Andrew Johnson

NAME Andrew Johnson

WHAT FAMOUS FOR Andrew Johnson was the seventeenth President of the United States, serving from 1865 to 1869. He assumed the presidency following the assassination of Abraham Lincoln. He is famous for presiding over the chaotic initial years of the Reconstruction era following the American Civil War, and for becoming the first U.S. president to be impeached by the House of Representatives. (1)

BIRTH He was born in a log cabin in Raleigh, North Carolina, on December 29, 1808. 

Johnson's birthplace and childhood home Mikehelms at English Wikipedia

FAMILY BACKGROUND His father, Jacob Johnson, worked as a town constable, sexton, and porter. 

His mother was Mary "Polly" McDonough, who worked as a weaver and washerwoman. 

In January 1812, when Andrew was three years old, Jacob rescued three men from drowning in a frozen pond, but the physical exertion severely damaged his health; he suffered a fatal heart attack shortly after while ringing the town bell. Polly Johnson was left as a penniless widow and became the sole support of the family. (2)

CHILDHOOD Following his father's death, Andrew grew up in extreme poverty. Unable to afford school, his mother bound Andrew and his brother William as indentured apprentices to a local tailor, James Selby, when Andrew was around ten years old. Unhappy with his harsh treatment and lacking personal freedom, Andrew ran away after a few years. Selby published a newspaper advertisement offering a $10 reward for the return of the runaway boys, but they were never caught. (3)

EDUCATION Andrew Johnson was the only U.S. president who never attended school for even a single day. He was largely self-taught, learning the basics of the alphabet from fellow workers in the tailor shop. He was later taught to write and perform basic arithmetic by his wife, Eliza McCardle, after they married. (4)

CAREER RECORD 1826 Moved to Greeneville, Tennessee, and opened his own tailor shop, which became a hub for local political debate.

1829 Elected alderman of Greeneville, beginning a steady political rise.

1835 Elected to the Tennessee state legislature.

1843 Elected to the U.S. House of Representatives, serving five consecutive terms.

1853 Elected Governor of Tennessee, serving two terms.

1857 Elected to the U.S. Senate.

1862 Appointed Military Governor of Tennessee by President Lincoln.

1865 Became Vice President, then succeeded to the presidency on April 15 following Lincoln's assassination.

1865–1869 Served as the 17th President of the United States.

APPEARANCE Johnson was of medium height, standing at 5 feet 10 inches, with a sturdy, broad-shouldered build. He possessed dark, deep-set eyes, a prominent jaw, a severe expression, and thick, dark hair that grayed as he aged. His stern countenance often gave him an intimidating, unyielding appearance. (5) 

Johnson, c. 1870–1875

FASHION As the only professional tailor ever to become president, Johnson was highly meticulous about his wardrobe. He wore only suits that he had cut and hand-stitched himself. Even while serving in high public office, he frequently visited local tailor shops during his travels to socialize and inspect the quality of the craftsmanship. (5)

CHARACTER Johnson was a man of immense physical courage, intense stubbornness, and fierce pride. Born into poverty, he harbored a lifelong resentment toward the wealthy Southern planter aristocracy, positioning himself as a champion of the "common white man." His unyielding, combative nature made him highly resistant to compromise, a trait that ultimately fueled his political downfalls. (5)

SPEAKING VOICE Johnson possessed a powerful, booming speaking voice that was well-suited for outdoor stump speaking. While he was a forceful and highly persuasive orator on the campaign trail, his speeches could become excessively passionate, repetitive, and combative when he was challenged by a crowd. (5)

His most infamous public speech—a slurred, rambling address at his vice-presidential inauguration—became a lasting embarrassment. (6)

SENSE OF HUMOUR Johnson was notoriously humorless, grim, and intensely serious. Observers frequently remarked that he rarely smiled or laughed, viewing political life as a constant battleground that required unrelenting vigilance rather than levity. 

RELATIONSHIPS On May 17, 1827, Johnson married sixteen-year-old Eliza McCardle in Greeneville, Tennessee. Eliza proved to be his most valuable supporter, tutoring him in writing and mathematics while quietly managing their household. 

The couple had five children: Martha, Charles, Mary, Robert, and Andrew Jr. 

Eliza suffered from tuberculosis, which left her an invalid during her husband's presidency, forcing their eldest daughter, Martha, to act as the official White House hostess. (7)

Locket portraits of Andrew and Eliza (McCardle) Johnson, created 1840s

MONEY AND FAME Through his diligent work as a tailor and savvy investments in real estate and municipal bonds in Greeneville, Johnson overcame his impoverished origins to become a wealthy landowner. By the time he reached the presidency, he had secured substantial financial independence, though he always maintained the frugal habits of his youth. (2)

FOOD AND DRINK Johnson's favorite dish was reportedly Hoppin' John, a hearty Southern staple of black-eyed peas, rice, onions, and bacon or salt pork, traditionally eaten for good luck on New Year's Day. He was known for preferring plain, hearty fare over the elaborate French-style dining favored by some of his predecessors and successors. (8)

While not a chronic alcoholic, he was known to drink whiskey, which he occasionally used for medicinal purposes. His reliance on alcohol famously backfired at his vice-presidential inauguration in March 1865. Weakened by a recent bout of typhoid fever, he drank a large quantity of whiskey to bolster his strength, resulting in a highly slurred, incoherent, and publicly embarrassing inaugural address. (2)

MUSIC AND ARTS Johnson showed very little personal interest in the fine arts, classical music, or theater. He viewed such pursuits as frivolous indulgences of the wealthy class that he so deeply distrusted. (5)

LITERATURE His reading habits were highly utilitarian. Rather than reading fiction or poetry, he focused almost exclusively on historical biographies, political essays, and constitutional law, using books primarily as tools to sharpen his political arguments. (4)

NATURE Having lived most of his life in the mountainous region of East Tennessee, Johnson appreciated rugged outdoor landscapes. However, he viewed nature primarily through the lens of agriculture and small-scale farming, advocating for policies that allowed poor settlers to claim and cultivate wild land. (4)

PETS Johnson kept no official presidential pets, but during the isolating months of his 1868 impeachment trial, he befriended a family of white mice living in his White House bedroom, feeding them flour and grain from his own mill business and leaving out water for them each night. He affectionately called them "the little fellows," even as his daughter Martha, the White House hostess, tried to exterminate them with cats, traps, and poison. (9)

Image by Chat GBT

HOBBIES AND SPORTS Johnson had virtually no interest in sports or recreational hobbies. His primary escape from political stress was returning to his tailor bench, where he found great therapeutic value in the quiet, precise work of cutting and sewing fabric. (5)

SCIENCE AND MATHS While Johnson lacked formal training in the sciences, he was highly competent in practical mathematics, a skill he developed through tailoring measurements and managing his personal business accounts. (2)

