David Gouverneur Burnet was an American Texas politician. He is noted for his service as interim President of Texas (1836 and again in 1841), second Vice President of the Republic of Texas (1839–41), and Secretary of State for the new state of Texas after it was annexed to the United States of America.
Background
David Gouverneur Burnet was born on April 4, 1788 at Newark, New Jersey, the son of William Burnet, and Gertrude (Gouverneur) Burnet. One of these brothers, Jacob Burnet, became a justice of the supreme court of Ohio and United States senator from that state. Another became mayor of Cincinnati.
Education
His parents died when he was very young and David was reared by his elder brothers and given a good education.
Career
When seventeen years old David became a clerk in a counting-house in New York; but the firm soon failed. In 1806 he joined, as a lieutenant, Francisco de Miranda's expedition to Venezuela to free that country from Spain. The expedition failed and Burnet barely escaped with his life. But he joined Miranda again in the abortive attempt of 1808.
On his return Burnet went to his brothers in Ohio. In 1817 he purchased a mercantile business in Natchitoches, Louisiana; but having developed tuberculosis, he sold his business and went to live among the Comanche Indians on the upper Colorado River in Texas. Then, his health being completely restored, he returned to Ohio. His visit to Texas resulted in a series of articles for the Cincinnati papers descriptive of the region he had seen.
He studied and practised law for a time, but drifted back to Louisiana and Texas. In the summer of 1826, bearing letters from Henry Clay and Stephen F. Austin, he went to Saltillo and obtained from the Mexican government an empresario's contract to settle three hundred families near Nacogdoches. But the enterprise proved beyond his means and he sold the contract to a firm in New York.
In 1833 he was a member of a convention at San Felipe, the capital of Austin's colony, which was called to petition the central authorities of Mexico for the separation of Texas and Coahuila. Burnet drew the petition, which was rejected in Mexico. In 1834 he was appointed judge of the municipality of San Felipe de Austin. The Texas Revolution was brewing.
On August 8, 1835, Burnet drew a set of very able and conservative resolutions for the San Jacinto community in which the rights of the citizens of Texas were firmly declared but desire for separation from Mexico was denied. Later in the same year he was a member of the General Consultation at Washington on the Brazos, which was called to protest against the measures of Santa Anna; and he was made a member of the committee of vigilance and safety.
Hostilities had begun at Gonzales and San Antonio, and Burnet was gradually won over to the cause of independence. In the spring of 1836 he was a member of the convention at Washington which issued the Texas Declaration of Independence. Two weeks later he was elected by the convention president ad interim of the infant Republic of Texas.
Burnet's administration, which lasted only until the following October, was as troubled as it was short. Santa Anna's forces had destroyed the Texan garrison at the Alamo and all the other small commands in the west except the little army under General Sam Houston, and Houston was in retreat.
As the Mexicans swept nearer, panic seized the people and a stampede began toward the Sabine. Deeming Washington unsafe, Burnet moved the seat of government to Harrisburg, near the present city of Houston; later he removed again to Galveston Island, and after the battle of San Jacinto, to Velasco. About all his government could attempt in the meanwhile was to allay the fears of the people, increase the army, and procure supplies. Burnet was not conspicuously successful in these efforts.
The people paid little attention to his assurances; recruits came in slowly; and the agents in New Orleans whom Burnet appointed to forward supplies failed miserably. After San Jacinto, fresh troubles arose over the disposition to be made of the captive dictator, Santa Anna, and the command of the Texan army. The government was too weak to enforce its will upon the undisciplined spirits who came in from the United States. Burnet also became involved in a quarrel with Houston. In September Houston was chosen president; and on October 22 Burnet resigned his office.
He retired to his farm, but two years later he was elected vice-president. During part of the administration of Lamar he acted as secretary of state, and later as president because of Lamar's illness and absence from the Republic.
In 1841 Burnet ran for the presidency against Houston, but was defeated. The campaign had been marked by rancorous personalities which developed in Burnet a hatred of Houston that never abated. From this time on Burnet was only intermittently interested in politics.
He lived on his farm, which he cultivated with his own hands, and struggled unsuccessfully against poverty. During 1846 and 1847 he served as secretary of state under the first governor, J. P. Henderson.
In 1866 he was elected by the first Reconstruction legislature to the United States Senate, but was not allowed to take his seat. In 1868 he was a delegate to the national Democratic convention in New York and was a presidential elector. This was his last contact with public affairs.
During the final years of his life he was too feeble to work his farm and lived with friends in Galveston, where he died.
Achievements
Religion
A deeply religious man, Burnet neither drank nor swore and always carried a Bible in his pocket.
Personality
That Burnet was a man of ability his public papers show, but he evidently was not a successful administrator. He was of unyielding temper, quick to resent offense, and prone to controversy: while his inflexible honesty and high sense of self-respect made it impossible for him to cultivate the arts of popularity.
Quotes from others about the person
Burnet challenged Houston to a duel, but Houston refused, saying "'the people are equally disgusted with both of us. '"
Connections
In 1831 he married a Miss Estis of New York and, returning to Texas, settled on the San Jacinto River. He had lost all his children except one; and his wife died in 1858 leaving him disconsolate.