Kaleidoscope

  Sam Houston Materials

        General Sam Houston was one of the most remarkable figures in American history. He was a native of Virginia who made his mark as a soldier, statesman, and adventurer on the frontier in Tennessee and the Arkansas territory before coming to Texas.

        As a soldier Sam Houston served under  Andrew Jackson in the war of 1812 and he ensured Texas independence in 1836 with his astonishing victory over Santa Anna and  the Mexican army at San Jacinto.

      As a politician, Houston was a Tennessee congressman at age thirty and governor at age thirty-six. He was the first elected president of the Republic of Texas and one of the first senators from the new state after annexation. Because of his ardent defense of the Union and his refusal to swear allegiance to the confederacy, he was deposed as governor of Texas in 1861.

         Houston’s personal life was as tumultuous as his political and military careers. He married three times, always to much younger women. The first marriage to an eighteen year old, ended mysteriously when she left him only eleven weeks later. Afterwards, he resigned the governorship of Tennessee and fled to the west and exile among his old Cherokee friends. It was there he married Tiana. Years later, at the age of forty-six, he married a woman of twenty who bore eight children during their devoted and happy marriage.

       Although Houston died vilified by those whose independence he had ensured, the eclipse of his reputation was brief. His fellow Texans soon acknowledged his central place in their history, and he is revered today as one of its and its greatest heroes.

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