Sam Houston

A Study in Leadership

Bill O'Neal

• Publisher: Eakin Press
• Year: 2020
• ISBN:
  9781681791913
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Storia
• Subtopic: Biografie in ambito storico

Sam Houston is a Texas icon. General Houston signed the Texas Declaration of Independence on his 43rd birthday, and six weeks later he led the Texas Army to a spectacular victory at San Jacinto. "Old Sam Jacinto" twice was elected president of the Republic of Texas; he served thirteen years as U.S. Senator from the State of Texas; and he won election as governor of the Lone Star State. Before he came to Texas, Houston twice lived with the Cherokee. As a young army officer he was severely wounded while leading charges at the Battle of Horseshoe Bend, and while still in his twenties Houston became major general of the Tennessee State Militia. In Tennessee he was elected to Congress and to the governorship, ultimately becoming the only man ever elected governor of two states. He knew and worked with fourteen consecutive U.S. presidents, from Thomas Jefferson to Abraham Lincoln, as well as Jefferson Davis, who became president of the Confederacy. Soldier, statesman, duelist, brawler, thrice married-Sam Houston lived a turbulent and controversial life filled with drama, conflict, and superlative achievements. From Houston's Virginia birthplace to his homes and grave in Huntsville, Texas, from Horseshoe Bend to San Jacinto, Bill O'Neal repeatedly has visited the sites of Sam Houston's life. O'Neal lectured about Houston for more than three decades in Texas history classes at Panola College, and the response to his public lecture on Houston as a leader at the Bob Bullock Museum inspired this book.

I could not be gotten into a schoolhouse until I was eight years old, nor did I accomplish much after I started.

Sam Houston

Chapter One

The Making of a Leader

Sam Houston radiated leadership.

Physically imposing and a man of powerful convictions, Houston gravitated to leadership roles throughout his adventurous life. At twenty-one, Lieutenant Houston was wounded three times while leading charges at Horseshoe Bend. More than two decades later General Houston was badly wounded while leading the spectacular victory at San Jacinto. A prolific public life placed him in both the United States House of Representatives and the U.S. Senate, the governorship of both Tennessee and Texas, and the presidency of the Lone Star Republic—twice.

The leadership roles, the leadership qualities of Sam Houston are remarkable, historically significant, and worthy of examination.

••••

Samuel Houston was born on March 2, 1793, on the Timber Ridge plantation begun by John Houston, Sam’s great-grandfather, in the mountainous frontier of western Virginia. Timber Ridge was located eight miles northeast of Lexington, the seat of Rockbridge County. Named after his father, Sam was the fifth son of Samuel and Elizabeth Houston. There would be another boy and three girls, so Sam was the middle of nine children. But there was nothing of the tranquil temperament of a typical middle child in his assertive, independent, ambitious Type A personality. Sam loved the forested hills that surrounded Timber Ridge, and he enjoyed boyhood adventures in the nearby wilderness.

Young Sam was strongly influenced by his father. As a young man during the American Revolution, Samuel Houston enlisted in the patriotic cause, serving ably under fellow Virginian Daniel Morgan. Morgan had been a member of the Virginia Militia since the French and Indian War, and when the Revolution erupted he raised a company of nearly 100 men. Many of his backwoods soldiers were armed with hunting rifles, rather than military smooth-bore—and short range—muskets. Morgan instructed his sharpshooters to gun down British officers and their Native American scouts. He fought skillfully at Quebec and Saratoga and Cowpens, as a colonel commanding Morgan’s Rifle Brigade. One of his company commanders was Captain Samuel Houston who, like Morgan before him, became an officer and inspector in the Virginia Militia after the war.

“A man of iron frame, commanding bearing, and fearless courage,” Sam later wrote about his father, with obvious admiration. “He was known for only one position, and this was for a military life.”¹

By nature many boys take pride in the military exploits of their fathers, and Captain Houston had served in a legendary unit. Throughout his boyhood, Sam witnessed his father ride off, clad in military attire, to perform official duties. He must have seen militia company drills with his father at nearby Lexington. A deep military ardor developed in young Houston.

