Part 2

"I have no explanation to give you. My wife has none to give you. She will not complain of me, nor shall I complain of her. It is no one's business in the world except our own. Any interference will be impertinent, and I shall punish it with my own hand."

"But," said his friend, "think of it. The people at large will not allow such action. They will believe that you, who have been their idol, have descended to insult a woman. Your political career is ended. It will not be safe for you to walk the streets!"

"What difference does it make to me?" said Houston, gloomily. "What must be, must be. I tell you, as a friend, in advance, so that you may be prepared; but the parting will take place very soon."

Little was heard for another month or two, and then came the announcement that the Governor's wife had left him and had returned to her parents' home. The news flew like wildfire, and was the theme of every tongue. Friends of Mrs. Houston begged her to tell them the meaning of the whole affair. Adherents of Houston, on the other hand, set afloat stories of his wife's coldness and of her peevishness. The state was divided into factions; and what really concerned a very few was, as usual, made everybody's business.

There were times when, if Houston had appeared near the dwelling of his former wife, he would have been lynched or riddled with bullets. Again, there were enemies and slanderers of his who, had they shown themselves in Nashville, would have been torn to pieces by men who hailed Houston as a hero and who believed that he could not possibly have done wrong.

However his friends might rage, and however her people might wonder and seek to pry into the secret, no satisfaction was given on either side. The abandoned wife never uttered a word of explanation. Houston was equally reticent and self-controlled. In later years he sometimes drank deeply and was loose-tongued; but never, even in his cups, could he be persuaded to say a single word about his wife.

The whole thing is a mystery and cannot be solved by any evidence that we have. Almost every one who has written of it seems to have indulged in mere guesswork. One popular theory is that Miss Allen was in love with some one else; that her parents forced her into a brilliant marriage with Houston, which, however, she could not afterward endure; and that Houston, learning the facts, left her because he knew that her heart was not really his.

But the evidence is all against this. Had it been so she would surely have secured a divorce and would then have married the man whom she truly loved. As a matter of fact, although she did divorce Houston, it was only after several years, and the man whom she subsequently married was not acquainted with her at the time of the separation.

Another theory suggests that Houston was harsh in his treatment of his wife, and offended her by his untaught manners and extreme self-conceit. But it is not likely that she objected to his manners, since she had become familiar with them before she gave him her hand; and as to his conceit, there is no evidence that it was as yet unduly developed. After his Texan campaign he sometimes showed a rather lofty idea of his own achievements; but he does not seem to have done so in these early days.

Some have ascribed the separation to his passion for drink; but here again we must discriminate. Later in life he became very fond of spirits and drank whisky with the Indians, but during his earlier years he was most abstemious. It scarcely seems possible that his wife left him because he was intemperate.

If one wishes to construct a reasonable hypothesis on a subject where the facts are either wanting or conflicting, it is not impossible to suggest a solution of this puzzle about Houston. Although his abandoned wife never spoke of him and shut her lips tightly when she was questioned about him, Houston, on his part, was not so taciturn. He never consciously gave any direct clue to his matrimonial mystery; but he never forgot this girl who was his bride and whom he seems always to have loved. In what he said he never ceased to let a vein of self-reproach run through his words.

I should choose this one paragraph as the most significant. It was written immediately after they had parted:

Eliza stands acquitted by me. I have received her as a virtuous, chaste wife, and as such I pray God I may ever regard her, and I trust I ever shall. She was cold to me, and I thought she did not love me.

And again he said to an old and valued friend at about the same time:

"I can make no explanation. I exonerate the lady fully and do not justify myself."

Miss Allen seems to have been a woman of the sensitive American type which was so common in the early and the middle part of the last century. Mrs. Trollope has described it for us with very little exaggeration. Dickens has drawn it with a touch of malice, and yet not without truth. Miss Martineau described it during her visit to this country, and her account quite coincides with those of her two contemporaries.

Indeed, American women of that time unconsciously described themselves in a thousand different ways. They were, after all, only a less striking type of the sentimental Englishwomen who read L. E. L. and the earlier novels of Bulwer-Lytton. On both sides of the Atlantic there was a reign of sentiment and a prevalence of what was then called "delicacy." It was a die-away, unwholesome attitude toward life and was morbid to the last degree.

