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WRITINGS OF SAM HOUSTON, 184,2
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Romantically inclined, he raised a company of volunteers for service in Texas in 1842, against the Mexican raids of that period. Among the :Public Debt Papers, in the Texas State Library, there are numerous papers showing one Henry W. Allen of Claiborne County, Mississippi, ·petitioning and claiming payment for services rendered to Texas in rais- .ing, equipping and transporting to the state, a company of soldiers in 1842. These claims show that there were some forty-five of these volunteer :soldiers who called themselves "Mississippi Guards," who were embarked at New Orleans, and were landed at Corpus Christi. They served three months and twenty-seven days (April 9-August 6, 1842). For total claims-expense of equipping and transporting this company to Texas, and . his own salary of $92 per month-Allen petitioned for some $1300. The company was discharged on August 25, 1842; part of the men returned to the United States, but a few remained to make Texas their home. Allen himself returned to Grand Gulf, and there married Salome Crane, the daughter of a Mississippi planter, who gave the young couple a plan- tation for a wedding gift. There Henry W. Allen lived and prospered until the death of his wife in 1849. In 1852 he moved to West Baton Rouge, Louisiana, and in 1853 was elected to the Louisiana Legislature. In 1854 he went to Harvard College to study law, and from there he went to Italy to fight for Italian unity under Garibaldi; but he reached Italy after the war was over. He decided to tour Europe and study the people and their customs, so for the next several years he drifted from country to country of Europe. The result of this tour was a book, The Travels of a Suga1· Planter (1861). Upon his 1·eturn in 1856, he found himself elected to the state legislature. He engaged in various public interests and became very popular; but the beginning of the Civil War cut short a promising political career. He enlisted as a private in the Confederate army, but was soon raised to the rank of lieutenant colonel in the Fourth Louisiana Regiment. He led his regiment in the battle of Shiloh, April 6, 1862, where he was seriously wounded in the face; he participated in the battle of Vicksburg (1862), where he was cited for bravery; he was in the fight at Baton Rouge, August 5, 1862, where he was again wounded-a leg completely shattered-was made a brigadier general, and ordered to the Trans-Mis- sissippi Department. He refu~ed to have his leg amputated, and it finally healed, but left him a hopeless cripple and with health impaired. In 1863 he was elected Governor of Louisiana, being inaugurated January 25, 1864. He found the state in desperate condition; everything was chaos. He went to work in the effort to save Louisiana from utter desolation; ltc gathered the sugar and cotton crops, shipped these products to Mexico in exchange for much needed goods, and established a system of state -operated stores, factories and foundries; he collected essential medicines and sold them at low prices to the people; and by accepting Louisiana- issued money at the state stores, largely restored its value. Food, clothes, .and medicine were distributed free to the poor and desolate; thus, he was able to rescue the population of West Louisiana from direst straits, and to some degree restore industry. Henry W. Allen came to hold the confidence of the entire Western Division, and was empowered by Texas, Arkansas, and the Confederate-governed part of Missouri, to negotiate for
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