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(Excerpt from Verse Memorials
That these poems - which ha...)
Excerpt from Verse Memorials
That these poems - which have dropped like wild-flowers along the rugged path of public duty - may prove hereafter a source of utility and pleasure to the sole offspring Of a happy home, is an additional reason for their collection and publication. The author would wish that his little daughter might acquire from these verses a better knowledge of her father's heart - or at least of some of its impulses - than she may be able to derive from the public records Of his political and military life; for such records generally can very little more than represent the sterner and less attractive phases of character. He is not unwilling - nay, he desires - to be judged, as a patriot, a soldier, and a statesman, by his documents and his Official acts but at the same time he would have the child of his heart to know that her father, however rigid in the discharge of Official duty, was something more than the mere soldier and politician; and that while he was devoted to his country, he was equally so in his private relations, and always less mindful of himself than of others. This she will gather from the present volume better than from history.
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The Papers of Mirabeau Buonaparte Lamar, Volume 2 - Primary Source Edition
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Mirabeau Buonaparte Lamar was an American attorney. He was elected as the second President of the Republic of Texas after Sam Houston.
Background
Mirabeau Buonaparte Lamar was born in Warren County, Georgia. He was a cousin of Gazaway Bugg Lamar and uncle of Lucius Q. C. Lamar. His parents, John, a farmer, and Rebecca (Lamar) Lamar were cousins descended from Thomas Lamar who emigrated from France to Virginia and then settled in Maryland before 1663. Mirabeau was the second of a family of nine children, more than one of whom later reached positions of distinction. The unusual names were due to the eccentricity of an uncle.
Education
Lamar loved to read and educated himself through books. Although he was accepted to Princeton College, he chose not to attend.
Career
After an unsuccessful venture as a merchant in Alabama, Mirabeau Lamar, in 1823, became the private secretary to Gov. George M. Troup of Georgia. In this position he took an active part in the movement to secure the expulsion of the Creeks and Cherokees against the opposition of the national government.
Later Lamar became the editor of the Columbus Enquirer at Columbus, Georgia, the organ of the states' rights party. Defeated for Congress, he soon afterward became interested in Texas and took a short trip there in 1835. Late in March 1836, he returned to Texas, borrowed a horse, and was soon on his way to join Houston's army at Groce's ferry (The Papers of Mirabeau Buonaparte Lamar, I, 346). In the battle of San Jacinto, Lamar distinguished himself as the commander of the cavalry and soon after became secretary of war in the provisional cabinet of President Burnet. He advocated the execution of Santa Anna and was bitterly opposed to the more lenient policy of Austin and Houston. In the election of 1836, Lamar was chosen vice-president of Texas, and two years later, after a curious campaign marked by the suicide of two leading opponents, he became president for the full constitutional period of three years (December 1838 - December 1841).
The new president was an excellent horseman and had a reputation as a ready orator and writer. His habit of writing verses after the fashion of Byron, some of which he later brought together in a volume entitled Verse Memorials (1857), strengthened the belief of his opponents that he was a dreamer rather than a statesman. But the simplicity of his manners, his honesty and generosity in money matters, his hospitality, and his complete devotion to the welfare of Texas were generally recognized by a pioneer community which did not always read his poems. (Anson Jones, Memoranda and Official Correspondence Relating to the Republic of Texas, 1859, p. 34, and Kendall, post, I, 69, are typical unfriendly and friendly portraits. )
President Lamar regarded the recent rejection of Texas by the United States as on the whole fortunate and laid all his plans for the creation of a great independent republic. He advocated a national bank and planned a comprehensive system of education beginning with the common schools and ending with a state university, both to be supported by generous grants of land. He commenced successful negotiations to secure recognition by France, England, and Holland. Mexico had been compelled by foreign war and internal dissensions to grant a virtual truce to the rebellious Texans, but all efforts to gain a recognized independence failed. One reason was Lamar's plan to extend the sovereignty of Texas to the whole region north and east of the Rio Grande.
For this purpose he secured the expulsion of the Cherokees from eastern Texas (1839) and sent a successful punitive expedition against the troublesome Comanches in the west. He had personally selected a capital for the nation on the extreme limit of settlement and in 1840 became the founder of the new city of Austin on the Colorado. In the closing months of his administration he opposed a scheme of Houston to grant great areas in the west to a colonizing French company, and without authority from Congress, he organized an expedition of 265 soldiers and 38 civilians to open trade with distant Santa Fé and to persuade the New Mexicans by peaceful means to accept the sovereignty of Texas. The distance had been miscalculated; the unfriendly influence of the Mexican governor Armijo had been underestimated; and the members of the expedition were easily captured and sent as prisoners on a long march to Mexico.
Lamar had been successful in many things, but he was unable to solve the growing financial difficulties of Texas. His Indian policy was ruthless and effective, but also expensive. When Houston was reëlected president at the close of 1841, Texas had a paper currency depreciated almost to the vanishing point and a debt of more than seven millions with no immediate likelihood of solvency.
Lamar's closing years were relatively uneventful. In 1844 he reversed his former attitude and became an advocate of annexation on the frank ground that such a measure was necessary to the preservation of slavery and the safety of the South (Papers, IV, 1924, pt. I, p. 113).
After services during the Mexican War at Monterey and Laredo, he spent most of his time in the management of his plantation at Richmond. He was bitterly opposed to Clay's compromise measures of 1850. In the fifties he took an active interest in various commercial conventions for the South. In 1857 his financial difficulties were partially relieved by an appointment as minister to Nicaragua, but he found it impossible to gain the ratification of a proposed treaty which would have given the United States a virtual protectorate over the isthmus, and his capacity for a diplomatic post was bitterly criticized by papers unfriendly to the Democratic administration (Papers, post, IV, pt. 2, pp. 201-04). In July 1859, he was recalled and died at his home in Richmond before the close of the year.
Lamar was married on January 1, 1826, to Tabitha B. Jordan, of Perry, Alabama. His wife died in 1833. After remaining a widower for many years, in 1851 Lamar was married to Henrietta Maffitt of Galveston, sister of John Newland Maffitt.