In circles where these ideas prevailed, to eat a hearty dinner was considered unwomanly. To talk of anything except some gilded "annual," or "book of beauty," or the gossip of the neighborhood was wholly to be condemned. The typical girl of such a community was thin and slender and given to a mild starvation, though she might eat quantities of jam and pickles and saleratus biscuit. She had the strangest views of life and an almost unnatural shrinking from any usual converse with men.

Houston, on his side, was a thoroughly natural and healthful man, having lived an outdoor life, hunting and camping in the forest and displaying the unaffected manner of the pioneer. Having lived the solitary life of the woods, it was a strange thing for him to meet a girl who had been bred in an entirely different way, who had learned a thousand little reservations and dainty graces, and whose very breath was coyness and reserve. Their mating was the mating of the man of the forest with the woman of the sheltered life.

Houston assumed everything; his bride shrank from everything. There was a mutual shock amounting almost to repulsion. She, on her side, probably thought she had found in him only the brute which lurks in man. He, on the other, repelled and checked, at once grasped the belief that his wife cared nothing for him because she would not meet his ardors with like ardors of her own. It is the mistake that has been made by thousands of men and women at the beginning of their married lives--the mistake on one side of too great sensitiveness, and on the other side of too great warmth of passion.

This episode may seem trivial, and yet it is one that explains many things in human life. So far as concerns Houston it has a direct bearing on the history of our country. A proud man, he could not endure the slights and gossip of his associates. He resigned the governorship of Tennessee, and left by night, in such a way as to surround his departure with mystery.

There had come over him the old longing for Indian life; and when he was next visible he was in the land of the Cherokees, who had long before adopted him as a son. He was clad in buckskin and armed with knife and rifle, and served under the old chief Oolooteka. He was a gallant defender of the Indians.

When he found how some of the Indian agents had abused his adopted brothers he went to Washington to protest, still wearing his frontier garb. One William Stansberry, a Congressman from Ohio, insulted Houston, who leaped upon him like a panther, dragged him about the Hall of Representatives, and beat him within an inch of his life. He was arrested, imprisoned, and fined; but his old friend, President Jackson, remitted his imprisonment and gruffly advised him not to pay the fine.

Returning to his Indians, he made his way to a new field which promised much adventure. This was Texas, of whose condition in those early days something has already been said. Houston found a rough American settlement, composed of scattered villages extending along the disputed frontier of Mexico. Already, in the true Anglo-Saxon spirit, the settlers had formed a rudimentary state, and as they increased and multiplied they framed a simple code of laws.

Then, quite naturally, there came a clash between them and the Mexicans. The Texans, headed by Moses Austin, had set up a republic and asked for admission to the United States. Mexico regarded them as rebels and despised them because they made no military display and had no very accurate military drill. They were dressed in buckskin and ragged clothing; but their knives were very bright and their rifles carried surely. Furthermore, they laughed at odds, and if only a dozen of them were gathered together they would "take on" almost any number of Mexican regulars.

In February, 1836, the acute and able Mexican, Santa Anna, led across the Rio Grande a force of several thousand Mexicans showily uniformed and completely armed. Every one remembers how they fell upon the little garrison at the Alamo, now within the city limits of San Antonio, but then an isolated mission building surrounded by a thick adobe wall. The Americans numbered less than three hundred men.

A sharp attack was made with these overwhelming odds. The Americans drove the assailants back with their rifle fire, but they had nothing to oppose to the Mexican artillery. The contest continued for several days, and finally the Mexicans breached the wall and fell upon the garrison, who were now reduced by more than half. There was an hour of blood, and every one of the Alamo's defenders, including the wounded, was put to death. The only survivors of the slaughter were two negro slaves, a woman, and a baby girl.

When the news of this bloody affair reached Houston he leaped forth to the combat like a lion. He was made commander-in-chief of the scanty Texan forces. He managed to rally about seven hundred men, and set out against Santa Anna with little in the way of equipment, and with nothing but the flame of frenzy to stimulate his followers. By march and countermarch the hostile forces came face to face near the shore of San Jacinto Bay, not far from the present city of Houston. Slowly they moved upon each other, when Houston halted, and his sharpshooters raked the Mexican battle-line with terrible effect. Then Houston uttered the cry: