Page:Life and Select Literary Remains of Sam Houston of Texas (1884).djvu/27

Miss Cunningham. They had two daughters and four sons, John, James, Robert, and Matthew. One of the daughters married a Gillespie, and the other a Montgomery. Their descendants are all of the highest respectability, both in Church and State. They all removed South. Three of the sons and one of the daughters removed to Tennessee, and the remainder settled in Rockbridge County, Va.

Gen. Sam's grandfather, Robert, purchased a plantation on Timberbidge, and married Miss Margaret, daughter of Samuel Davidson and Ann Dunlop, of the Scottish house of Dunlop. They had two sons and five daughters. Mistresses McClung, Hopkins, McKee, Letcher, and Gillespie. John was a magistrate; Major Sam inherited the homestead, and married Miss Elizabeth Paxton, a lady of the highest respectability. Major Houston was a very fine-looking man, and was Brigade Inspector for many years; indeed, he lost his life making his last round.

When his son, Gen. Sam, was a lad not thirteen years old, Aunt Houston removed with her young family to Tennessee. She was a noble woman, and reared her family well, and Sam was a debtor to that mother for much that was great, noble, and good in his character.

From the time he was seventeen history began to write his life.

Much, very much, he said to me in confidence; from all such conversations I shall never lift the veil.

He paid us a visit in Lexington after his celebrated rencounter with the Hon. Mr. Stansberry, of Ohio. I asked him how he felt whilst chastising him: "Meaner than ever I felt in my life; I thought I had gotten hold of a great dog, but found a contemptible whining puppy."

After he had fought for and gained the independence of Texas, he wrote to me to come to Texas, offering me a fine plantation. That was just in character with his profuse liberality. He said they needed the influence of woman to give stability to the government. I jestingly replied he had the example of Romulus; he laughingly said, "he had no doubt if he would send and bring round to Texas a few ship loads of Yankee onion girls, they would thank him for the rape."

At the time of the disturbance of the Mo. Compromise, his sagacious mind intuitively perceived the end. From the beginning he opposed that Pandora's box of evils. He was opposed to violating that Compromise, unjust as he viewed it in the beginning; yet there had been rights secured to the poor red man that he wished to see inviolably carried out. But his greatest fears were realized, for he said the disturbance was virtually putting the knife to the throat of the South.