Sam Houston Elected President of the Republic of Texas (1836)
On September 5, 1836, Sam Houston was elected as the first President of the Republic of Texas. The Republic of Texas was an independent state from both the United States and Mexico that existed from 1836 to 1845.
Sam Houston was born in 1793 in the Shenandoah Valley in Virginia. He later immigrated to Tennessee, lived with and married into the Cherokee Nation, fought in the War of 1812, and entered Tennessee politics.
Houston left Tennessee after a political fight with another Congressman and moved to Mexico’s Texas. In Texas, Houston quickly became a leader in Texas’s Revolution and eventual independence from Mexico.
On this day, September 5, 1836, Sam Houston was elected President of the new Republic of Texas. And Stephen Austin, known as the Father of Texas, became the Secretary of State for the new Republic of Texas. However, Austin died only two months later.
The first Congress of the Republic of Texas met in October 1836 in Columbia (present-day West Columbia), Texas. The capital of Texas was several times, until 1837, when Texas President Mirabeau Lamar finally selected the new town of Austin as the capital of Texas – which it remains today.
In 1841, Houston was re-elected as the President of the Republic of Texas. However, in December 1845, the United States admitted Texas as a new state. In February 1846, Houston became a U.S. Senator for the new state of Texas. And in 1859, Houston was elected as the governor of Texas.
In 1861, Texans voted to secede from the Union at the start of the Civil War. However, Houston did not support seceding from the Union. So, Houston was removed from office. President Abraham Lincoln then offered Houston troops to quash Texas’s secession, but Houston declined the Lincoln’s offer as Houston could not fight against his own countrymen.
In February 1861, Texas seceded from the Union and shortly thereafter joined the Confederacy. Houston called Texas’s secession an illegal act and moved back to his farm in Huntsville, Texas where he died in July 1863.
Today, Sam Houston is commemorated and remembered for his leading role in the establishment of Texas. For example, the city of Houston is named after him, as well as Houston University, a U.S. army base, memorial museum, and national forest, among others.