"Remember the Alamo!"

With deadly swiftness he led his men in a charge upon Santa Anna's
lines. The Mexicans were scattered as by a mighty wind, their
commander was taken prisoner, and Mexico was forced to give its
recognition to Texas as a free republic, of which General Houston
became the first president.

This was the climax of Houston's life, but the end of it leaves us
with something still to say. Long after his marriage with Miss
Allen he took an Indian girl to wife and lived with her quite
happily. She was a very beautiful woman, a half-breed, with the
English name of Tyania Rodgers. Very little, however, is known of
her life with Houston. Later still--in 1840--he married a lady
from Marion, Alabama, named Margaret Moffette Lea. He was then in
his forty-seventh year, while she was only twenty-one; but again,
as with his Indian wife, he knew nothing but domestic
tranquillity. These later experiences go far to prove the truth of
what has already been given as the probable cause of his first
mysterious failure to make a woman happy.

After Texas entered the Union, in 1845, Houston was elected to the
United States Senate, in which he served for thirteen years. In
1852, 1856, and 1860, as a Southerner who opposed any movement
looking toward secession, he was regarded as a possible
presidential candidate; but his career was now almost over, and in
1863, while the Civil War--which he had striven to prevent--was at
its height, he died.