Was Texas politics ever really fun? Believe it or not, there was such a time. This was during the decade that Texas was an independent nation, eighteen thirty-six through the year eighteen forty-five. (1836-1845) The two political opponents were Sam Houston and Mirabeau Lamar.
After the Battle of San Jacinto, Houston saw to it that under his leadership the hastily set up new nation of Texas would run from the largest city in the republic, which of course bore the name, Houston. “Old Sam” had seen to it that the port was named for himself. The electorate was not sure of the wisdom of giving Houston as chief officer a full term of three years, so they allowed him only a first term of two years.
Sam Houston before coming to Texas had previously been in politics in Washington as an ardent supporter of Andrew Jackson. On arrival in Texas, almost exactly a year before the Battle of San Jacinto, Houston’s only goal in politics was to make the republic a part of the United States. When Houston ended his two-year term as President of the Republic he had not met his goal. Houston was not eligible for an immediate second term to succeed himself since the politicians, debating term limits, limited the first President to a two year term to be followed by a Second President with a three year term, not eligible for re-election.
Mirabeau Lamar, the cavalry officer who actually had led the charge that caught Santa Anna with his pants literally down, was elected Second President of the Republic. Lamar, recognizing that it was clear that Texas would not be admitted to the Union of the States for the foreseeable future, believed that the new nation of Texas could stand alone and began his term by seeing to it that a completely fully operating government was established. This infuriated “Old Sam”, who was called "Old Sam" by his contempo-raries because he was years older than most of them. After a three-year term for Lamar as the Second President of the Republic of Texas, Houston, as the only other experienced national leader, was elected for his second term, which had been denied by the electorate who designed a first term as only two years.
Houston, still believing Texas should be part of the U.S., did all he could to see to it that nothing would remain of the government Lamar had established during the three years between Houston’s first and second terms.
The result was the Archives War.
When all within Lamar’s smoothly running government had to leave the new capitol in Austin because the constitution did not allow their second term, Houston, returning to Texas government once again as President, sent his henchmen from Houston back to the Austin site of government to retrieve all records and return them to the first capitol, Houston.
On Houston's first attempt to obtain the papers peaceably, several of the Austinites showed their contempt by shaving the manes and tails of the horses of Houston's messengers. Undeterred, Houston sent an armed force of thirty men on a follow-up attempt to retrieve the records.
It was a boarding house keeper, a woman, Mrs. Angelina Eberly, who thwarted Houston's effort to wipe out Lamar’s entire attempt to relocate the capitol in the centralized Texas location of Austin. She alerted her cohorts and mounted a cannon on a wagon. When Houston’s men began loading the documents on their own wagon, she trained the loaded weapon on them and told them to leave the records where they had found them or she would fire. There was a glint in her eye that convinced them she meant business. She fired. The coastal inhabitants sent by Houston hastily finished loading the treasured documents and left town, chased by Mrs. Eberly's forces. Eighteen miles out of town the dispute was settled and the next morning the records returned to the Austin capitol and Houston's men returned to Houston empty-handed. The records remained in the capitol on the banks of the Colorado where they had been stored and continue to remain, in Austin as Lamar had planned, the more central location for a state capitol than Houston.
When Texas finally was voted into the Union after ten years of uncertainty while they operated as The Republic of Texas, it would be with a serious gap without the records saved by a woman and a handful of Lamar supporters.
Today the real story of Texas during the time of the Republic can be found in those and other papers, which are preserved together on the capitol grounds in the Lorenzo De Zavala Archives & Library Building, listed simply as “The Lamar Papers”.
