by Mark Stein
Houston’s anger at being wrongly accused of fraud was intensified by the fact that he had no legal recourse. Congressmen and senators have immunity from slander for anything they say in session. Houston did what any man worth his salt would do; he sent Stanberry a note. To which Stanberry replied:
I received this morning, by your hands, a note signed Samuel Houston, quoting from the National Intelligencer of the 2nd a remark made by me in the House. The object of the note is to ascertain whether Mr. Houston’s name was used by me in debate, and whether my remarks were correctly quoted. I cannot recognize the right of Mr. Houston to make this request.
Very respectfully yours etc.,
William Stanberry
One might wonder what Stanberry intended to achieve. Why not stand behind his statement, rather than imply the note might not be authentic (and therefore unfair to Houston) and then insult Houston? Elsewhere, Stanberry acknowledged that he knew the note was authentic and also knew the character of the man who sent it. “It was the opinion of one of my friends that it was proper that I should be armed,” he stated on the floor of the House, “that, immediately upon the reception of my note, Mr. Houston would probably make an assault upon me. Mr. [Thomas] Ewing accordingly procured for me a pair of pistols.”
Houston, however, did not assault Stanberry upon receiving his reply. He assaulted him ten days later. There could have been any number of reasons for the delay, including the “hot-headed” Houston’s contemplation of the political chessboard.
One thing certain is that on the evening of April 13, 1832, Stanberry crossed the street from his boarding house and, as he later testified:
At the moment of stepping on the sidewalk, Mr. Houston stood before me. I think he called me by my name and instantly struck me with the bludgeon he had in his hand with great violence, and he repeated the blow while I was down.… Turning on my right side, I got my hand in my pocket and got my pistol and cocked it. I watched an opportunity while he was striking me … and pulled the trigger, aiming at his breast. The pistol did not go off.… He wrested the pistol from my hand and, after some more blows, he left me.
Stanberry’s testimony was not given in court. Houston’s trial took place in the House of Representatives after it voted that its sergeant-at-arms should arrest Houston. Congressman James K. Polk strenuously opposed this action:
Was not the law of the District of Columbia open to the member? Was not the individual who had assaulted him … guaranteed by the Constitution to a trial by jury?
But a counterargument was made by Congressman Daniel Jenifer:
The Constitution … expressly declared that no member might be brought into question elsewhere for words spoken in the House.… Now, [I] would like to know, whether in the present case there had not been an attempt not only to question the words of the member assaulted, but to … deprive him altogether of the power of exercising it.… Was it credible, was it possible, that … in such a matter the House had no right to interfere … that their fellow-member was to be left to the courts of the District of Columbia?
All of this behooved Houston. The attack on the snooty congressman became national news, as Houston likely expected. But the decision to try him in the House of Representatives was a bonus, adding constitutional importance to the story in a way that cast him in the role of victim.
During the trial, Houston’s array of skills was in peak form. Courageously declaring that he wished no counsel, he then, without fanfare, obtained the most celebrated defense attorney of the day: Francis Scott Key. From April 14 to May 14, the House of Representatives devoted nearly all its time to Houston’s trial, ultimately finding him guilty and sentencing him to hear an official reprimand.
Stanberry next chaired a special committee to investigate fraud in Houston’s government contract and brought criminal charges against him in court. Houston was fined $500. Newspapers outside of Washington, DC, devoted no more than nine lines total to the trial—far less than their concurrent coverage of the official report from Stanberry’s committee, which found no fraud.
Houston was now free to go. With his newly bolstered public esteem raising him above the rumormongers, he went where he had intended to go all along: Texas. His successful maneuver, however, was not without cost. Houston’s Cherokee wife, Diana, was unwilling to part from her people. When Houston arrived in Nacogdoches, 165 miles southeast of present-day Dallas, he was alone.
All the rumors Houston’s detractors had circulated about his ambition to lead a revolution in Texas proved true. No sooner had “businessman” Houston arrived than he wrote to President Jackson regarding American acquisition of Texas. “That such a measure is desired by nineteen-twentieths of the population of the province, I cannot doubt,” Houston informed the president. “The course which Texas must and will adopt will render the transfer of Texas inevitable to some power, and if the United States does not press for it, England will most assuredly obtain it by some means.”
Within two months, Houston was elected to be a delegate to a convention seeking Mexican statehood for Texas (then part of the Mexican state of Coahuila). While many at the convention urged independence from Mexico, Houston (contrary to his letter to Jackson) publicly sided with Texas patriarch Stephen Austin in urging loyalty to Mexico. Houston chaired the committee drafting a Mexican statehood constitution. Austin then delivered the document to the national government in Mexico City, where he ended up in jail.
With Mexican president Antonio López de Santa Anna threatening to send troops into Texas, Houston was chosen to head the militia in Nacogdoches. Skirmishes commenced between Mexican troops and the various Texas militias. After a year in prison (and no trial), Austin returned and resumed leadership. But his health had deteriorated during his confinement, and his brilliance was in creating, not destroying. Though Austin had misgivings about Houston, he recognized him as the man most able to lead the military. In 1836 Houston was given command.