PHILOSOPHY & THEOLOGY Johnson was one of only three U.S. presidents, along with Jefferson and Lincoln, to have no formal religious affiliation. He occasionally attended Methodist services with his wife Eliza and admired the Baptist faith for its democratic structure, while also respecting Catholic services for their egalitarian treatment of worshippers regardless of wealth. Johnson held an almost sacred reverence for the U.S. Constitution, once declaring he intended to "stand by the Constitution, as the chief ark of our safety, as the palladium of our civil and religious liberty." (10) (11) 

PRESIDENCY Andrew Johnson’s presidency was less a period of government than a prolonged family argument conducted with the volume turned all the way up. The Civil War had ended, the nation was exhausted, and Congress wanted to rebuild the South on new terms. Johnson, however, believed the Southern states had never truly left the Union and therefore deserved a remarkably forgiving welcome home. Former Confederates were soon regaining political rights, while the newly freed slaves received precious little in the way of federal protection—a bit like rebuilding a house and forgetting to install the doors.

Congress, particularly the Radical Republicans, regarded this as a spectacularly bad idea and set about opposing him with the enthusiasm of men trying to stop someone backing a carriage into a lake. Johnson responded by wielding the veto pen as though it were a personal hobby. He rejected 29 bills, more than any president before him. Congress, unimpressed, overrode 15 of those vetoes, which remains the American record. In effect, Johnson and Congress spent four years engaged in a constitutional tug-of-war in which neither side trusted the other with so much as a wheelbarrow.

One lasting success did emerge from the turmoil. In 1867, Johnson's administration completed the purchase of Alaska from Russia for $7.2 million, a deal negotiated by his Secretary of State, William H. Seward. Critics at the time mocked the acquisition as "Seward's Folly" and "Seward's Icebox," convinced the United States had spent a small fortune on an enormous freezer inhabited chiefly by snow, bears, and the occasional puzzled seal. As it turned out, Alaska contained vast reserves of gold, oil, timber, and other natural resources, making it one of the most profitable real estate bargains in history—a useful reminder that yesterday's folly has an irritating habit of becoming tomorrow's masterstroke.

The result was a presidency defined not by grand achievements but by relentless conflict. Johnson insisted he was preserving the Union; his opponents insisted he was surrendering the fruits of victory. History has generally concluded that if Reconstruction was a difficult and delicate operation, Andrew Johnson approached it with the bedside manner of a man attempting surgery with a coal shovel.

POLITICS Politically, Johnson was a strict Jeffersonian Democrat who strongly championed states' rights, the interests of small farmers, and a literal interpretation of the U.S. Constitution. His deep-seated racism guided his policy decisions, as he consistently argued that the United States was meant to be a government "for white men" and actively opposed granting voting rights or federal protection to African Americans. (5)

When Tennessee and ten other Southern states seceded, Johnson was the only sitting senator from a seceding state to remain in the U.S. Congress, a stance that made him a Union hero and led to his selection as Lincoln's 1864 running mate as a War Democrat. (3)

SCANDAL Johnson was at the center of the greatest constitutional crisis of his era. On February 24, 1868, he became the first U.S. President to be impeached by the House of Representatives. The primary charge stemmed from his attempt to dismiss Secretary of War Edwin Stanton in defiance of the Tenure of Office Act, a law Congress had passed over his veto specifically to protect cabinet members. During his subsequent trial in the Senate, Johnson avoided removal from office by a margin of just one vote, as the final tally fell one short of the required two-thirds majority. Later that year, he failed to secure the Democratic nomination for the 1868 presidential election. (4)

Illustration of Johnson's impeachment trial in the United States Senate, by Theodore R. Davis

MILITARY RECORD While he never served as a combat soldier, Lincoln appointed him as a Brigadier General of Volunteers in 1862 so he could serve as the Military Governor of occupied Tennessee. In this high-stakes role, he successfully maintained Union control of Nashville, suppressed confederate sympathizers, and began rebuilding the state's infrastructure. (4)

HEALTH AND PHYSICAL FITNESS Johnson possessed a remarkably tough constitution, but the extreme stress of his political career took a heavy physical toll. He survived a severe case of cholera in 1873, and suffered from kidney stones and chronic muscular pain throughout his later years. (5)

HOMES Johnson's primary residence was a two-story brick home on Main Street in Greeneville, Tennessee, known as the Homestead, which he purchased in 1851. During the Civil War, Union soldiers occupied the house as a headquarters and hospital, leaving it damaged, and Johnson and his family renovated it after returning from Washington in 1869. Today, the Homestead, his earlier home, his original tailor shop, and his grave site are preserved together as the Andrew Johnson National Historic Site. (12)

The Homestead by Brian Stansberry

TRAVEL Unlike many of his wealthy political contemporaries, Johnson never traveled to Europe. His travel was entirely domestic, largely consisting of political trips between Tennessee and Washington, D.C. 

His most famous trip was his disastrous "Swing Around the Circle" speaking tour in 1866, where his highly combative, ad-libbed speeches to hostile crowds severely damaged his political standing. (5), 

DEATH While visiting his daughter near Elizabethton, Tennessee, Johnson suffered a severe stroke. He died on July 31, 1875, at the age of 66. In accordance with his explicit final wishes, his body was wrapped in an American flag, and his personal copy of the U.S. Constitution was placed beneath his head as a pillow. (3)

APPEARANCES IN MEDIA Johnson has been portrayed in various historical films and television dramas focusing on the Civil War and Reconstruction. Notably, he was portrayed by Van Heflin in the 1942 biographical film Tennessee Johnson, which presented a highly sympathetic view of his presidency. 

ACHIEVEMENTS His most significant achievement as president was the acquisition of Alaska from the Russian Empire in 1867. Negotiated by his Secretary of State, William H. Seward, for $7.2 million, the purchase added over 580,000 square miles of resource-rich territory to the United States. 

In addition, when Southern states seceded in 1861, Johnson achieved lasting historical distinction as the only sitting U.S. Senator from a seceding state to remain fiercely loyal to the Union. 

Sources: (1) Wikipedia – Andrew Johnson (2) National Park Service – Andrew Johnson (3) Encyclopedia of Trivia (4) Britannica (5) White House Historical Association (6) History.com (7) National Park Service – Eliza Johnson (8) The Talbot Spy (9) (Presidential Pet Museum (10) Miller Center (11) God and Country (12) National Park Service - Homestead

Thomas Jefferson

NAME Thomas Jefferson. He was often referred to by contemporaries as the "Sage of Monticello," a title that reflected his vast intellect and philosophical retirement. 

