by Mark Stein
One thing Congress could do was to appease Virginia by giving back the land it had ceded to create the District of Columbia. Such an action, at that point in time, would help Virginia in two significant ways.
The first benefit would be Virginia’s acquisition of additional proslavery voters electing representatives to its legislature. These votes were needed to counter those of the increasing population in Virginia’s mountainous western region (present-day West Virginia), an area not suitable for the large plantations needed to support slave labor. When Hunter presented his proposal, Virginia’s staunchly proslavery Democrats had recently lost their majority in the state’s House of Delegates.
The second significant benefit had to do with the slave trade. As Hunter stated in Congress, Alexandria was suffering economically, in part because no federal facilities had been built on the Virginia side of the Potomac. To make matters worse, Congress had begun to contemplate a prohibition of the slave trade in the District of Columbia. Were that to happen, it would be yet another blow to Alexandria’s economy.
Alexandria had been home to the nation’s largest slave-trading firm, Franklin & Armfield. Though the company had dissolved by the time Hunter proposed retrocession, its partners had sold their interests to a number of local slave traders. The size of the market served even by these smaller Alexandria companies, and by other slave dealers in the District of Columbia, was evidenced on a daily basis in the local papers:
CASH FOR NEGROES—I will give the highest cash price for likely NEGROES from 10 to 25 years of age. Myself or my agent can at all times be found at the establishment formerly owned by Armfield, Franklin & Co. at the west end of Duke Street, Alexandria.—GEORGE KEPHART
NEGROES WANTED—The subscriber wishes to purchase any number of Negroes for the New Orleans market, and will give at all times the highest market price in cash in likely young Negroes. Those wishing to sell will find it in their interest to call at my establishment, corner of 7th Street and Maryland Avenue, where myself or agent can be seen at any time.—THOS. WILLIAMS8
While outlawing the slave trade would be an economic blow to Alexandria, if Congress returned Alexandria to Virginia and then outlawed the slave trade in the District, the prohibition would be a boon to Alexandria, since it would eliminate the competition. To achieve this boon required some delicacy. Hunter, with his calm, dispassionate manner, a Southerner who spoke glowingly of the future of the Union, was just the man for the job. The bill passed the House 96 to 65 (and the Senate 32 to 14).
The legislation stipulated that a referendum be held on the southern side of the Potomac to determine whether a majority of that area’s voters (white males) wished to become Virginians. One group of Alexandrians particularly concerned about the vote’s outcome were its African Americans, since Virginia law prohibited teaching African Americans to read and write and required African American religious activities to be monitored by whites. Describing the day of the referendum, one free African American businessman in Alexandria wrote, “Whilst the citizens of this city and county were voting … humble poor were standing in rows on either side of the court house and, as the votes were announced every quarter of an hour, the suppressed wailings and lamentations of the people of color were constantly ascending to God for help and succor.”9
Today ghosts of the original District of Columbia remain on the map in the borders of present-day Arlington County, Virginia, and along the post—Revolutionary War segment of King Street in Alexandria.
As for Hunter, he was elected to the Senate later that year. While there, the anticipated storm erupted over slavery in the region acquired in the Mexican War. It blew away the Missouri Compromise. In its place, Congress cobbled together the Compromise of 1850 and then, four years later, took cover under the Kansas-Nebraska Act, which left the question of slavery to the states and territories (see “Stephen A. Douglas” in this book). Amid the bitter debates over the Kansas-Nebraska Act, Senator Hunter’s calm demeanor and practical arguments provided influential support for the bill—so much so that, the following year, the Cleveland Herald noted, “Clubs are forming in [New York] for the support of Robert M. T. Hunter, at present U.S. Senator from Virginia, for President of the U.S.”
Ghosts of old D.C. border
Though Hunter’s presidential bid failed even to get his name on the ballot at the 1856 Democratic National Convention, it succeeded in calling attention to him as a candidate for the future. Indeed, four years later, a correspondent for the Daily South Carolinian reported:
I would respectfully suggest that a union of the Southern delegates might be effected upon the Honorable Robert M. T. Hunter of Virginia.… Mr. Hunter is peculiarly fitted for the Presidency.… He is a man of superior natural abilities and thorough cultivation … profoundly versed in the history of the rise and fall of empires.… However he is free from even the slightest tinge of pedantry and sentimentality. He is a plain, practical business man.
