How the States Got Their Shapes Too_ The People Behind the Borderlines - Mark Stein [88]
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