WHAT FAMOUS FOR Thomas Jefferson was an American statesman, diplomat, lawyer, architect, philosopher, and Founding Father who served as the third President of the United States. He is world-renowned as the principal author of the Declaration of Independence. He expanded the United States significantly through the Louisiana Purchase and championed the strict separation of church and state, declaring that there should be a "wall of separation" between the two.

BIRTH Thomas Jefferson was born on April 13, 1743, at the family home, a one-and-a-half-story farmhouse in Shadwell, Albemarle County, Virginia. The third of ten children, most of whom died early in life. (1)

FAMILY BACKGROUND Jefferson's father, Colonel Peter Jefferson, was a land surveyor who was one of the surveyors who helped lay out the Virginia–North Carolina border. 

Jefferson's mother, Jane Randolph, was of old Virginian aristocracy, the daughter of Isham Randolph, a ship's captain and sometime planter. Jefferson and his mother did not have a close relationship. When her house burnt down, his first question was "what about my books?" — it never occurred to him to invite his homeless mother into his own home. (2)

CHILDHOOD Seven of Jefferson's first nine years were spent at Tuckahoe, the Randolph estate on the James River near Richmond. When Jefferson was nine, the family moved back to their Shadwell home. 

When not at school, young Thomas went with his father to hunt deer and turkeys along the Rivanna River. He also liked to go for long walks in the mountains. Colonel Jefferson died when Thomas was 14. (3)

EDUCATION Jefferson began his childhood education under the direction of tutors at the Randolph Tuckahoe estate, alongside the Randolph children. In 1752, at the age of nine, Thomas began attending the school of the Reverend William Douglas, a Scottish Presbyterian minister, where he studied Latin, Greek, and French. He also learned to ride horses and began to appreciate the study of nature.

At the age of 14, in 1757, Thomas was sent to the classical school of the Reverend James Maury, near Gordonsville, Virginia. While boarding with Maury's family, he studied history, science, and the classics.

At age 16, in 1760, Jefferson entered the College of William & Mary in Williamsburg, where he studied mathematics, metaphysics, and philosophy under Professor William Small. In 1762, Professor Small suggested to America's first law professor, George Wythe, that he supervise the legal training of the star student. Jefferson studied law with Wythe, who became his friend and mentor. Jefferson was admitted to the bar of the General Court of Virginia in 1767.

CAREER RECORD 1767 — Admitted to the bar of the General Court of Virginia. Lived with his mother at the Shadwell family home and practiced law up and down the Valley from Staunton to Winchester. His client list featured members of Virginia's elite families, including members of the Randolph family.

1769–1775 — Represented Albemarle County in the Virginia House of Burgesses, beginning May 11, 1769 and ending June 20, 1775.

1776 — Principally responsible for drafting the Declaration of Independence, regarded as the strongest and most eloquent writer among the Founding Fathers.

1779–1781 — Served as Governor of Virginia.

1782 — Appointed a peace commissioner to assist Benjamin Franklin and John Adams in peace negotiations, but his ship was icebound in Chesapeake Bay and his appointment was withdrawn.

1783 — As chairman of the Currency Committee, devised the dollar and cents system still used to this day.

1784–1789 — Sent by the Confederation Congress to Europe to join Franklin and John Adams as ministers for purposes of negotiating commercial trade agreements with England, Spain, and France. Departed Boston on July 5, 1784. Served as United States Minister to France between 1785 and 1789. Was present in Paris during the storming of the Bastille and consulted with the Marquis de Lafayette while the latter drafted the Declaration of the Rights of Man and of the Citizen.

1790–1793 — Served as the first Secretary of State under President Washington. Resigned in 1793 in protest at Alexander Hamilton's attempts to centralize government and what Jefferson regarded as his financial impropriety. Retired to his Virginian farm for the next four years.

1791–1793 — Co-founded the Democratic-Republican Party with James Madison, organized to oppose Hamilton's Federalist Party. The party came to power in 1800 and dominated national and state affairs until the 1820s.

1797–1801 — Served as Vice President to President John Adams after coming second in the 1796 presidential election.

1801–1809 — Served two terms as the third President of the United States.

1819 — Co-founded the University of Virginia at Charlottesville. The university's first classes met on March 7, 1825. 

APPEARANCE Jefferson was six feet two and a half inches in height, large-boned, slim, erect, and sinewy, and was nicknamed because of his tall figure and spindly limbs. He had a very ruddy complexion, red hair that became sandy as he aged, hazel-flecked grey eyes, and a long, high nose. 

He had big feet, wearing size 12½ shoes. 

Jefferson stood and walked straight and, owing to his plentiful hair, with no need of a wig. 

The writer Gore Vidal once observed: "For those who believe the old saw that an honest man must have a direct gaze, I refer them to a contemporary's report that the shiftiest-eyed man he had ever met was Thomas Jefferson." (3)

A 48-year-old Jefferson in 1791, in a portrait by Charles Willson Peale

FASHION In the fashion of his time, Jefferson dressed in a long, dark coat — usually blue, and in summer generally of silk — a ruffled stock or cravat in place of the modern necktie, a red waistcoat, short knee breeches, and shoes with bright buckles. 

Except during his days of courtship and married life, Jefferson paid little attention to clothes. Never a fan of formal affairs, he was often reported to have worn his pajamas while meeting with foreign dignitaries. When he was President, Jefferson made a habit of plainness, both in dress and in matters of ceremony. (3)

CHARACTER Urban and cultivated, Jefferson was courteous, bowing to everyone he met. There was grace in his manners, and his frank and earnest address, quick sympathy, and vivacious, informing talk gave him an engaging charm. On the debit side, he was chilly and impenetrable and seemed cold to strangers. (3)

SPEAKING VOICE Jefferson was a poor public speaker with a thin, fine voice. He talked with his arms folded and hated public speaking so much that he gave only two speeches during his entire presidency — one per term. (2)

SENSE OF HUMOUR Though it is a biographical tradition that Jefferson lacked wit, Molière and Don Quixote appear to have been among his favourite reading, suggesting a taste for comic writing. (3)

RELATIONSHIPS Thomas Jefferson married a young widow, 23-year-old Martha Skelton (1748–1782), described as small and pretty, on New Year's Day, 1772, at the Forest, Charles City County. 

They had six children: Martha Jane, an unnamed son, Mary (called Polly by Jefferson), and two daughters both named Lucy. Four of their children died in infancy. After the death of the fourth child in 1782, Martha succumbed to grief and prolonged illness, dying on September 6, 1782. Jefferson vowed never to remarry. (3)

Mary died in 1804; Jefferson had inscribed on her tombstone two lines from the Iliad: "If in the house of Hades, men forget their dead, yet will I even there remember my dear companion."

Only Martha, his firstborn child, outlived him.