But the times no longer called for plain, practical men. The Compromise of 1850 and the Kansas-Nebraska Act had failed to mitigate the political storm over slavery. Inadvertently, they fed its escalation to hurricane force. In choosing a presidential candidate at the 1860 Democratic National Convention, the delegates were unable to coalesce after fifty-seven ballots. In each of those votes, Hunter placed a distant third among nine nominees. Ultimately the party shattered. Its splintered constituencies enabled the election of a visionary, Abraham Lincoln.
After Virginia’s secession, Robert M. T. Hunter was elected to the Confederate Congress—but not for long. In July 1861, three months into the Civil War, Hunter became the Confederacy’s secretary of state—also not for long. Individuals and factions were jockeying for power in the newly forming government, as San Francisco’s Evening Bulletin observed in February 1862:
[Robert Toombs] was made Secretary of State for the Confederacy … but resigned late in July, professedly that he might take the field [of battle].… Soon he was sent back to the rebel Senate, probably expecting to be chosen its presiding officer. But R. M. T. Hunter was too smart for him. That Virginian, rich in initials, was made Secretary of State after Toombs … [then] resigned, was sent to the new rebel Senate, and has been elected its president pro tem.
Hunter served in the Confederate Senate for the duration of the war, but the center of action was on the battlefield. Near the war’s conclusion, Hunter was one of three delegates selected to meet with President Lincoln at a peace conference held behind Union lines in Hampton Roads, Virginia.
The war left Hunter economically debilitated. In time, a government tidbit was thrown his way via an appointment as collector of the port of Tappahannock, Virginia. By then, Robert M. T. Hunter had become much like that section of the District he had restored to Virginia—a part of the government but hardly a participant, taking whatever opportunity came his way. Under the circumstances, however, there was no place to which he could retrocede himself.
· · · TEXAS · · ·
SAM HOUSTON
The Man Who Lassoed Texas
Speaker of the House: Samuel Houston, you have been brought before this House, by its order, to answer the charge of having assaulted and beaten William Stanberry, a member of the House of Representatives of the United States from the State of Ohio, for words spoken by him in debate upon a question then depending before the House.… If you desire the aid of counsel … your request will now be received.
Samuel Houston: Mr. Speaker, I wish no counsel.
—REGISTER OF DEBATES, 22ND CONG., APRIL 17, 1832
If you think Texas is big, take a look at the man whose name is now the state’s biggest city: Sam Houston. He stood nearly six and a half feet tall, and that was the least of his outsized aspects. Houston, along with Stephen Austin, are the two people most associated with the fact that Texas is today part of the United States. While Austin followed a relatively direct path (continuing his father’s founding of a colony in Mexico’s sparsely populated region of Tejas), Houst
on’s path was far more erratic. In retrospect, however, Houston’s life seems inevitably to have led to Texas. Or to being shot dead.
Houston was born in Virginia, the son of a distinguished officer in the American Revolution. When his father died in 1807, the family moved to Tennessee, where fourteen-year-old Sam was enrolled in a Christian school run by his brothers. He played hooky so often the family put him to work in their farm-based trading post. Many of its customers were Cherokees from a nearby settlement. Sam was fascinated both by them and by the novels and literary classics he’d bring to the store from his father’s library. The only downside to being a clerk was being a clerk. So Sam took off at age sixteen and headed into the woods to live with the Cherokees. Over the next several years, he learned their language and customs and found a second father. Houston was adopted by Oolooteka, known also as John Jolly, the leader of these Cherokees and, after their relocation, chief of the Arkansas Cherokees.
