he confessed to the charge. “Fellow citizens, I did lie,” he said. “They told stories on me, and I wanted to show them, if it came to that, that I could tell a bigger lie than they could. Yes, fellow citizens, I can run faster, walk longer, leap higher, speak better, and tell more and bigger lies than my competitor, and all his friends, any day of his life.”

  His reputation spread. “His friends admit that he is somewhat eccentric, and that from a deficit in education, his stump speeches are not famous for polish or refinement,” one editor explained. “Yet they are plain, forcible, and generally respectful.” Another remarked, “To return from the capitol without having seen Colonel Crockett betrayed a total destitution of curiosity and a perfect insensibility to the Lions of the West.” Alexis de Tocqueville, the French aristocrat who was slumming in America to learn about the novel phenomenon of democracy, knew about Crockett, or thought he did. “Two years ago the inhabitants of the district of which Memphis is the capital sent to the House of Representatives in Congress an individual named David Crockett, who has no education, can read with difficulty, has no property, no fixed residence, but passes his life hunting, selling his game to live, and dwelling continuously in the woods.” Now and then Crockett felt obliged to correct the most egregious misconceptions about himself—he could read well enough, and lived most of the year under a roof—but he hardly went out of his way to diminish the myth he was already becoming.

  Crockett’s growing fame didn’t endear him to some in the Jackson camp. James Knox Polk was younger than Crockett (by nine years), better educated than Crockett (who wasn’t?), more refined than Crockett (ditto), and more ambitious than Crockett. This last trait seems to have been what set him against Crockett, for though they both entered Tennessee politics as Jacksonians, Polk evinced a desire to make himself the heir of Old Hickory (now that Houston was out of the way). Polk was also craftier than Crockett, and on some controversial issues—school funding, the tariff—he isolated Crockett from the mainstream of Jacksonian sentiment. “Rely upon it,” Polk told a fellow Jackson loyalist, by way of attacking Crockett, “he can be and has been operated upon by our enemies
. We can’t trust him an inch.”

  Crockett won reelection to Congress in 1829 (this was before the states regularized their electoral calendars and settled on even-year elections), but he felt the ground being cut from beneath his feet. “To General Jackson I am a firm and undeviating friend,” he protested. “I have fought under his command, and am proud to own that he has been my commander. I have loved him, and in the sincerity of my heart I say that I still love him. But to be compelled to love every one who for purposes of self-aggrandizement pretends to rally around the ‘Jackson standard’ is what I can never submit to. The people of this country, like the humble boatsmen on the Mississippi, ought to look out for breakers!” (Crockett knew about the Mississippi breakers, having nearly drowned when high water ran a flatboat of his into an anchored log raft, sweeping him and the boat under the raft. He barely escaped, losing every stitch of clothing and large patches of skin in the process.)

  But it was Crockett who got slapped by the political waves. The more distance that developed between him and the president’s advisers, the more attractive he became to Jackson’s avowed enemies, who were busy forming the Whig party. Crockett innocently accepted their support and in doing so made himself even more of a target of the Jacksonians. Nearly every measure he supported—on land sales, Indian policy, highways—met resistance from the administration. Eventually Crockett had to admit that the problem wasn’t merely Polk but Jackson himself. When the president endorsed a rival in Crockett’s 1831 reelection campaign, the rift between the two old comrades in arms burst into the open. Crockett accused Jackson of abandoning his own beliefs, saying, “I have not left the principles which led me to support General Jackson; he has left them and me; and I will not surrender my independence to follow his new opinions, taught by interested and selfish advisers, and which may again be remolded under the influence of passion and cunning.” On another occasion Crockett indignantly declared, “I have not got a collar round my neck marked ‘My dog,’ with the name of Andrew Jackson on it. Because I would not take the collar round my neck, I was hurled from the party.” When defeat became all but certain, Crockett asserted, “I would rather be beaten and be a man than to be elected and be a little puppy dog. . . . I would rather be politically buried than to be hypocritically immortalized.” (The pleasure of the Polk faction at Crockett’s downfall was captured in a remark by one of them on the eve of the balloting: “I think Crockett is going to be beat at this election. . . . I hope the name of David, the mighty man in the River Country, will no longer disgrace the Western District in the National Legislature.”)