Houston Becomes the President of Texas

On October 22, 1836, Sam Houston became the first president of the Republic of Texas and Mirabeau Lamar became its first vice president, not counting the interim holders of those offices in the months since Texas won its independence from Mexico, David Burnet and Lorenzo de Zavala.

"At his inauguration in Columbia, Houston dramatically flourished, then gave up the sword he had used at the Battle of San Jacinto," says the Texas State Library and Archives Commission (TSLAC) in Triumph and Tragedy: Presidents of the Republic of Texas. "It was a symbolic gesture by which Houston hoped to signal to the people that it was time to turn away from war and to the business of building a new Texas."

Houston had a hard time of it during his first term in office. Among other problems, the United States refused to admit Texas as a state, most of the rest of the world refused to recognize it as a nation, and the Republic was deep in debt. Officers of the army that had won independence took to seizing citizens' cattle to feed their men, mutinies broke out in Galveston and Velasco, and Indians were a persistent threat.

The town of Houston was founded as the capital of Texas, but it wasn't a stately affair. "... there is evidence that this was not a happy time in [Sam Houston's] life," continues the TSLAC. "The muddy collection of tents and log buildings was known as the 'Bachelor Republic,' and Houston joined right in with the drinking, brawling, and carousing. During this time in his life, he was drinking very heavily and probably using opium as well."

Houston endured his troubles, however, holding another term as president and then becoming a U.S. Senator from Texas after annexation. He was elected governor of Texas in 1859, but forced from office in 1861 when he refused to take an oath of loyalty to the Confederacy. "It is almost impossible to overstate the influence of Sam Houston on Texas history," says the TSLAC. "For thirty years, Sam Houston was the dominant star around which the Texas political constellations revolved."

November 6, 1861:Jefferson Davis Elected CSA President

In early 1861, the provisional Confederate government slated its first presidential election for November 1861 -- a year to the day after Lincoln had been elected US president, in fact. The CSA provisional president, Jefferson Davis, won the '61 election handily since he, like Washington decades before, ran unopposed. It proved to be the one and only presidential election the CSA ever held, so unlike Washington, Davis had no successors.

Among US presidential elections, November 6 saw contests in 1860, 1888, 1900, 1928, 1956 and 1984. Far and away the most momentous of these was the election of Lincoln in 1860 in a four-way race. Benjamin Harrison won the electoral vote in 1888, thus replacing Grover Cleveland for a term. In 1900, McKinley won his ill-starred second term, and in 1928, Hoover won his ill-starred single term, though at least he survived it. Both 1956 and 1984 saw easy re-elections for popular presidents, Eisenhower and Reagan respectively.

October 17, 1978:Citizenship Restored to Jefferson Davis

On this day in 1978, President Carter signed a joint resolution of Congress restoring U.S. citizenship to Jefferson Davis, president of the Confederate States of America.

According to the United Daughters of the Confederacy: "Some 11 years after the war, a universal amnesty bill was pending in Congress. A Senator from Maine rose at the last minute to offer an amendment reading: '...with the exception of Jefferson Davis.' A storm of protest arose, but the amendment passed and Jefferson Davis alone remained a non-citizen.

"Many people urged Davis to apply for a pardon, so that the Mississippi legislature could elect him United States senator, but Davis would not apply, and he avoided politics. The Mississippi legislature, on March 10, 1884, in a joint meeting of both houses, honored Davis, who spoke to that body: 'It has been said that I should apply to the United States for a pardon, but repentance must precede the right of pardon, and I have not repented. Remembering, as I must, all which has been suffered, all which has been lost, disappointed hopes and crushed aspirations, yet I deliberately say, if I were to do it all over again, I would again do just as I did in 1861.'

" '...Our people have accepted the decree. It therefore behooves them to promote the general welfare of the Union, to show the world that hereafter, as heretofore, the patriotism of our people is not measured by lines of latitude and longitude, but is as broad as the obligations they have assumed and embraces the whole of our ocean-bound domain.' He always spoke of the fact that the United States was now one country and on the theme of reconciliation.