Portrait of Jefferson's daughter, Martha by Thomas Sully

Jefferson also had at least one child, a light-skinned boy called "yellow Tom," with his teenage black chambermaid, Sarah "Sally" Hemings. Sally Hemings was the daughter of widowed planter John Wayles and a mixed-race woman he kept as a slave, Betty Hemings. Sally and her siblings were three-quarters European and half-siblings of Jefferson's wife, Martha Wayles Skelton. She had olive skin and long straight auburn hair, coming to Monticello as an infant as part of Martha's inheritance. (3)

MONEY AND FAME In 1819, Jefferson's close friend Wilson Cary Nicholas carelessly defaulted on a $20,000 bank loan and then died shortly afterwards. Jefferson had co-signed for the loan and was now liable for the debts. Upset and embarrassed, he suffered from gross indigestion for several days. 

By the age of 83 he was completely broke and deeply in debt. He was allowed to sell lottery tickets, the winner receiving the former president's land, but the lottery was not a success and he died in debt. 

Jefferson's all-round genius was summed up by President John F. Kennedy, who once said to his Nobel Prize-winning guests: "I think this is the most extraordinary collection of talent, of human knowledge, that has ever been gathered together at the White House — with the possible exception of when Thomas Jefferson dined alone." (3)

FOOD AND DRINK  After serving as ambassador to France, Jefferson brought back to America a taste for ice cream, which he delighted in serving to his guests. 

Thomas Jefferson presenting ice cream to guests

He also introduced Americans to fried potatoes, having sampled them in Paris; he described them as "potatoes, fried in the French manner" with beefsteak. He returned from France with a waffle iron and a pasta-making machine, which he used to serve macaroni or spaghetti. Jefferson helped popularize "Mac 'n' Cheese" by serving it to dinner guests during his presidency. (5)

Jefferson was an enthusiastic wine connoisseur. During his ambassadorship to France in the 1780s, he made several tours of European wine regions and sent bottles of the finest back to America. Following his return, he attempted to replicate these wines at Monticello by planting extensive vineyards, but a significant portion were destroyed by vine diseases native to the Americas. Jefferson installed a small, innovative shelved elevator at Monticello to carry wine from his cellar to his dining room.

Jefferson planted some of the first Brussels sprouts in America and also grew tomatoes at Monticello — not to eat, but as a curiosity. Not many colonists at the time realized tomatoes were edible; indeed, many Americans feared them to be poisonous. (3), 

MUSIC AND ARTS Jefferson liked to sing and tended to hum or sing as he walked or rode. He played the violin, sang pleasantly, and amassed over 500 pieces of music, including violin works by Corelli, Handel, and Vivaldi. Christmas celebrations at the White House and at Monticello included Jefferson playing the violin for family and guests. He also enjoyed attending operas. 

He supervised his daughter's music education, hiring Frances Alberti, an Italian immigrant, as a music tutor. Jefferson's oldest daughter, Martha, played harpsichord, and his other daughter, Maria, played guitar. (3)

LITERATURE A naturally succinct writer, Jefferson claimed "the most valuable of all talents is that of never using two words when one will do." He generally wrote with his "Polygraph," a machine in which an automatic pen inscribed a facsimile of a manuscript. 

Jefferson liked to invent words: "belittle" was one of his most famous coinages, appearing in his 1780 book Notes on the State of Virginia, in which he wrote: "So far the Count de Buffon has carried this new theory of the tendency of nature to belittle her productions on this side of the Atlantic." Surprisingly, Notes on the State of Virginia was the only book Jefferson published in his lifetime.

Jefferson could read and write in six languages — English, Spanish, French, Latin, Italian, and Ancient Greek — and was fluent in more languages than any other American president to date. He also studied and wrote on Old English and had a knowledge of German, Arabic, Irish, and Welsh.

Jefferson was largely responsible for drafting the 1776 Declaration of Independence, being regarded as the strongest and most eloquent writer among the Founding Fathers. He wrote it between June 11 and 28, 1776, from a floor he was renting in a home at 700 Market Street in Center City Philadelphia. Below in John Trumbull's painting Declaration of Independence, the five-man drafting committee presents its work to the Continental Congress. 

In retirement at Monticello, Jefferson gave up reading newspapers almost entirely, writing to John Norval: "I do not take a single newspaper, nor read one a month, and I feel myself infinitely the happier for it." He went further still, declaring: "The man who never looks into a newspaper is better informed than he who reads them; inasmuch as he who knows nothing is nearer to truth than he whose mind is filled with falsehoods and errors."

The one exception to his contempt was the advertisements. Jefferson noted, with characteristic dry wit: "Advertisements contain the only truths to be relied on in a newspaper." (6)

In January 1815, Congress purchased Jefferson's personal library for $23,950; the 6,500 volumes became the nucleus of the Library of Congress. (3)

NATURE Jefferson experimented with new varieties of grain at Monticello, introduced the threshing machine into the United States, and was one of the first Americans to employ crop rotation. 

He studied and classified fossils at a time when investigation of such objects was in its infancy. 

When exploring a Native American burial mound on his Virginia estate in 1784, Jefferson avoided the common practice of simply digging downwards. Instead, he cut a wedge out of the mound so that he could walk into it, examine the layers of occupation, and draw conclusions from them — one of the earliest significant works of archaeology in American history. 

When he was Secretary of State, a plant was named after him — the Jeffersonia diphylla — because "in botany and zoology, the information of this gentleman is equaled by few persons in the United States." (3)

PETS Jefferson kept a Shetland sheep among about 40 other sheep on President's Square in front of the White House. In the spring of 1808 it attacked several people, killed a small boy, and was referred to Jefferson as "this abominable animal." After being moved to Monticello, the ram was eventually killed, having killed several other rams. 

Jefferson had little tolerance for dogs that harmed his sheep and once ordered one of his sheepdogs to be hanged for mauling livestock. 

Jefferson once had a mockingbird that he taught to peck food from his lips and to hop up the stairs after him. (3)

Image by ChatGBT

HOBBIES AND SPORTS Jefferson was an avid collector and player of marbles. 

A good horseback rider, he often rode for pleasure. 

The dome on his Monticello home concealed a billiard room — in Jefferson's day, billiards was illegal in Virginia. (3)

SCIENCE AND MATHS In 1783, as chairman of the Currency Committee, Jefferson devised the dollar and cents system still used in the United States to this day. 

Jefferson invented many small practical devices; he is credited with inventing the lever-operated double door opener, still often seen on trains and buses, and the folding chair — both the common type and the shooting-stick type now used by sports spectators. He is also credited with the invention of the swivel chair, the first of which he created and used to write much of the Declaration of Independence. 

