1829

 

__________ 

“I love Mr. Nickerson’s little finger better than I do your whole body.” 

Mrs. Houston to her newlywed husband.

__________

SAM HOUSTON runs into marital troubles: 

Soon after his inauguration [as governor of Tennessee] he had married an accomplished young lady, to whom he one day intimated, in jest, that she apparently cared more for a former lover than she did for him. “You are correct,” she said earnestly. “I love Mr. Nickerson’s little finger better than I do your whole body.” Words ensued, and the next day Houston resigned his Governorship, went into the Cherokee country, west of the Arkansas River, adopted the Indian costume, and became an Indian trader. He was the best customer supplied from his own whiskey barrel…

 

Then he heard about the trouble in Texas. “A friend agreeing to accompany him, he cast off his Indian attire, again dressed like a white man, and never drank a drop of intoxicating beverage afterward.” (Benjamin Perley Poole, Reminiscences; Volume 1, pp. 369-370.)

Sam Houston - after he became famous.

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April: Postmaster John McLean, a longtime admirer of Andrew Jackson, tells former-President Monroe that he has serious reservations. Jackson, he says, just one month after he took office, “was deficient in requirement and capacity for the station he fills. He is influenced by those who are about him. His firmness is not that which arises from a mature investigation and enlightened conclusion, but of impulse.” (24/560)

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June 29: Lawyer Charles R. Sherman of Norwalk, Conn. was a collector of internal revenue under President Monroe; but two deputies “involved him in financial embarrassment.” 

    “In the hope of bettering his condition he went West in 1821, leaving his wife behind him in Connecticut. A year later he sent for her, and under the escort of some friends and neighbors she traveled on horseback over the Alleghenies, holding her infant child on a pillow in front of her.” (36/21) 

    He died at Lebanon, Ohio in the summer of 1829, leaving behind his widow and eleven children. Thomas Ewing took William Tecumseh Sherman into his family and raised and educated him as one of his own; later adopted. 

    He was often called “Cump,” a shortened version of Tecumseh. 

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WHEN Robert E. Lee first entered West Point, “No cadet could drink or play cards, or use tobacco. He might not have in his room any cooking utensils, any games, or any novel.”  (22/13) 

    The young cadet’s manners were impeccable. Classmates nicknamed him the “Marble Model.” In the 1828-1829 term, he was chosen as adjutant of the corps, the highest honor a cadet could achieve. Robert graduated second in a class of 46. Charles Mason was first. Lee stood a little more than five-foot-ten, with wavy hair and brown eyes, cutting an attractive figure. In August 1829, he was posted to an island near Savannah, where heat, mosquitoes and fevers made life almost impossible. Freeman mentions that Lee was receiving training in “the practical problems of military engineering and in the management of labor.” (His biographer, Freeman does not mention any of the work that might have been done by slaves.) (22/23)

 

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October 5: Virginia calls a constitutional convention. Western counties want to base apportionment on the white population. Eastern counties want to continue counting slaves for such purposes. Monroe and Madison proposed a compromise: White population only to determine representation in the lower house, Senate apportionment to recognize the rights of slaveholders. Even Monroe believed a minimal land ownership should be retained for voters. 

    Madison and Monroe wanted the governor’s powers extended; but only Madison believed he should be elected by the people.