WRITINGS OF SAM HOUSTON, 1860
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Baltimore, in 1860, and presented Sam Houston as a candidate for the Presidency with great forcefulness. In fact, it is stated that Houston failed to be nominated by that convention, only because his enemies from Tennessee were able to force an adjournment, and next day nominated Bell and Everett. After the Civil War, Norton was a staunch Republican. He attended every national convention and voted for Grant, Hayes, and Garfield. He served as vice-president of the conventions of 1872, and 1876. He was a representative from Van Zandt, and Kaufman Counties to the Constitutional Convention of Texas in 1866. President Grant appointed him postmaster of Dallas, and President Hayes reappointed him; he held the office until 1879, when Hayes appointed him United States Marshal for North Texas. During his tenure of all these offices, he edited a weekly and daily newspaper, Norton's Jntelligenc.e,·, in a little office in his own back yard. In 1857, he married Maria Neyland, of Jasper, Texas. They had six children. Mrs. Norton was killed in a railroad accident in 1875. Norton was eccentric in many ways; this accounts for the inability of investi- gators to discover the date of his birth. He would never tell his age-not even to his wife and children, but would always say, "My body was born some time before the war, but my heart is younger than that of the gen- eration that has grown to manhood since Appomattox." His friends and family estimated that he was about eighty years old· at the time of his death, December 31, 1893. See Philip Lindsey, Greate1· Dallas and Vicinity, I, 71; William DeRyee, The Texas Albmn of the Eighth Legislature, 145- 146; William S. Speer (ed.), The Encyclopedia of the.New West, 228-230.
To A. E. CoTToN 1 Executive Department, Austin, April 6, 1860.
A. E. Cotton, Esq., San Antonio Dear Sir: A petition for the convict woman Sarah Williams having been presented to me together with your letter to Colonel Thomas Carouthers, in relation to the same, I have to suggest that you forward to this Department a copy of the Judge's Charge, the finding of the Jury, and a t~anscript of the evidence and proceedings in the case, as I am disposed to grant the pardon if there is any evidence to warrant the intervention of the Executive clemency. Besides the transcripts would be necessary to make out a pardon. Sam Houston. 1 Executive Records, 1859-1861, p. 121, Texas State Library.
To SAM HOUSTON, JR. 1
Austin, Texas, April 7, 1860. My Dear Son: Your favor received this morning. I thank you for it. I sent your letter to your Ma, since then I have not heard
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