Jefferson introduced the threshing machine to the United States and was one of the first Americans to employ crop rotation. (3)

PHILOSOPHY & THEOLOGY Jefferson was a freethinker, influenced by Rousseau and a champion of religious freedom. Like many intellectuals of his era, he was a deist, replacing revelation and tradition with reason. He cut out of his Bible all supernatural elements — including the Resurrection and the Virgin Birth — because he did not accept them, though he approved of Jesus's moral philosophy. The closing words of the Gospels in Jefferson's Bible read: "There they laid Jesus and rolled a great stone to the mouth of the sepulchre and departed."

Jefferson was raised Episcopalian at a time when the Episcopal Church was the state religion in Virginia. Before the American Revolution he was a vestryman in his local church, but he later removed his name from those available to become godparents, as his Deist beliefs opposed Trinitarian theology. 

Convinced of the need to keep church and state separate, he believed unwaveringly in freedom of religion. Jefferson refused to issue a Thanksgiving proclamation and declared that there should be "a wall of separation between church and state." He wrote in his Notes on Virginia: "Millions of innocent men, women and children since the introduction of Christianity have been burned, tortured, fined and imprisoned, yet we have not advanced one inch towards uniformity. What has been the effect of coercion? To make one half of the world fools and the other half hypocrites."

The Virginia Statute for Religious Freedom was drafted by Jefferson in 1777 in Fredericksburg, Virginia, and adopted by the Virginia General Assembly on January 16, 1786. It became the basis for the establishment clause of the First Amendment of the U.S. Constitution and led to freedom of religion for all Americans. It is one of only three accomplishments Jefferson instructed to be placed in his epitaph. (3)

PRESIDENCY Thomas Jefferson's path to the presidency began with one of those constitutional mishaps that make you wonder whether the Founding Fathers had tested their machinery before putting it into service. In the election of 1800, Jefferson and Aaron Burr each received 73 electoral votes, producing a deadlock that sent the decision to the House of Representatives. There, legislators spent seven days and 35 ballots proving that indecision can be every bit as strenuous as action. Finally, on February 17, 1801, the House cast a 36th ballot and elected Jefferson the nation's third president.

For his inauguration, Jefferson chose not to arrive in regal splendor but instead walked from his boarding house to the Capitol. This was intended to demonstrate what he called "Republican simplicity"—a refreshing concept in an age when European rulers were still rather attached to crowns, uniforms, and being carried about by other people.

As president, Jefferson presided over one of the greatest real-estate bargains in history. In 1803, he purchased the Louisiana Territory from France for 50 million francs plus the cancellation of debts worth another 18 million francs. The transaction worked out to less than three cents an acre, a price so low that even today it would seem suspicious. The deal doubled the size of the United States and remains the largest land sale ever completed.

The expansion came at a cost for Native Americans. Jefferson's administration also began developing policies that encouraged the removal of Native tribes westward into the Louisiana Territory, setting in motion a process whose consequences would echo through American history.

Jefferson's record on slavery was similarly complicated. He signed the 1807 Act Prohibiting Importation of Slaves, ending the legal importation of enslaved people into the United States. Yet he refused to recognize Haiti after its successful slave revolution and supported trade restrictions intended to isolate the new nation. The prospect of enslaved people successfully overthrowing their masters was, from the perspective of many American slaveholders, precisely the sort of precedent they preferred not to advertise.

The federal government was also astonishingly small by modern standards. Jefferson had just one clerk and one messenger to assist him, and because Congress had not yet seen fit to fund presidential staff, he paid both men himself. Today, a White House intern probably receives more administrative support than the President of the United States did in 1801.

Jefferson nevertheless found time for home improvements. He expanded the White House by adding the colonnades that still connect the residence to what would later become the East and West Wings. Their original purpose was not grandeur but concealment: they were designed to hide stables, storage areas, and other practical necessities that might spoil the view. He also opened the White House to public tours, establishing a tradition that has endured ever since except during periods when the nation found itself occupied with the business of war. 

Jefferson carried his preference for simplicity into the White House. He disliked grand titles and preferred to be addressed as "Mr. Jefferson" rather than "Mr. President," a modesty that was easier to maintain in an era when the federal government consisted of roughly the number of people now employed to manage a medium-sized airport gift shop.

His dinner parties were conducted with similar care. Jefferson limited gatherings to about 14 guests, having concluded that this was the largest number that could comfortably sustain a single conversation. The goal was to ensure that everyone could participate without being stranded at the far end of the table discussing the weather with a distant cousin of someone's brother-in-law. At a time when formal dinners often fragmented into competing conversations, Jefferson preferred a more democratic arrangement.

POLITICS Between 1791 and 1793, Jefferson co-founded the Democratic-Republican Party with James Madison to oppose the Federalist Party led by Secretary of the Treasury Alexander Hamilton. The party came to power in 1800 and dominated national and state affairs until the 1820s when it faded away.

Jefferson and George Washington had a poor relationship. Their enmity stemmed from the last year of Washington's second term, when Washington suspected Jefferson of being responsible for scurrilous press attacks on him. Jefferson denied responsibility and Washington accepted his word, but a chill remained between them. Jefferson chose not to attend ceremonies marking Washington's death in 1799 and wrote no note of condolence to Washington's widow.

Jefferson resigned as Secretary of State in 1793 in protest at Hamilton's attempts to centralize government and what he regarded as Hamilton's financial impropriety. He retired to his Virginia farm for the next four years. (4)

SCANDAL Jefferson's presidency was dogged by persistent allegations that he slept with enslaved women. On October 19, 1796, the Gazette published an article accusing him of carrying on an affair with his enslaved chambermaid, Sarah "Sally" Hemings, noting they had "heard the same subject freely spoken of in Virginia, and by Virginia Gentlemen." Jefferson himself never publicly denied the allegation. DNA evidence published in 1998 strongly supported the conclusion that Jefferson fathered at least one of Hemings's children. (4)

Thomas Jefferson, who wrote that "all men are created equal," enslaved over 600 people across his lifetime, freed only five during his lifetime, and retreated from his early calls for gradual emancipation under pressure from Virginia's planter class — with the remaining enslaved people at Monticello auctioned off after his death to pay his debts. 

