Page:Life and Select Literary Remains of Sam Houston of Texas (1884).djvu/274



has been said by one already frequently quoted, "That Gen. Houston's judgment was pre-eminently calm and thoughtful; his very bursts of tempestuous passion (in early life) were premeditated. In intercourse with Houston running through more than a quarter of a century I never imagined there was more than one human being to whose judgment he deferred, and to which he postponed his own. That man v/as Andrew Jackson."Just before Jackson's death he visited the Hero of New Orleans at the Hermitage. The "Hero of San Jacinto" went to bid a last adieu to his earliest and most lasting personal and political friend. It was an affecting meeting. Houston's noble wife, who was present, described it as one of the most remarkable imaginable. Both were patriots, soldiers, leaders, statesmen. Both had perilled life in youth on the battle-field for their country. Jackson loved the Union, the United States; yet not even he ever loved the Union of the States with more intense affection than Houston.

The history of Sam Houston is alike the property of the American people at large, and of the people of Texas specially. The part which he bore in the liberation of an oppressed colony, in gathering ardent and invincible spirits about him, in leading them to victory, his skill as a General, his statesmanship as Congressman, President, Senator, and Governor, will ever form one of the brightest pages of American history.

Justly has it been remarked that American history will be incomplete without assigning the chief place to the most sagacious statesman which the Southwest has ever produced. Born of Scotch-Irish parentage, near the greatest of Virginia's physical marvels in Rockbridge County, the character-nursery of the McDowells, Moores, Tuckers, Letchers, and Stonewall Jacksons, with the blood of the McClungs and the Alexanders coursing in his veins, he gave early promise in his erratic boyhood, and wild life among uncivilized men, of the destiny which unerring wisdom had marked out for him. Thrown at an early age upon his own resources, content with a soldier's hard fare and a hero's fate, we find him, under the lead and following the fortunes of Andrew Jackson,