In that same year, the two battles that stand out as mileposts in the Texas War of Independence took place: the Battle of the Alamo, a stunning defeat for the Texans, and the Battle of San Jacinto, a victory that marked the end of the war and commenced the independent Republic of Texas. Houston was not at the Alamo. He had, in fact, issued orders for its abandonment and destruction, upon learning of its vulnerability as Mexican forces approached. But his orders were not obeyed. Consequently, as the New Orleans Commercial Bulletin reported:
On the 6th March about midnight, the Alamo was assaulted by the whole force of the Mexican army, commanded by Santa Anna in person. The battle was desperate until daylight, when only seven men belonging to the Texian garrison were found alive who cried for quarters but were told that there was no mercy for them; they then continued fighting until the whole were butchered.… The bodies of the slain were thrown into a heap at the center of the Alamo and burned.
Though the accuracy of this report is open to question, it was the version that “Texians” received. The same news report continued:
Immediately after the capture, Gen. Santa Anna sent … [a] servant to Gen. Houston’s camp … offering the Texians peace and general amnesty if they would lay down their arms and submit to his government. Gen. Houston’s reply was, “True, sir, you have succeeded in killing some of our brave men—but the Texians are not yet conquered.” The effect of the fall [of the Alamo] throughout Texas was electrical. Every man who could use a rifle and was in a condition to take the field marched forthwith to the seat of war.
Once again, an unfortunate affair ended up working in Houston’s favor. Six weeks later, with the Texans’ manpower boosted, events went differently. In May Washington’s National Intelligencer reported:
During the night of the 20th, after the skirmish between Mexican and Texian forces, Gen. Houston … gained a position within rifle distance of the enemy before they were aware of his presence. Two discharges of small arms and cannon loaded with musket balls settled the affair.… The officers broke and endeavored to
escape; the mounted riflemen, however, soon overtook all but one.… The pursuers … searched the woods for a long time in vain, when it occurred to an old hunter that the chase might, like a hard-pressed bear, have “taken a tree.” The tree tops were examined, when lo! the game was discovered snugly ensconced in the forks of a large live oak. The captors did not know who their prisoner was until they reached the camp, when the Mexican soldiers exclaimed, “El General! El Gefe! Santa Anna!”
The captured Mexican leader signed a surrender. Though it did not include recognition of the Republic of Texas, for all practical purposes Texas was now an independent nation.
On September 5, 1836, Sam Houston became the second president of Texas, defeating the ailing Stephen Austin by a margin of nearly ten to one. Though Houston, like his mentor, Andrew Jackson, had earned a reputation for brash statements and acts, both men were capable of caution, as reflected at this politically critical moment. President Jackson’s remarks on Texas called for moderation:
My friend Sam Houston, after he thrashed Stanberry of Ohio, went to Texas.… Santa Anna said to Houston … “You must give up your arms.” At this, Sam, whom I taught to fight, the rogue, stood straight up and told him, “Come and take them.” On this Santa Anna … marched into Texas, passed the Rio del Norte and all the other rivers whose names I cannot remember, till he got as far as the San Jacinto. There Sam and his troops … attacked the Mexicans—routed, killed, chased, and captured the whole lot—pulled Santa Anna from a tree, up which he had climbed, and thus almost equaled—not quite—my victory at New Orleans. On this the Texians have established their independence.… I am informed that they want to be admitted into the Union, but we must not let that come yet. Let their recognition be openly made. Let Mexico and Europe be persuaded that it is no use to think of stopping Texas from going her own way.7
Houston echoed this view when addressing the Texas legislature on the subject of annexation to the United States. “It is not possible to determine what are to be [our] future relations,” he stated. “Texas, with her superior natural advantages, must become a point of attraction, and the policy of establishing with her the earliest relations of friendship and commerce will not escape the eye of statesmen.”
Houston devoted his presidency to the mundane tasks required to bring economic stability to his deeply indebted nation. Limited by law to one term, Houston subsequently served in the Texas House of Representatives, where he counseled moderation regarding plans to expand into regions of Mexico that today include New Mexico, Arizona, and California. The initial target was an expedition to occupy Santa Fe, since the town was within the Rio Grande boundary that Texas declared to be its border. Houston declared the expedition foolhardy: the Hispanic population of Santa Fe would receive them as enemies, and the act of aggression would provide sympathy for, and justify military action from, Mexico. The bill was defeated.
Still, Houston did not completely oppose expansion; his views were simply more pragmatic. After returning to the presidency in December 1841, Houston described to the U.S. minister to Texas an astonishing vision for the future if the United States did not offer it statehood:
Houston’s vision of United States without Texas
The union of Oregon and Texas will be much more natural and convenient than for either separately to belong to the United States.… Such an event may appear fanciful to many, but I assure you there are no Rocky Mountains interposing to such a project. But one thing can prevent its accomplishment and that is annexation.… Most of the provinces of Chihuahua, Sonora, and Upper and Lower California, as well as Santa Fe, which we now claim, will have to be brought into the connection of Texas and Oregon. This you will see, by reference to the map, is no bugbear to those who will reflect upon the achievement of the Anglo-Saxon people.8
Such a map did indeed seem both fanciful and logical. The time had come for the United States to make up its mind about Texas.