Sam’s mother was a formidable woman who had to manage a great many children during her husband’s military absences. “She was distinguished by a full, rather tall, and matronly form, a fine carriage and an impressive and dignified countenance,” related Sam. “She was gifted with intellectual and moral qualities, which elevated her, in a still more striking manner, above most of her sex.”²

Both of his parents had strong physiques. His father had a “powerful frame” and his mother was tall and stout. Little wonder that their son grew into a man of impressive size. Samuel and Elizabeth were intelligent and people of character. On a regular basis Captain Houston demonstrated leadership qualities through his military activities.

Young Sam was bright, but the energetic boy balked at the prospect of confinement in school. “I could not be gotten into a schoolhouse until I was eight years old, nor did I accomplish much after I started.”³

The plantation home where Sam Houston was born stood on a hill above this marker. Fittingly, the marker is anchored by a 38,000-pound piece of Texas granite. Photo by the author.

Frontier schools usually were one-room log buildings with no desks, just benches. Books and paper and chalk boards were rare, and often there were not even hand-held slates. Teachers, who frequently had little schooling themselves, had to rely upon short oral lessons to teach the 3-Rs: Readin’, ‘Ritin’, and `Rithmetic. School children would recite the teacher’s lessons aloud, repeating it until memorized. Pupils were expected to recite loudly and often in chorus. These “ABC schools” or “vocal schools” or “blab schools” sometimes were entertaining to the students. But little Sam Houston was not entertained, later estimating that he barely attended school for a total of six months near his home.

“I learned to read and write, and gained some idea of imperfect ciphering.”⁴ Having learned to read, however, Sam opened the door to self-education. Like another backwoods boy fourteen years his junior, Abraham Lincoln, Sam had only a skimpy education but became an avid reader.

Sam and Abe also shared a dislike of the drudgery of farm work. Despite his disdain for school, Sam later complained that he “was compelled to devote more of his time to farm-work than to school . . .”⁵ If he disliked school, he despised working in the fields.

Major Houston—promoted by the Virginia Militia in 1803—may have passed on this trait to his namesake sons, preferring to spend time on inspection trips rather than in his own fields. His older son tried to shoulder greater responsibilities on the plantation, but debts accumulated. Now in his fifties with growing health problems, Major Houston acquired cheap land in eastern Tennessee, where there were relatives.

He bought a large wagon and team, to go with a smaller conveyance already on the plantation. Having already sold parcels of his land for needed cash, he now arranged the sale of the remainder of his property. The Timber Ridge plantation would sell for one thousand pounds.

In the midst of these preparations, Major Houston died—perhaps fittingly—while on a militia inspection trip. Young Sam was only thirteen. Houston left his widow with six sons and three daughters and considerable debt. But fifty-two-year-old Elizabeth Paxton Houston went to work closing out the Virginia property, paying off family creditors, and packing up for the long, rugged trip to a new frontier home.

Sam, at thirteen, was excited by the prospect of a pioneer journey. Sam’s admiration of his mother soared: “she was not a woman to succumb to misfortune” he reflected, also extolling her “heroism” and “her usual determination of spirit.”⁶

The Houston patriarch was dead, but Sam witnessed the family leadership vacuum courageously filled by his stalwart mother. The Houston family would be led to a new frontier home by a resolute and authoritarian matriarch.

Family belongings were packed into the two wagons and the Houstons set out across the Allegheny Mountains. The journey was about 300 miles cross-country, but it was much farther when traversing precipitous and winding mountain trails. Houston later spoke of “severe hardships” as the family trekked through “unpeopled regions.”⁷

But at thirteen Sam had never traveled far from home. He had a restless, adventurous nature, and the first major journey of his life featured magnificent scenery, countless new experiences, and the classic American anticipation of a fresh start on a new frontier. Despite the hardships of wilderness travel, the overland trek of 1807 unleashed the boy’s nomadic instincts.

As an adult he became a compulsive traveler, undeterred by distance or hardship or lack of accommodations in a slow-moving age. The exhilaration of journeying to new places, of seeing new people or old friends, made the roving lifestyle of a wayfarer irresistible to Sam Houston.

At last the Houstons arrived at the log cabin village of Maryville, about twenty-five miles southeast of Knoxville. Major Houston had negotiated for more than 400 acres of land on a branch in Baker’s Creek Valley, about eight miles south of Maryville.

Elizabeth Houston patented the hilly property, with the Great Smoky Mountains looming just to the west. The family erected a hillside cabin, and began clearing the land.