MILITARY RECORD As Governor of Virginia during the Revolutionary War (1779–1781), Jefferson faced severe criticism for his handling of British raids on Virginia, including the near-capture of himself and the state legislature by British cavalry under Banastre Tarleton in 1781. A subsequent legislative inquiry was initiated but ultimately dropped, and Jefferson was exonerated. (2)

As US Minister to France between 1785 and 1789, he was present in Paris during the storming of the Bastille on July 14, 1789, and sent detailed eyewitness accounts back to John Jay, the US Secretary of Foreign Affairs. Jefferson was deeply sympathetic to the revolutionary cause, though he deplored the violence even before the full horrors of the Reign of Terror became apparent. He left France in September 1789, before the Revolution descended into its bloodiest phase. (7)

As President, Jefferson was determined to keep the United States out of the Napoleonic Wars and laid out seven formal principles of neutrality before Congress, thanking Providence for keeping America from "hastily entering into the sanguinary contest." However, his attempts to enforce neutrality led to serious problems. When both Britain and France began seizing American merchant ships, Jefferson passed the Embargo Act of 1807, banning all trade with Europe. This proved catastrophic — it devastated the American economy, particularly the mercantile Northeast, and was widely regarded as a failure. Jefferson was forced to back down in the last months of his presidency. The trade tensions he left unresolved ultimately helped propel the United States into the War of 1812 under his successor, James Madison. (8)

HEALTH AND PHYSICAL FITNESS Jefferson was a chronic migraine sufferer. His migraines lasted about a month at a time and recurred roughly every seven years. Each time, he carried on working through the pain. 

Jefferson's health began to deteriorate in July 1825, from a combination of various illnesses and conditions, probably including toxemia, uremia, and pneumonia. By June of the following year he was confined to bed. (3)

HOMES In February 1770, his family house at Shadwell, Virginia burnt down, destroying his library, legal papers, and notes. 

A skilled architect, interior designer, builder, and furniture maker, Jefferson designed his 35-room replacement home at Monticello. Monticello had only two very narrow staircases, as Jefferson considered them a waste of space. 

Among the mechanical contrivances at Monticello was an interior weather vane connected to one on the roof. In its 13 bedrooms, all the beds were simply mattress supports hung on wall hooks. In his study, Jefferson had a revolving chair that enabled him to reach both a desk and a reading stand, and a chaise longue fitted with candlestick holders in both arms to provide light for reading. 

Monticello in 2013 by Martin Falbisoner -

On March 17, 1801, Jefferson moved to the White House as the third American President. Jefferson permitted regular public tours of the executive mansion, initiating a tradition that has continued ever since, except during wartime. (3)

Jefferson used a round table at both the White House and Monticello precisely so that no one sat at its head, eliminating any visible hierarchy among his guests. He deliberately seated his guests "pell-mell" — without assigned seats based on social or diplomatic rank — as a conscious rejection of the formal European court customs he had observed and despised during his time in France. (9)

TRAVEL In 1784, Jefferson departed Boston on July 5, taking his young daughter Patsy and two servants, to join Benjamin Franklin and John Adams in Europe as minister for negotiating commercial trade agreements. During his ambassadorship to France in the 1780s, he made several tours of European wine regions. He returned to the United States in September 1789. (2)

DEATH Jefferson was determined to survive until the 50th anniversary of the Declaration of Independence. At 12:45 pm on July 4, 1826, he mumbled "This is the fourth?" When he realized it was indeed the Fourth of July, he murmured "I resign my spirit to God, my daughter to my country," and died peacefully. Remarkably, the second President, John Adams, died a few hours later on the same day. Jefferson's remains were buried at Monticello.

Thomas Jefferson took care before he died to write out the inscription for his own tombstone. It listed his great accomplishments — "author of the Declaration of Independence," author of the Virginia Statute for Religious Freedom, and founder of the University of Virginia — but conspicuously omitted the fact that he had once been President of the United States. (4)

APPEARANCES IN MEDIA  The Jefferson Memorial, a neoclassical monument in Washington, D.C., was dedicated on April 13, 1943, on the 200th anniversary of Jefferson's birth. Situated in West Potomac Park at the southern end of the National Mall, the building is modeled after the Pantheon in Rome and features a 19-foot bronze statue of Jefferson inside. (10)

Jefferson has been portrayed in numerous films and television productions, most notably by Ken Howard in the 1972 Broadway musical 1776 and its 1972 film adaptation, and by Nick Nolte in the 1995 television film Jefferson in Paris. 

He appears on the U.S. nickel and the two-dollar bill. 

ACHIEVEMENTS Principal author of the Declaration of Independence (1776)

As chairman of the Currency Committee (1783), devised the dollar and cents system still used in the United States

Served as the first Secretary of State (1790–1793)

Co-founded the Democratic-Republican Party (1791–1793) with James Madison

Completed the Louisiana Purchase as President, doubling the size of the United States

Drafted and signed the 1807 Act Prohibiting Importation of Slaves

Authored the Virginia Statute for Religious Freedom (1777), the basis for the First Amendment's establishment clause

Co-founded the University of Virginia (1819)

Assembled the personal library that became the nucleus of the Library of Congress (6,500 volumes purchased by Congress in 1815)

Credited with inventing the swivel chair, the folding chair, and the lever-operated double door opener

Introduced ice cream, french fries, waffles, and pasta-making to wider American audiences

Conducted one of the earliest scientific archaeological excavations in American history

Sources: (1) Wikipedia: Thomas Jefferson (2) Monticello.org: Thomas Jefferson (3) Encyclopaedia of Trivia (4) The White House: Thomas Jefferson (5) Food For Thought by Ed Pearce (6) University of Chicago Press — Founders' Constitution: Jefferson to John Norvell, June 11, 1807 (7) Revolution (8) State Of The Union History (9) American Essence (10) National Park Service: Thomas Jefferson Memorial

Sam Houston

NAME Samuel Houston. He was known to the Cherokee as "Colonneh," meaning "The Raven." 

WHAT FAMOUS FOR Sam Houston is the only person in U.S. history to have been elected governor of two different states (Tennessee and Texas). He was the primary military leader of the Texas Revolution, the first and third President of the Republic of Texas, and a tireless advocate for the rights of indigenous peoples. (1)

BIRTH Samuel Houston was born on March 2, 1793, in Rockbridge County, Virginia. His birthplace was the Timber Ridge plantation, a working farm maintained by enslaved African Americans. 

FAMILY BACKGROUND Houston came from Scottish and Irish colonial stock. His father, Samuel Houston Sr., was descended from Ulster Scots and the Houston baronets, the founders of Clan Houston in Scotland. His mother was Elizabeth Paxton. 

Both parents traced their ancestry to colonists who had settled in America in the 1730s. Houston's father served as a captain in Morgan's Rifle Brigade during the American Revolutionary War as a paymaster, though the demands of military service left the family plantation in financial difficulty. 

He had five brothers — Paxton, Robert, James, John, and William — and three sisters: Isabella, Mary, and Eliza. 

Houston's father died in 1806, and his mother Elizabeth moved the family to Maryville, Tennessee, on the American frontier. (2)

CHILDHOOD Houston had a carefree, rebellious childhood with little patience for schooling or farm work. He was at odds with the Presbyterian hellfire preached by his mother and resisted every attempt to confine him to a conventional frontier life. 

