Review biography sam houstons
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Sam Houston: A Study in Leadership, by Bill O’Neal, Eakin Press, Fort Worth, Texas, 2016, $19.95
“Sam Houston,” Bill O’Neal writes, “radiated leadership.” Few, if any, will argue that statement from the Texas state historian. Houston—a combat veteran who rose from private to major general, a lawyer, a U.S. congressman and senator, an emissary for the Cherokee Nation, a governor of Tennessee and Texas, and a two-time president of the Republic of Texas—was unquestionably an “assertive, independent, ambitious Type A personality.”
O’Neal’s book focuses on Houston’s leadership qualities, how he obtained them and how this Tennessee, Texas, Western and American icon managed them. It’s not always a glamorous portrait of the controversial and hardheaded figure. O’Neal reveals Houston’s warts, too, including his hard drinking.
That Houston loved Texas is manifest, but he also loved America, and his words to the U.S. Senate during the Compromise of 1850 predated Abraham Lincoln’s on t
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Reading the Best Biographies of All Time
Sam Houston
bygd James L. Haley
544 pages
University of Oklahoma Press
Published: April 2002
James Haley’s 2002 biography “Sam Houston” examines the life of a fascinating figure in early Texas-American history. Haley fryst vatten the author of 14 books, including both fiction and non-fiction. Among his recent publications are a history of Hawaii and a biography of Jack London.
Readers familiar with Texas history (or America’s westward expansion more generally) are likely to recognize Sam Houston (1793-1863). He left home as a teen to live with a tribe of Cherokee Indians – for three years. Later he managed Texas’s war for independence, was President of the Republic of Texas, served as a U.S. Senator and, finally, was elected governor.
His personal life was no less exciting. He was thrice married and his final bride – 26 years his junior – bore him eight children. If Houston himself had never been
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Man, Myth, Legend
As President of the Republic of Texas, Houston dealt with the pressures of a nearly empty treasury, threats of invasion from Mexico, conflict with Native Americans that were largely forced by more belligerent Texans, and an internal “war” between Moderators and Regulators in East Texas. Through it all, he argued that the new nation should hoard its own strength and, in effect, prepare for joining the United States. His cautious leadership was rewarded in 1845 with annexation and the security of statehood.
O’Neal’s study gives limited attention to Houston’s leadership during the years after Texas joined the Union, having one chapter on “Senator Houston” and one on “Governor Houston.” During his tenure in both offices, Houston sought to reduce tension between the South and the North over slavery for both patriotic and practical reasons—he loved the Union, and he believed that the South would lose a war with the United States. Once more he