On April 12, 1844, President John Tyler signed and sent to the Senate a treaty with the Republic of Texas that would convert the republic into an American territory. During the treaty’s negotiations, public opinion was highly divided over whether or not the nation wanted Texas. Many in the North vehemently opposed the annexation of Texas, and not simply because it would be a slave state, but because Congress gave Texas the option of becoming as many as five states more equal in size with other states. Consequently, Southerners, envisioning ten additional proslavery votes in the Senate, vehemently supported its annexation. Texans, however, had developed such a strong sense of identify that they never considered subdividing the state. To remain a slave state, though, Texas had to relinquish its land north of 36°30’ (the top of its Panhandle) to be in compliance with the Missouri Compromise.
Ultimately, a quest shared by Northerners and Southerners—expansion of the nation—prevailed over their slavery conflict, and Texas was admitted to the Union on March 1, 1845. Houston was elected to represent Texas in the U.S. Senate, where he participated in an additional boundary change. With the state still facing enormous debts from its days as a republic, Houston supported the $10 million sale to the United States of a large chunk of western Texas, which was then annexed to New Mexico.
More important was the context in which that sale took place: the Compromise of 1850, in which the central issue was slavery. Without the Compromise of 1850, the South would have seceded, as ten years later it nevertheless did. Though Sam Houston supported slavery, he opposed secession till the day he died in 1863, in the midst of the Civil War. Back during the debate in 1850, he had summoned all of his oratorical skills on behalf of loyalty to the Union. Those skills, like so many of Sam Houston’s skills, were formidable. So formidable that a future president filched one of the lines from Houston’s speech: “A nation divided against itself cannot stand.”9
· · · UTAH, NEVADA, ARIZONA · · ·
BRIGHAM YOUNG
The Boundary of Religion Revisited
The Mormons are, at present, eliciting considerable interest and inquiry in reference to the organization of a new State in the far West under the cognomen, State of Deseret.… Ought they be admitted without strict inquiry? For a starting point, Congress might appoint a committee to inquire into and report the facts … relative to polygamy and, if the facts are unfavorable, that they be not … styled “the State of Deseret but “the State of Whoredom.”… And, further, to inquire whether the whole movement be more or less a mere Mormon church maneuver to create a Mormon church State, designed to be under Mormon church jurisdiction exclusively.
—NATIONAL ERA, JANUARY 24, 1850
Two hundred and fifty feet below the surface of Lake Mead is the town of Callville, Nevada, founded in 1858 at the behest of Mormon leader Brigham Young. Callville was the high-water mark of Young’s efforts to create a Mormon state. The high-water mark for Callville itself (or, as it turned out, its second highest water mark) was in October 1866, when the first oceangoing steamship arrived at its dock. Its highest-water mark was in 1936, when it was inundated by the Colorado River upon completion of the Hoover Dam. By then, however, it had been abandoned for more than fifty years, despite having played a key role in establishing the present-day boundary between Nevada and Arizona—a boundary far from Utah, the state predominated by Mormons. That distance reflects the scope of Brigham Young’s dream.
Young was a thirty-year-old carpenter and blacksmith when he joined the Mormon Church in 1832. The church itself had only recently been organized by Joseph Smith, who published the Book of Mormon in 1830. Through the energy Young devoted to the church, and his charismatic personality, he rose in its ranks over the next decade, surfacing in the national press in 1842 when the New York Herald mentioned him among the leadership of the Mormons. That article, however, was a report on the nation’s animosity toward Mormons. “The fights and quarrels in Mormon country promise to be much richer than anything that has occurred here since the days of the Revolutionary War,” it began, relating that Missouri “has char
ged Joe [Smith, founder of the church] with instigating the man who attempted to kill Gov. Boggs.”
The nation’s antagonism emanated from the Mormons’ firm belief in traditional marriage—biblically traditional marriage, which is to say polygamy. But the hostility grew to include other matters. Joseph Smith had prophesied that God would soon bring “a full end of all nations.” In view of the Mormon disregard of state laws prohibiting polygamy, Smith’s proclamation on “the end of nations” got Washington’s attention. Smith sought to mitigate these fears in 1838 by publishing The Political Motto of the Church of Latter-day Saints, which praised the U.S. Constitution as being “founded in the wisdom of Almighty God.” But not everyone believed him. Later that year he was arrested for treason. Lacking sufficient evidence, authorities in Missouri struck a face-saving deal in which Smith was allowed to escape. He relocated in Illinois, but the conflicts followed him and in 1844 he was assassinated.
A leadership crisis ensued. “There has been a feud and division among the Mormons,” South Carolina’s Southern Patriot reported. “When Joe Smith, the head imposter, was killed, there was a struggle for ascendancy. Sidney Rigdon thought that he ought to be next in command.… Emma Smith, the widow, seemed disposed to be the spiritual leader.… Wm. Smith, the brother of Joe, set himself up as Patriarch.… Brigham Young and the Council of Twelve then took upon themselves the spiritual and temporal government of the Mormons.”