At age 16, fatherless and restless, he ran away from home and went to live with a Cherokee tribe on Hiwassee Island, led by Chief John Jolly (known in Cherokee as Ahuludegi or Oolooteka), who adopted him as a son and gave him the Cherokee name "The Raven." Houston spent more than two years with the tribe, learning the Cherokee language and following their customs. 

He returned to Maryville in 1812 and briefly worked as a schoolmaster at the age of 19, charging his pupils three dollars per term — one-third payable in cash, the rest in corn.  (3)

EDUCATION Houston received only about six months of formal schooling in total across his entire life. He attended Porter Academy in Maryville, Tennessee, where he was taught by the Reverend Isaac L. Anderson, founder of Maryville College. Whether he attended Maryville College itself has not been confirmed. 

What formal learning Houston lacked, however, he partially compensated for through voracious reading — in particular, he was drawn to his father's library and devoured classical authors such as Virgil as a boy. 

After the War of 1812, he studied law for just six months in Nashville under Judge James Trimble and passed the bar in 1818. (4)

CAREER RECORD 1813, Enlisted in the U.S. Army during the War of 1812, serving under Andrew Jackson.

1818, Resigned from the army and began studying law; he passed the bar after only six months of study and opened a practice in Lebanon, Tennessee.

1823–1827, Served two terms in the U.S. House of Representatives for Tennessee’s 7th district.

1827, Elected Governor of Tennessee.

1836, Appointed Commander-in-Chief of the Texas Army; led the victory at the Battle of San Jacinto.

1836–1838, Served as the first President of the Republic of Texas.

1841–1844, Served his second term as President of the Republic of Texas.

1846–1859, Served as one of the first two U.S. Senators from the state of Texas after annexation.

1859–1861, Served as the 7th Governor of Texas

1861–1863, Retired to Huntsville, Texas, shunned by many Texas leaders. 

APPEARANCE Houston was a physically commanding presence — tall, broad-shouldered, and powerfully built, standing approximately 6 feet 6 inches in height, which made him a giant by 19th-century standards. 

He was considered handsome in his youth, and even in middle age his imposing frame drew attention wherever he went. 

Outside Huntsville, Texas, a 67-foot concrete statue by sculptor David Adickes, titled A Tribute to Courage and colloquially known as "Big Sam," captures something of his physical monumentality. (5) (6)

Painting of Houston from 1836

FASHION Houston was one of the most flamboyant dressers of 19th-century American public life. He loved pomp and theatrical self-presentation and dressed in loud, provocative costumes throughout most of his life. He favoured the latest styles in hats, vests, sashes, pantaloons, shirts, coats, and boots, wearing them with deliberate theatricality. 

When he led a delegation of Cherokee to Washington, D.C., he dressed in full Cherokee regalia to meet President James Monroe — earning a sharp reprimand from Secretary of War John C. Calhoun. 

As a U.S. Senator from Texas, he wore a leopard-skin vest on the Senate floor. 

In all weathers he favoured a soft fur hat with an immense round brim, and in winter wrapped himself in a Mexican serape. 

In 1835, before any army existed for him to command, he travelled to New Orleans specifically to purchase a general's uniform, ready for the revolution he anticipated. Houston, it was said, did not dress to please others — he dressed to present a striking pose. (5)

CHARACTER Houston was a man of grand contradictions: brave, witty, generous, and visionary on one side; given to drinking, volatile rages, and personal recklessness on the other. He combined the noble qualities of the frontier — individualism, self-sufficiency, determination — with a surprisingly modern openness to other peoples and cultures unusual for his time. He believed that Native Americans and Black people were as intelligent as whites, even as he owned enslaved people.

Houston was charismatic to an extraordinary degree and commanded a room the moment he entered it. 

Observers described him as fiercely loyal, yet capable of long periods of self-destructive isolation. Biographers have suggested he may have suffered from depression or bipolar disorder. 

He fought only one duel in his life, wounding but not killing his opponent, and escaped others through theatricality and wit. 

The inscription on his tomb, approved in his lifetime, reads: "A Brave Soldier. A Fearless Statesman. A Great Orator — A Pure Patriot. A Faithful Friend, A Loyal Citizen. A Devoted Husband and Father. A Consistent Christian — An Honest Man." (5)

SPEAKING VOICE Houston was celebrated as one of the great orators of his age. His voice was described as deep, resonant, and compelling — a natural instrument for both the courtroom and the open-air political rally. 

He had joined the Dramatic Club in Nashville in his twenties, where his height and frame made him a powerful stage presence. The club's director declared he had never encountered another actor with "a keener sense of the ridiculous." 

Houston brought this theatrical flair to all his public speeches, and his addresses — particularly his warnings to Texans against secession in 1860 and 1861 — were noted for their prophetic force. His prediction to a crowd on April 19, 1861 — "After the sacrifice of countless millions of treasure and hundreds of thousands of lives, you may win Southern independence if God be not against you, but I doubt it" — proved devastatingly accurate. (5)

SENSE OF HUMOUR Houston possessed a sharp, irreverent wit. When challenged to a duel by a man he considered beneath him, he responded coolly: "Tell him that I won't fight him, for I never fight downhill." 

His humour was part of his political arsenal — on one occasion he defused a confrontation with armed rival William H. Wharton not through violence but through theatrical grandeur, raising his arms and thundering: "Draw! Draw if you dare! Lift your hand against the majesty of Texas and the Almighty God would blast you where you stand." Wharton stood down; Houston later appointed him Texas's ambassador to the United States. (5)

RELATIONSHIPS Houston was married three times.

His first wife was Eliza Allen (born 1810), daughter of a wealthy Tennessee plantation owner, whom he married on January 22, 1829, when he was 35 and she was 19. The marriage collapsed after just eleven weeks. Neither Houston nor Eliza ever publicly revealed the reason; some historians have speculated Eliza was in love with another man. The scandal forced Houston to resign the governorship of Tennessee. Eliza refused to sanction a divorce, and Houston did not obtain one until 1837 from a Texas district court.

His second relationship was with Tiana (Diana) Rogers, a Cherokee woman and daughter of Chief John "Hellfire" Rogers, whom he married in a Cherokee ceremony in 1830 while still legally married to Eliza Allen under civil law. Tiana had been widowed with two children. Houston and Tiana lived together for several years. She declined to accompany him to Texas in 1832; she remarried and died of pneumonia in 1838.

His third and final wife was Margaret Moffette Lea Houston (April 11, 1819 – December 3, 1867), of Marion, Alabama, whom he married on May 9, 1840, when he was 47 and she was 21. They had met at a garden party hosted by her sister in Mobile in 1839. 

Margaret Lea Houston, wife of Sam Houston circa 1839.

