Texas, which is better than all other states because it was once its own country, had, in its entirety as the Republic of Texas, had 4 presidents, 3 if you’re not counting one of the officeholders twice.
From March through September of 1836 Texas had as interim president a man named David G. Burnet. Burnet, a failed land speculator, was chosen at the Convention of 1836 to be the interim president of the newly-formed Republic of Texas following the adoption of the Texas Declaration of Independence. After the Battle of San Jacinto Burnet, along with Mexican president Antonio López de Santa Anna, signed the Treaties of Velasco on May 14, 1836, making Texas a free republic.
But Burnet was not to continue as president of the weeks-old republic. Burnet’s political enemy, Sam Houston, was elected as president on September 5 of that same year. Whether it was out of disgust with politics or him just being a sourpuss, Burnet resigned as president on October 22, handing over the reigns of power to Houston, who was supposed to assume the presidency in December.
Houston had been a veteran of the War of 1812, a lawyer in his adopted home state of Tennessee, and had also been a senator there. Even with all of the success he’d had, Houston’s 2 year constitutionally-mandated term was plagued with problems. Texas had a mountain of debt left over from the revolution, and to compound on this the new country had no money, and no real way to raise it. Also the new republic lived under the constant specter of another imminent invasion, as Mexico had renounced the signing of the Treaties of Velasco. Lastly, Texas was a country that was unrecognized by any nation of the world. Houston sought to immediately join the United States to alleviate some of his country’s troubles, but, with the slave issue raging, Texas was denied entry into the Union, as it would have entered as a slave state.
At the end of his 2 year term Houston was succeeded by his vice president, Mirabeau Bounaparte Lamar. Lamar had fought under Sam Houston in the revolution, joining up after the massacres at Goliad and the Alamo. He commanded the cavalry during the Battle of San Jacinto.
Lamar, unlike Houston, wanted Texas to remain an independent nation, eventually expanding itself out to California, and to eventually rival the United States for control of the North American continent. He also was in favor of exterminating all Texas Native Americans. But on the plus side, under him Texas was recognized by several European countries, and he also founded the new capital of Texas in Austin. Through all of this he spent money like it was going out of style, raising the national debt to unheard of heights.
It may have been the problems that Lamar faced that caused his old political rival to once again assume command of Texas, and on December 12, 1841, Sam Houston once again became the president of the republic and led the fledgling country until it was finally annexed by the United States in 1845. 1
- I got a majority of the information for this piece either on Wikipedia (for the personal information about each man) and TexasEscapes.com. ↩