The East Tennessee farm pioneered by the Houston family is designated by a roadside historical marker and, at the home site, by a trio of flagpoles, for the banners of the United States, Tennessee, and Texas. Photo by the author.

Among the belongings the Houstons brought from Timber Ridge was Major Houston’s modest library. Young Sam already had dipped into these books, being far more interested in reading than in the instruction of a frontier schoolhouse. Sam was especially captivated by Alexander Pope’s famous translation of The Iliad, the Greek epic poem set in the Trojan War. The siege of Troy, the heroic exploits of Achilles, the drama involving Agamemnon, King Priam, Hector, Paris, and the beautiful Helen—the entire tale called out to young Sam. He read and re-read The Iliad, and in Tennessee he far preferred reading to the grueling work of building a farm.

Sam’s mother sent him to the Maryville Academy, which he later described as “a rude frontier school.”⁸ Sam took little interest in his lessons, but he could not put down The Iliad, “which I read so constantly that I could repeat it almost entire from beginning to end.”⁹

His mother was a devout Presbyterian, and she had brought Sam and the other children with her to the rock church close to their Timber Ridge house. In Tennessee she attended a Presbyterian church a couple of miles east of her home, and she is buried there in the church yard. As a boy, Sam attended church with his mother, and he read the Bible in the King James Version, with its stately, well-constructed grammar. He memorized Biblical passages, and he memorized Shakespeare. Later he quoted impressive passages in public addresses, a practice he cultivated and eventually recommended to his older son.

While Sam was wandering in the woods to pursue his reading program, his mother and brothers were toiling to improve the family fortunes. As their farm developed, the Houstons acquired an interest in a general store in Maryville. It was decided that since Sam was of little use around the farm, he should work at the store, and he was installed at the Maryville mercantile.

By now Sam was fifteen. He stood nearly six feet tall and he resented the bossiness of his older brothers. He took an instant dislike to clerking. Writing in the third person years later, Houston unhappily recalled that “standing behind a counter was not a life to please a mind of his caste, and he disappeared.” Meaningfully, Houston added “that the wild liberty of the red man suited his nature far better than the restraints of the white settlements.”¹⁰

Cherokee country was just to the west of the region where the Houstons settled. A peaceful, agricultural people, the Cherokee nation was the most advanced of “Five Civilized Tribes” of the American southeast. There was trade and other interaction between whites and the Cherokee. During his first couple of years in Tennessee, including whatever time he spent in the store, young Houston doubtless had contact with Cherokee people. At some point the notion of living with the Cherokee occurred to him, igniting his imagination and sense of adventure.

Most Cherokee settlements were built alongside rivers, which were wilderness highways. Houston learned of a sizable village about fifty miles—as the crow flies—southwest of his family home. Home to perhaps 300 people, Cayuga town was on an island in the Hiwassee River not far from its confluence with the Tennessee River. The headman of Cayuga town was an impressive leader named Oolooteka. Oolooteka was a prosperous merchant and planter known to whites as John Jolly, and he would rise to prominence among the Cherokee.

Sam Houston had the gift of making friends, and when he arrived in Cayuga town he quickly became well-liked. The bright lad learned the Cherokee language, and he embraced his new lifestyle. Oolooteka, who spoke no English, was impressed by the strapping youngster. Oolooteka adopted Sam and renamed him “Colonneh,” which meant the Raven, a Cherokee symbol of good fortune.

Cherokee towns featured wattle and daub houses, made by weaving river cane, vines, and wood into a frame, which was coated with plaster. Roofs were either thatched with grass or shingled with bark. These Cherokee houses were roughly as stable and as snug in the winter as most pioneer log cabins. Cherokee towns featured a multi-sided structure for ceremonial occasions, as well as a ball field with benches for spectators. A stickball game resembling lacrosse was popular, and it is easy to imagine the tall, rangy, white teenager loping across the ball field with his youthful friends.

On the field of play, Cherokee children enjoyed trying to throw darts through a rolling hoop, and the Raven surely tried his luck at this game. Children had dolls and toys, but they also were assigned chores. Cherokee adults took turns at storytelling with the children, and teaching the traditional music and crafts.

Cherokee men hunted deer, wild turkey, and small game with bows and arrows. They also employed blowguns, a new device for the Raven. Men also fished, with poles and spears, often from long hollo...