Davy Crockett's View Of Martin Van Buren

Source

Struggling With The Civil War

See post entitled Nancy Maria (Nettie) Fowler McCormick.

"Southerner by birth, Northerner by adoption, Mr. McCormick's course in these days was difficult and he did not escape epithets inspired by the hot enmities of the time."

"Though naturally Mrs. McCormick identified herself with the North, her anguished concern was for the nation as a whole. With her husband, she disapproved of secession...but she did not comment on the issues of the war, scarcely mentioning slavery. 'We have been both a covetous & a spendthrift nation," she wrote, "and God is punishing us."'

Statue Of Family Traveling The Underground Railroad

"Mrs. McCormick was Northern, of a family every line of which was no doubt committed to the Northern point of view. Her Spicer kinfolk included Abolitionists who were organizers of the underground railway. The Merick household, which helped mold her youth, was clearly Whig. She had married a stout Democrat, born and reared in the South, who while loyal to the Government was trying energetically to stop the war. The young wife, only thirty when the war ended, had adopted her husband's interests wholeheartedly, and it is fairly evident that his views influenced her. Besides, loyalty to him together with her own marked capacity for sympathy would have kept her on a quiet course harmonious with his. [Source]

Martin Van Buren, Heir-Apparent

Source

"[President Andrew] Jackson is open, bold, warm-hearted, confiding, and passionate to a fault. Van Buren is secret, sly, selfish, cold, calculating, distrustful, treacherous; and if he could gain an object just as well by openness as intrigue, he would choose the latter."

A Diplomat From Jonesville

"The Political Career of William Walton Murphy...".

Jonesville, Michigan, On The Map [Source]

Source

Appointed By President Lincoln

From the Michigan Historical Collections:

That Pattern Began To Crack

Below is an excerpt from And Wait For The Night by JohnWilliam Corrington...:

From the starched rectitude of the family, through the unsullied rondo of the schools, to the rich properties of his father’s bank, young Lodge had stepped without a hitch. There was one city: Boston.  One church: Episcopal. One state superior in all ways: Massachusetts. One law: gentlemanly conduct and smart business practice. One political party: Whig. And one view of life not sicklied o’er with the film of degeneracy and indecency: his kind of life. It was possible for a man to be born, to live, and to die within this regimen. It had been done. His father had done it. But as the century moved forward into the middle 1840’s, that pattern began to crack and shred along the edges. 

House In Louisiana (Chalmette Battlefield)

Vast new territories were being consumed into the Union (already swollen beyond decent bounds by the damnable and possibly treasonous Louisiana Purchase—which yet might prove the seed of ultimate disunion) and almost all of this territory was either in the hands of slave-state representatives, or well on the way to falling into their grasp. Not that Lodge, in 1845, was an abolitionist. Hardly that. Abolitionists were seedy radicals at least as distasteful as the slave-owning, pseudo-aristocratic barbarians themselves. A conservative man would have as little truck as possible with the latter and no conversation with the former at all. Still, the slave-power burgeoned and thrived: in Virginia, Nat Turner had revolted, slaughtered, been captured, and executed, and still the threat of another Santo Domingo, another slave-rising under a L’Ouverture yet to make himself known, seemed to hover over the states south of Washington City. Even a conservative like Jonathan Lodge could say this much: --The system is basically unstable. 

Andrew Jackson and the Banks

The book, "Magnificent Destiny," by Paul I. Wellman, profiled the relationships of President Andrew Jackson, including his wife, Rachel and other relatives, Sam Houston, and his Cabinet among others. This source described some of the important issues that defined Andrew Jackson's era.

With the current debate over banks and monetary policy, it was interesting to read about the bank controversies in the 1830's and some comparisons to the present day.

Andrew Jackson campaigned in the election of 1832 against the Second Bank of the United States (and won):

"He (Andrew Jackson) mentioned Chief Justice John Marshall. 'A bigoted hypocrite,' he said, 'with his doctrine of "implied powers." Implied by whom? by Marshall! And for whom? The monied powers. As, for example, the authorization of the Bank of the United States." He stared broodingly into the fire. 'And speaking of the Bank of the United States brings up the name of another in the category of Clay, Adams, and Marshall--that smug moneylender in the temple, Nicholas Biddle. The Bank and Biddle, who take orders from Clay and Adams, to create hard times or alleviate them for political effect, are the head and forefront of the money octopus that would throttle this nation. I'll meet them, sir--head to head! It may stun the monied powers, the plan that I'll submit. The government, sir, not private financiers, should control the finances of America. They'll howl, but that's what they'll have to swallow!' [From Magnificent Destiny]

The Honorable Charles Pinckney Sumner In Print

A blog entry at "Richmonds & Connected Lineages," featured the Honorable Charles Pinckney Sumner, United States Senator from Massachusetts, who was physically attacked and beaten with a cane on the floor of the Senate by Rep. Preston Brooks of South Carolina in 1856. Sumner's great-grandmother was Hannah (Richmond) Jacobs, a descendant of John Richmond and John's son, Edward, who were also two of my ancestors. Hannah was a Mayflower descendant through Edward Richmond's son, Silvester, who married Elizabeth Rogers, a Mayflower decendant.