"In 1887, following a speech in Georgia, Davis became seriously ill. When he recovered, he considered his days of public speaking over. But a convention of young men was held in March of 1889 at Mississippi City, only six miles from Beauvoir, and a delegation asked him to address them. He began his remarks with:'Friends and fellow citizens,' but he stopped and said: 'Ah, pardon me, the laws of the United States no longer permit me to designate you as fellow citizens, but I am thankful that I may address you as friends. I feel no regret that I stand before you a man without a country, for my ambition lies buried in the grave of the Confederacy.'

"He continued with these memorable words for his young audience: 'The faces I see before me are those of young men; had I not known this I would not have appeared before you. Men in whose hands the destinies of our Southland lie, for love of her I break my silence, to speak to you a few words of respectful admonition. The past is dead; let it bury its dead, its hopes and aspirations. Before you lies the future - a future full of golden promise; a future expanding national glory, before which all the world shall stand amazed. Let me beseech you to lay aside all rancor, all bitter sectional feeling, and to take your places in the ranks of those who will bring about a consummation devoutly to be wished - a reunited country.' "

June 3, 1808:Jefferson Davis' Birthday

One of the more famous what-ifs of presidential history involves the fact that Jefferson Davis and Abraham Lincoln were both born in southern Kentucky late in the first decade of the 19th century, but neither stayed there to grow up: Lincoln went north, Davis went south. If it had been reversed? A few have imagined the two men switching presidencies, but it's only idle speculation, given the number of variables in any particular life.

Philip Robert Dillon, writing in American Anniversaries (1918), commented on Davis' birthdate, mentioning the curious coincidences of his birth fairly near Lincoln's, both in time and space, but keeps the speculation more realistic than President Lincoln of the CSA and President Davis of the USA: "Jefferson Davis was born in Todd County, Ky., June 3, 1808, less than a year before the birth of Abraham Lincoln and at a place but a short distance from Lincoln's birthplace in the same state. He was descended from Scotch-Irish and Welch ancestry. His father, Samuel Davis, was one of the border pioneers. He was he youngest of nine children.

"The early parallel between the lives of Davis and Lincoln has furnished a subject for speculation to many writers. Lincoln moved north to Indiana and later to Illinois where slavery was forbidden. Davis moved south to Mississippi where slavery was accepted... If Lincoln had been taken south by his parents, and if the father of Davis had gone north, would Lincoln have become a slave holder and would Davis have become an abolitionist?"

February 18, 1861:Jefferson Davis Becomes President of the Confederacy

Provisional president, actually, since the CSA was newly organized and elections wouldn't be held until October 1861. Davis won those handily, since he was unopposed, and began a six-year term in February 1862, as specified under the spanking-new Confederate constitution. In it, the president was limited to a single six-year term. By 1868, of course, the CSA was no more, and so Davis remains the one and only president of the Confederacy.

Mexican War hero, US senator and secretary of war -- it's conceivable that without the sectional crisis, Davis might have become president of the United States. But just like another man of presidential possibility before him, Sam Houston, he was destined to be president of something else.

The 1911 Encyclopaedia Britannica, published still fairly close to events -- closer than we are now to World War II -- had the following to say about Davis' selection for that post. Note that the word pathetic has shifted some since 1911, however, meaning "arousing pathos" then, not pitiful as it does now.

"When his state had passed the ordinance of secession he resigned his [US Senate] seat, and his speech on the 21st of January was a clear and able statement of the position taken by his state, and a most pathetic farewell to his associates. On the 25th of January 1861 Davis was commissioned major-general of the forces Mississippi was raising in view of the threatened conflict. On the 9th of February he received the unanimous vote of the Provisional Congress of the seceded states as president of the 'Confederate States of America.' He was inaugurated on the 18th of February, was subsequently, after the adoption of the permanent constitution, regularly elected by popular vote, for a term of six years, and on the 22nd of February 1862 was again inaugurated. He had not sought the office, preferring service in the field."