Houston Elected: Texas Independence Solidified

Sam Houston, the former governor of Tennessee who had abandoned his political career to live among the Cherokee before reinventing himself as the hero of the Texas Revolution, was elected the first president of the Republic of Texas on September 5, 1836. Houston won in a landslide, capturing nearly 80 percent of the vote against two opponents, running on the strength of his victory at the Battle of San Jacinto five months earlier, where his forces had destroyed the Mexican army and captured General Santa Anna in just 18 minutes of fighting. Houston's path to the Texas presidency was one of the most improbable in American political history. He had served as a congressman and then governor of Tennessee, apparently destined for national office, when his marriage collapsed after just eleven weeks in 1829. He resigned the governorship, crossed the Mississippi, and spent three years living with the Cherokee in what is now Oklahoma, earning the nickname "Big Drunk" for his heavy consumption of whiskey. He arrived in Texas in 1832 as a land speculator and quickly became enmeshed in the growing movement for independence from Mexico. The Battle of San Jacinto on April 21, 1836, made Houston a legend. After weeks of strategic retreat that infuriated his own troops, Houston attacked Santa Anna's army during an afternoon siesta near the confluence of the San Jacinto River and Buffalo Bayou. The Texan force of roughly 900 men overwhelmed the 1,300 Mexican soldiers, killing over 600 and capturing the rest, including Santa Anna himself, in a battle that lasted less than twenty minutes. Houston was shot in the ankle during the charge but continued directing the fight from horseback. As president, Houston faced the enormous challenge of governing a republic that was bankrupt, sparsely populated, and threatened by Mexico, which refused to recognize Texas independence. He sought annexation by the United States, but the issue of adding a slave state to the Union delayed the process for nearly a decade. Texas joined the United States in 1845, and Houston went on to serve as one of its first U.S. senators and later as governor, making him the only person in American history to serve as governor of two different states.