While researching, the Life and Times of Charles Pinckney Sumner, by Elias Nason, was found online.

Another publication, Memoirs and Letters of Charles Sumner, Vol. II, 1838-1845, by Edward Lillie Pierce (who donated Sumner-related documents to Harvard), Charles Sumner published in Boston in 1878 by Roberts Brothers, was also found.

The Complicated Life of Sam Houston

The Raven by Marquis James (a preview can be seen here on Google books) is a Pulitzer Prize winning biography of Sam Houston. President George W. Bush named "The Raven" as his favorite book.

A short chronological explanation of the life of Sam Houston can be found here. He was born in Rockbridge County, Virginia, on 2 March 1793. Sam Houston's widowed mother, Eliza, and family moved to Blount Co., Tennessee in 1807. In 1809 Houston ran away from home and lived with the family of Chief Oolooteka (AKA John Jolly) who dubbed him "The Raven" or Colonneh in Cherokee. Sam Houston participated in the Battle of Horseshoe Bend on March 27, 1814, where General Andrew Jackson noted his heroics. [Some of the Indians fought on the side of the Americans]

A close relationship and correspondence developed between Houston and Jackson. One example of a letter from Sam Houston to Andrew Jackson was dated 18 December 1817. In the book "Sam Houston" by John Hoyt Williams the author provided additional detail regarding the relationship between Andrew Jackson and Sam Houston and stated that "the parallels in their lives defy probability theory."

Houston was appointed as a sub-agent to the Cherokee nation under Agent Return J. Meigs until Sam crossed the powerful John C. Calhoun. Houston studied law and opened a practice in Lebanon, TN. Houston was then Attorney General (Nashville District) (1819) and also Major General of the Tennessee militia (1821). In 1823 he was elected to the U.S. House of Representatives as a "Jackson Democrat" and re-elected in 1825. After fighting a duel in 1826, Sam Houston was elected as the Governor of Tennessee in 1827.

Houston's political career came to a screeching halt in 1829 when he and his bride of three months, Eliza Allen, separated and Governor Houston resigned and moved to Arkansas near his adopted Indian father. Houston later led a delegation of Cherokees (in 1830) to Washington, D.C, as an adopted citizen of the Cherokee nation.

In Washington, D.C., Houston assaulted Representative William Stanbery because of remarks made on the floor of the House of Representatives, was tried by the House and rebuked as related in a letter found here. Sam Houston's attorney was Francis Scott Key. One of Houston's companions the night before his trial was Balie Peyton (also noted here); another was James K. Polk.

In 1832 Sam Houston entered Texas, then part of Mexico. A 13 Feb 1833 letter from Sam Houston to Andrew Jackson.

Sam Houston and Eliza (Allen) Houston never reconciled after their brief three months together in 1829. He married Tiana Rogers in 1830 in a Cherokee ceremony. Sam filed for divorce from Eliza in 1833. Eliza was the daughter of John & Laetitia (Saunders) Allen; her younger brother, B. F. Allen, married a distant relative of mine, Mary Louisa Trousdale, daughter of Tennessee Governor William Trousdale, of Gallatin ( Gov. Trousdale was the first cousin of my 5th great-grandfather, Alexander Trousdale).

Houston, who set up a law office in Texas, was a delegate to a convention calling for the separation of Texas from Mexico. Stephen F. Austin took the request for separation to Mexico City and was imprisoned for his efforts.

Sam Houston's stint as the Major-General the Texas Army culminated in his victory at the Battle of San Jacinto where he defeated the powerful Mexican Army of Santa Anna after the disasters at the Alamo and Goliad.

Houston was elected as President of The Republic of Texas on 5 Sept 1836, defeating Stephen Austin for that office. In December 1838, Vice President Mirabeau Lamar ascends to the office of President. In Mobile, Alabama, Sam Houston meets Margaret Lea whom he married on May 9, 1840 and with whom he had 8 children. In 1841 Houston became President of Texas for a second time and in 1842 Santa Anna and his army made a foray back into Texas.

Sam Houston became a United States Senator in 1846 after Texas was admitted to the United States and after machinations involving the United States, France, Great Britain and Mexico. A letter regarding the Annexation of Texas from Sam Houston to Andrew Jackson Donelson representative of negotiations.

In 1846 the United States plunged into war with Mexico, with the new State of Texas at the forefront. The Treaty of Guadalupe Hildago formalized the end of the Mexican War om 1848.

A third term as U.S. Senator put him on the unpopular side of the Kansas-Nebraska bill.

In 1859 Sam Houston is elected as Governor of Texas again and in 1860 is considered as a possible candidate for President of the United States. His political career was derailed when he refused to take a loyalty oath to the Confederacy after Texas seceded from the United States and he was then deposed as Governor.

More about Sam Houston the and fortunes of Texas can be found here and here regarding the "Archive War."

Sam Houston died July 26, 1863 at Huntsville, Texas; see entry at findagrave.com.