Following in the footsteps of both fathers, Sam Houston fought in the War of 1812, which involved the Cherokees, allying with the Americans in response to the fact that their enemy, the Red Stick Creeks, had allied with the British. Wounded at the Battle of Horseshoe Bend, Houston nevertheless led a courageous charge when the battle seemed lost, only to discover that his comrades hadn’t followed. Within moments Houston was again wounded, this time, it was believed, mortally. But he defied the doctors and lived, and also came to the attention of the commanding general, Andrew Jackson, who became yet another father—or, more accurately, godfather—to Sam Houston. “Old Hickory,” as Jackson was known, appointed his young protégé to serve as the military’s subagent to the Cherokees. In this capacity, Houston accompanied an 1818 delegation of Cherokees to Washington, DC, where, meeting with Secretary of War John C. Calhoun, Lieutenant Houston wore the blanket and loincloth of his adopted brethren. Calhoun was not pleased and, following the meeting, let Houston know it. Houston, equally displeased, resigned.1
Returning to Tennessee, Houston studied law and, for a brief time, was a local attorney. In rapid succession, he was appointed by the governor to the honorary post of major general in the Tennessee militia, elected to Congress in 1823, and reelected in 1825. In 1826 a flurry of gossipy newspaper items regarding one of Houston’s numerous spats noted “information which may be relied upon has been received … that Gen. Houston and Gen. White had gone to Kentucky to fight a duel.” This item, from Richmond’s Constitutional Whig, included a curiously convoluted coda: “Gen. White accompanied Col. Smith when he bore the challenge from John P. Erwin, Esq. to Mr. Houston.” One might think duels the most straightforward way imaginable of resolving differences. Evidently not in this case: someone named Erwin, angry at Houston, got someone named Smith to deliver his challenge, in response to which Houston ended up dueling someone named White, who accompanied Smith.2 Honor among politicians, even then, had its intricacies.
Sam Houston (1793-1863) (photo credit 25.1)
The press reported on the duel as if it were the sporting event of the year, which, in effect, it was. The New York Spectator wrote in October 1826:
The parties met on Thursday morning beyond the Kentucky line. They fought at the distance of fifteen feet only, and at the first fire Houston’s aim took effect, striking White very near the center of the body, but, as he was in a walking position and the ball striking on a rib, it passed round the back and lodged on the opposite side, from which it was easily extracted. Had the ball passed directly through from the point of entrance to the point of extraction, it would have caused instant death.… They were accompanied by their friends on each side, who bear united testimony of the fair and chivalric conduct of the parties.
Clearly, Houston did not lack courage. But he could also tap-dance his way out of danger. Throughout his career, he was challenged to duels by numerous colleagues, including a naval commander and two of the presidents of the Republic of Texas.3 Houston accepted none of their challenges. In fact, he never dueled again, possibly because the practice was coming to entail an additional risk: one could get arrested. Kentucky charged Houston with attempted murder following his duel with White. But he nimbly managed to stay one step ahead of the law, as revealed in an exasperated editorial in Kentucky’s Frankfort Commentator:
A grand jury at Nashville, Tenn. has presented Gen. Houston, of that place, for having lately fought a duel within the limits of this state with Gen. White, who was severely wounded—not as having been guilty of a violation of the laws of God and man, but as having performed a manly act, quite necessary and altogether proper for a gentleman, and which ought to have no unfavorable effect upon his election of Governor of Tennessee!!
That Houston managed to get a grand jury in Tennessee to consider an act he committed in Kentucky attests less to his guilt or innocence than to his ability to maneuver—as does Houston’s subsequent use of the Tennessee grand jury’s ruling as an asset in his bid to become the governor. With the duel having become a campaign issue, outgoing Tennessee governor William Carroll opted not to decide on a response to Kentucky’s request for extradition. The decision then fell to the next governor, Sam Houston, who opted not to order himself to face trial in Kentucky.
While governor, an event took place that exploded Houston’s political plans and landed him, badly damaged, facing Texas. That event was marriage. Three months after Houston wed Eliza Allen, she returned to her parents. The most likely cause was that Eliza had revealed to Houston her love for another man. Houston was twice the age of this eighteen-year-old girl, who may have yielded to her parents’ pressure that she marry the more prestigious man.4 Houston, for his part, said only that the matter was private. But he resigned as governor of Tennessee and went back into the woods, returning to his adopted father, Chief Oolooteka.
