Sam Houston was born in Virginia in 1793, and after his father’s death his mother moved the family to Maryville on the Tennessee frontier. At 16 he ran away to live with the Cherokee under Chief John Jolly, learning the language and taking the name Raven. He joined the Army in the War of 1812 and was wounded so badly at Horseshoe Bend in 1814 that doctors left him for dead, earning Andrew Jackson’s lifelong patronage. He became a Nashville district attorney, a congressman and in 1827 governor of Tennessee, but resigned in 1829 after his marriage to 19 year old Eliza Allen ended within 11 weeks, and returned to the Cherokee in Arkansas Territory, where he married Diana Rogers.

In 1832 he beat Congressman William Stanbery with a cane on Pennsylvania Avenue, was reprimanded by the House and fined $500, and soon moved to Mexican Texas. As commander of the Texian army he retreated after the fall of the Alamo, then routed Santa Anna’s force at San Jacinto in April 1836 and captured Santa Anna despite a shattered ankle. He served as the first and third president of the Republic of Texas and courted Britain and France until the U.S. annexed Texas in 1845. As a senator he backed the Compromise of 1850 and opposed the Kansas-Nebraska Act. Elected governor in 1859, he refused the Confederate loyalty oath in 1861 and was removed. He died of pneumonia in July 1863 at 70.

• Stanbery had accused him of seeking a fraudulent contract to supply rations to Native Americans.
• At San Jacinto his horse was shot out from under him.
• He warned the Senate that the Kansas-Nebraska Act would bring a sea of blood and smoking ruin.
• While being removed, he warned that the North would advance with the momentum of a mighty avalanche.
• After his death Joshua, a man Houston had enslaved, offered his own savings to help Houston’s widow Margaret.