The Southwestern Historical Quarterly, Volume 47, July 1943 - April, 1944 Page: 188
456 p. : ill., maps ; 24 cm.View a full description of this periodical.
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Southwestern Historical Quarterly
should devote its energies. . . . The experiment [of a state
university] may be tried, if we have the money to spare-but
proper restraints to the power of those who control it should
be provided.... Texas is not prepared for a system of wealthy
pauperism like that of the West Point academy" (VII, 363).
The Military Academy had been a special aversion of Houston
for years.
Houston's career in the Senate is mirrored in three of these
four volumes. He was a picturesque figure as he sat whittling
or as he rose to consign his enemies to oblivion and vindicate
his own course or engage in not-unskillful, if ponderous and
prolix, debate. He opposed blue laws and prohibition in 1853
in an able address that unaccountably escaped re-publication
during the struggle over the nineteenth amendment (VI, 24);
he got jobs for his constituents and kept his enemies off the
public payroll; he sent seed to the Texans who elected him
("the sum appropriated for seeds is the most beneficially ex-
pended money that is expended by this Government") (VI, 440) ;
and served on the board of visitors of the Military Academy-
without learning to love the institution or trust its product
(VI, 474). He opposed acceptance of the Hermitage as a gift
from Tennessee, not because he considered Andrew Jackson
inferior to Washington, or even Caesar and Alexander, but
because it was coupled with a proposal to establish there an-
other military academy. One West Point was more than enough
for Senator Houston (VI, 435).
Before he entered the Senate Houston had done as much as
any man to implement Manifest Destiny, and he was there a
perennial spokesman for the doctrine in which he believed with
Calvinistic devotion (V, 34; VII, 33ff).
Although no great legislation bears his name and he was
not a master of parliamentary strategy, he was a factor in
national affairs. His course was a consistent one, based, funda-
mentally, upon his almost religious devotion to the Union. It
was the one great passion of his life; there was an emotional
content in his feeling on this subject not to be found in his
other attachments. As the years passed and it became evident
that disunion would have its day, Houston did not yield. Except
for the principle of squatter sovereignty, he approved the Com-
promise of 1850, to the disgust of his Southern colleagues and
a large number of his Texan constituents. He saw nothing188
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Texas State Historical Association. The Southwestern Historical Quarterly, Volume 47, July 1943 - April, 1944, periodical, 1944; Austin, Texas. (https://texashistory.unt.edu/ark:/67531/metapth146054/m1/206/: accessed May 1, 2024), University of North Texas Libraries, The Portal to Texas History, https://texashistory.unt.edu; crediting Texas State Historical Association.