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Maryland State Archives Adam Goodheart Collection MSA SC 5826 msa_sc5826_3_1-0018 Enlarge and print image (883K) |
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Maryland State Archives Adam Goodheart Collection MSA SC 5826 msa_sc5826_3_1-0018 Enlarge and print image (883K) |
| msa_sc5826_3_l-0018 ©Maryland State Archives - 18 - travellers, yet she did not reach her destination till the grey of the morning. On board of the steamer was a man, then in the prime of life, who was afterwards famous who impressed me greatly by his magnificent appearance, dressed in a suit of grey, straight as an arrow, and his hair in glossy black curls. This was Gen. Houston then M.C. from Tennessee. Gazing at him, in my boyish admiration of his manly figure, he patted me on the head and asked what I saw in him to attract my attention. I told him I heard he was a soldier, and I wished to know if all soldiers looked as he did. He said, he was once a 2d Lieut. of Infantry, and marching through the streets of N. Orleans under Gen. Jackson bound for the Creek War, the ladies all came to the windows to look at him. I ought to have seen him then if I wished to know what a soldier looked like. At that time he was the observed of all on board the boat, and seemed to enjoy the gaze of the crowd greatly. He was then on the Board of Visitors to the Military Academy, and courted popularity particularly with young men, as if he were already commencing to beat up recruits for his Texas invasion. I met him frequently in after life and he always recollected, and referred to our first meeting by saying, "I did not think such a little brat as you were then, could get through that W. Point mile. With all his foppery and eccentricity, he was a man of solid merit and his vicissitudes of life were almost incredible. After his, to this day, unaccountable desertion of his wife when Governor of Tennessee, he went into the Creek Nation and became Indian Chief, and it is within my own knowledge that while there he had fallen so low, that on one occasion, he came on the reservation at Fort Gibson, with a parcel of Indians, with nothing on his person but a breech clout, and was so disorderly that he, with the Indians was confined in the Guard-house by the commanding officer. Shortly afterwards he was the President of Texas and the Hero of San Jacinto, one of the boldest and best fought battles of the period. |