in t: 1 faith had
ever I. ecu violated by Indians. His Cherokee w ife having died some time 1. el ore. he
was again married in ls4o. this time to a lady from Alabama, who exercised over
him a restraining and ennobling influence through the stormy vicissitudes of his
eventful life. In June, 1842, he vetoed a hill making him dictator for the purpose of
resisting a threatened invasion from Mexico.
(>n December 29, 1845, Texas was admitted to the Union, and in the following
March Houston was elected to the Senate, where he served continuously until 1859,
when he resigned to take his -eat as governor, to which position he had just been
elected. From 1852 to 1860 bis name was three times presented before national
presidential nominating conventions, the last time receiving 57 votes. Hehad taken
issue with the Democratic majority throughout his term in the Senate, and when
Texas passed the secession ordinance in February, 1861, being an uncompromising
Union man, he refused to take the oath of allegiance to the Confederacy and was
accordingly deposed from the office of governor, declining the proffered aid of federal
troops to keep him in his seat. Unwilling either to fight against the Union orto
take -ides against his friends, he held aloof from the great Struggle, and remained m
silent retirement until his death, two years later. No other man in American history
224 MYTHS OF THE CHEROKEE [eth.ann.1W
has left such a record of continuoua election to high office while steadily holding to
hisown convictions in the faceof strong popular opposition. Antlmntii-s: Appleton's
Cyclopaedia of American Biography, 1894; Bonnell, Texas, 1840; Thrall, Texas,