The Writings of Sam Houston, Volume VII

217

WRITINGS OF 5AM HOUSTON, 1859

27, 1858, to December 5, 1859. He died at Warm Springs, near Raleigh, North Carolina, but lies buried in the old City Cemetery at Nashville,· Tennessee. See Biographical Directo1·y of the American Congress (1928), p. 1666. 6 For the personnel of the State Democratic Committees of 1857, 1858, and 1859, see E. W. Winkler (ed.), Platforms of Political Pa1·ties in Texas, pp. 74, 77, 79-80, respectively. John Marshall was the c 0 hairman of each of these committees. 0 Hardin R. Runnels became Governor of Texas, on December 21, 1857, he having defeated Sam Houston for the position, by 32,552 votes against 23,628, for Houston. He had served as Lieutenant Governor under Pease, for the two preceding years. Runnels came to Texas from Mississippi in 1841, and opened a cotton plantation in Bowie County. He was a nephew of Hiram G. Runnels, who had once been governor of Mississippi. Hiram G. Runnels came to Texas in 1842; both uncle and nephew interested them- selves in Texas politics. Runnels County was named in honor of Hiram G., not for Hardin R., as is usually supposed. Hardin R. Runnels was first elected to the Texas Legislature in 1847; from that time until his death, at his home in Bowie County, in 1873, he was constantly in the public eye. He was a man of exceedingly plain appearance and address, but he had strong sense and indomitable will. He belonged to the ultra-southern school in politics, and never tired of defending the Virginia and Kentucky resolutions of 1798. For further biographical details see: Biogravhical Encyclo71edia of Texas (Southern Publishing Company, New York, 1880), p. 19; Davis and Grobe (ed.), New Encyclopedia of Texas, I, 260; Barker-Johnson, Texas ancl Texans (1916 edition), II, 1075; L. E. Daniell, Types of Successful Men, p. 96; Gcilveston News (Daily), April 12, 1879. •Francis R. Lubbock. See The Writings, II, 168; also see Francis R. Lub- bock, Six Decades in Texas, 01· Memofrs (Austin, 1900). 8 John Marshall was born and reared to young manhood in Virginia, but moved to Mississippi. There, in 1850, he married Anne P. Newman, by whom he had two children. The daughter of this marriage, named Clara, married W. S. Oldham in 1873 (she was Oldham's second wife); she died at Houston in 1899. The son, Hudson B., was a farmer of Travis County, Texas, and lived near Austin. John Marshall and family lived at Jacksonville, Mississippi, until 1854, where he edited the Mississivvicm. In 1854 he came to Texas and bought half interest in the State Gazette, a paper published at Austin (see the State Gazette, May 27, 1854). After coming to Texas, John Marshall studied law, and was licensed to practice the profession. While it-was never his intention to practice law, it was his belief that every voting citizen should have a fundamental knowledge of the law of the land in which he lived, especially be believed this to be necessary for newspaper editors who wished to give the citizens true information concerning the affairs of their times. Immediately upon arriving in Austin, he plunged into politics, and ,vas soon the avowed leader of the Democratic party of the State, a position he held until 1861; and he made his paper the organ of the Democratic party in Texas (see Southwestern Historicctl Q11a1·terly, XX, footnote, p. 135). Through the medium of his paper, Marshall was one of the strongest influences that defeated Houston for the gubernatorial chair in 1857, thereby becoming an object of Houston's unrelenting animosity. For the

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