Glenn Vance

The Four Presidents of The Republic of Texas

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

1. I got a major­ity of the infor­ma­tion for this piece either on Wikipedia (for the per­sonal infor­ma­tion about each man) and TexasEscapes.com. [↩]

16. January 2007 by Glenn Vance
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