acinto was fought,
President Jackson was one day found by Mr. Buchanan studying earnestly
the map of Texas. He was tracing Houston's plan of retreat--of which
he had doubtless received information--and putting his finger upon San
Jacinto he said, "Here is the place! If Sam Houston is worth one
bawbee, he will make a stand here, and give them a fight!" A few days
after this declaration, news was received in Washington that the fight
had been given and won on that very spot.

The annexation of Texas was now publicly, as it had long been
privately, the hope and goal of the Government; and for this end
Jackson, says Mr. Parton, "displayed an energy and pugnacity seldom
exhibited before or since, by a politician in his seventy-seventh
year." But "failure" was a word not in Jackson's vocabulary; he
annexed Texas, and dying as the measure was accomplished, talked only
in his last moments of Texas and Houston.

Houston was elected President of the new Republic by acclamation, and
he served the State two terms in this capacity. Both were marked by
the finest statesmanship; and during them the Texans suffered little
from the ferocious Apache, Comanche, and other Indian tribes. For
Houston fearlessly slept in their camps, and treated them as brethren;
and his Indian "Talks" have an Ossianic poetry about them. Thus he
writes to the Indian Chief Linney: "The red brothers know that my
words to them have never been forgotten by me. They have never been
swallowed up in darkness, nor has the light of the sun consumed them.
Truth cannot perish, but the words of a liar are as nothing. Talk to
all the red men, and tell them to make peace. War cannot make them
happy. It has lasted too long. Let it now be ended and cease forever,"
etc., etc.

After the annexation of Texas, Houston represented the State for three
terms in the United States Senate; but in 1859 he failed of
re-election, because he refused to go with the South on the fatal
subject of Secession. Yet so great was the confidence of the people in
his honor and ability, that they elected him Governor of Texas in the
same year; and he entered on the office in December, 1859. The
election of Mr. Lincoln in 1860 precipitated events; and though
Houston used all his mighty personal influence, and all his charmful,
potent eloquence to keep Texas in _the Union_, he failed, and was
deposed from the Governorship on his refusal to sign the Ordinance of
Secession.

Then he calmly withdrew