Oolooteka, now located in Arkansas, welcomed his prodigal son—though this prodigal son, as the astute chief knew, was closely connected to the new president of the United States, Andrew Jackson. Initially, Chief Oolooteka sent Houston on local missions to mediate intertribal disputes. Other relationships also occupied Houston’s time—one in particular with a Cherokee widow named Diana Rogers Gentry. They soon married. How officially they were married depends on one’s cultural customs, but among the Cherokees and in their own hearts, they were wed. Houston’s relationship with the tribe also deepened as he formally became a full-fledged Cherokee.
Chief Oolooteka then sent Houston to Washington as part of a delegation working out details resulting from the Treaty with the Western Cherokee Nation of 1828. Houston was again in Cherokee garb, this time in the presence of the president. Old Hickory reacted with a grin and an embrace.
Houston’s appearance in Washington as a Cherokee fooled no one—with the possible exception of Houston. His plans at this point were a mystery, perhaps even to himself. Speculation was rampant. Friends in Tennessee began setting the table for his return to elective office. Foes in Tennessee pulled the tablecloth off. In May 1830 the Nashville Banner reported:
At a meeting of sundry respectable citizens … it was resolved that a committee draw up a report expressive of the opinions entertained of the private virtue of Mrs. Eliza Houston, and whether her amiable character has received an injury among those acquainted with her in consequence of the late unfortunate occurrence between her and her husband, Gen. Samuel Houston.… It has been suggested that … a belief has obtained in many places that he was married to an unworthy woman and that she has been the cause of all his misfortunes and his downfall as a man and a politician. Nothing is further from the fact.… The committee has no hesitation in saying that he is a deluded man; and his suspicions were groundless.
Tennessee was not Houston’s only option. He had also been approached by friends in Texas, where the Anglo population had grown to the point that there was talk of separation from Mexico. Here too his enemies sought to undermine him, reporting that Houston planned to exploit rebellion in Texas by taking its helm. President Jackson wrote to his unpredictable prot�
�gé, laughing off the rumor “that you had declared you would, in less than two years, be emperor of that country by conquest.” Jackson then mentioned that the military would suppress any such effort.5
Houston responded to these efforts to confine him by placing an ad in the Nashville Banner. Knowing that the press loved every aspect of his public and private controversies, Houston was assured his ad would soon appear as a news story nationwide. Worded as it was, it did:
Now know all men by these presents, that I, Sam Houston, “late governor of the State of Tennessee,” do hereby declare to all scoundrels whomsoever, that they are authorized to accuse, defame, calumniate, traduce, slander, or vilify and libel me, to any extent in personal or private abuse.… Be it known … I do solemnly promise on the first day of April next, to give to the author of the most elegant, refined, ingenious lie or calumny, a handsome gilt copy (bound in sheep) of the Kentucky Reporter, or a snug plain copy of the United States Telegraph (bound in dog).6
Houston’s humor concealed the dynamite around which it was wrapped. By detonating ridicule beneath the feet of his detractors, Houston obtained time to make a move. That move was to Texas, ostensibly as a business venture. To do so, however, Houston needed to clear the concerns of President Jackson. His move to Texas, therefore, was via Washington.
Jackson too, by dint of his flinty personality, was also an embattled man. Shortly after Houston’s arrival in Washington, Congressman William Stanberry delivered a speech on the floor regarding Jackson appointees who had, or should have been, fired. Amid those he was listing, Stanberry declaimed, “Was the late Secretary of War removed in consequence of his attempt, fraudulently, to give to Governor Houston the contract for Indian rations?” The answer to that question was yes and no. No, that was not why Secretary of War John Eaton had left office. And yes, there had been fraud—but not in Houston’s contract. The fraud was in the previous contract, the holder of which deprived the Cherokees of adequate rations while pocketing the surplus profits. Secretary of War Eaton awarded Houston the new contract knowing it would be administered honestly. In so doing, Eaton aroused the wrath of entrenched political interests.