The age gap of twenty-six years and Houston's well-known difficulties with drink gave her family serious reservations. Houston courted her with love letters and presented her with his likeness carved on a brooch. 

Margaret was First Lady of the Republic of Texas, First Lady of the state of Texas, and a founding member of Concord Baptist Church in Grand Cane. She was a poet and an accomplished musician. Her deep Baptist faith and resolute personality persuaded Houston to give up alcohol and profane language. 

They had eight children together. Their eldest son, Sam Houston Jr., joined the Confederate army and was left for dead on the battlefield at Shiloh; he was saved by a Union Army clergyman who found a Bible from Margaret in his pocket. 

Margaret gave birth to their youngest child, Temple Lea Houston, inside the Governor's Mansion in Austin, as angry mobs gathered outside in response to her husband's opposition to Texas signing the Ordinance of Secession. 

After Sam Houston died in 1863, Margaret became the keeper of his legacy and opened his records to a trusted biographer. She died on December 3, 1867.  (7) (8)

MONEY AND FAME Houston achieved enormous fame but died in relatively modest circumstances. His log home, "Woodland," in Huntsville, and his cramped log law office nearby were, as one historian noted, all that Texas's leading citizen had to show for a lifetime of bravery and inspired leadership. 

In his final years, too ill and politically ostracised to practice law effectively, he rented the Steamboat House in Huntsville because he could not afford to buy back his old home. Yet his name was already attached to the booming city of Houston, Texas, which had been named in his honour in 1837, and which grew to become one of the largest cities in the United States. 

His posthumous fame has only grown — he is widely regarded as one of the founding giants of the American Southwest. (9)

Sam Houston in 1861.

FOOD AND DRINK Houston was a legendary drinker for the first half of his life — so notorious that the Cherokee who sheltered him after his first failed marriage nicknamed him "Big Drunk." He drank so heavily during his years among the Cherokee in the late 1820s and early 1830s that contemporaries despaired of him. 

In the mid-1840s, having married Margaret Lea and pledged sobriety, he was discovered to be consuming what he called "bitters and orange peel," which in fact registered eighty proof — the same alcoholic strength as bourbon. By the mid-1850s, historians believe he had genuinely moderated his drinking. Margaret's religious influence was credited with his eventual abstinence. 

On food, Houston was a man of the frontier with straightforward tastes; no elaborate dining habits are recorded.  (10)

MUSIC AND ARTS Houston had strong theatrical instincts and a love of public performance, honed from his early years in Nashville's Dramatic Club. He was drawn to opera during his years in Washington and was known to attend theatrical performances. 

His wife Margaret was an accomplished musician whose playing and singing were a regular feature of domestic life. Houston's own artistic expression lay primarily in rhetoric and oratory, which contemporaries rated as among the finest of his age.  (11)

LITERATURE Houston was a reader from boyhood, shaped by his father's library of classical authors. He was particularly fond of Virgil, whose Aeneid — the story of a wandering hero who founds a new nation — had obvious personal resonances. 

As a public figure he was also a writer of considerable force, and his undelivered speech on being removed from the governorship of Texas in 1861 is considered a masterpiece of political prose. 

Houston's life has attracted major literary and historical treatments, including James A. Michener's The Eagle and the Raven (1990) and Marshall DeBruhl's biography Sword of San Jacinto. 

NATURE Houston spent formative years on the Tennessee and Texas frontiers and was deeply at home in wild terrain. His years with the Cherokee gave him practical skills in woodcraft, hunting, and wilderness survival. 

He had a well-documented and somewhat irrational fear of ticks — an odd phobia for a frontiersman who spent decades in the outdoors. 

Cedar Point, the family farm on Trinity Bay (1840–1863), was the one home the Houstons maintained continuously throughout their marriage. (11)

PETS Houston kept animals throughout his life as befitted a man of the frontier. He once took in a mangy dog, though he was not above kicking or whipping it — a lapse in kindness noted even by his admirers. His horse Copperbottom (purchased 1839) became historically significant as a progenitor of the American Quarter Horse breed.

He was a capable horseman and in 1839 purchased a horse named Copperbottom, which went on to become one of the foundation sires of the American Quarter Horse breed; he owned the animal until its death in 1860.  (5)

The Sam Houston monument by sculptor Enrico Cerracchio, in Houston, Texas's Hermann park

HOBBIES AND SPORTS Houston  was a skilled and enthusiastic whittler — a hobby he acquired during his years with the Cherokee and maintained throughout his life. He often carved small wooden objects while listening to political debates. 

His deeper recreation was political theatre and oratory. 

SCIENCE AND MATHS He had little interest in the hard sciences, though as a statesman, he was concerned with the practicalities of land surveying and the logistics of early Texan infrastructure

PHILOSOPHY & THEOLOGY Houston's spiritual life was a long, complicated journey. He was raised in his mother's strict Presbyterian faith but rejected its hellfire and damnation as a teenager, finding greater spiritual comfort in what biographer James L. Haley described as the "free and unsophisticated spiritual expression" of the Cherokee. 

In 1833, he was baptised into the Catholic faith in order to qualify under Mexican law for property ownership in Texas — a pragmatic rather than devout conversion. 

His wife Margaret spent fourteen years trying to bring him to the Baptist faith. With the help of the Reverend George Washington Baines (great-great-grandfather of President Lyndon B. Johnson), Houston finally agreed to adult baptism, and on November 19, 1854, he was immersed in Little Rocky Creek near Independence, Texas, by Reverend Rufus C. Burleson, then president of Baylor University. He lived the rest of his life as a professing Baptist, and Margaret read to him from the 23rd Psalm as he died. (12) (13)

TEXAS PRESIDENT History has a habit of rewarding punctuality, but in the case of Sam Houston, it seems you could show up fashionably late and still walk off with the prize. Houston only declared himself a candidate eleven days before the September 1836 election—the first held by the fledgling Republic of Texas—and promptly trounced the field. He collected 5,119 votes, leaving Henry Smith dust with 743, and Stephen F. Austin—the very chap many considered the father of Texas—trailing with a rather humbling 587. It was less an election than a victory lap following Houston’s recent heroics at the Battle of San Jacinto.

He took office on October 22, 1836, inheriting a nation that might politely be described as “aspirational.” The treasury was empty, the debts were mountainous, and there wasn’t even a proper currency to lose sleep over. Recognition from abroad was essential if Texas was to avoid being mistaken for an unusually ambitious cattle ranch. The United States eventually obliged in March 1837, with France, Britain, the Netherlands, and Belgium following along, presumably after checking that Texas was, in fact, still there.

Meanwhile, Antonio López de Santa Anna loomed to the south like a recurring nightmare, as Mexico declined to recognise Texan independence or its enthusiastic claim to the Rio Grande. Closer to home, relations with Native peoples presented another difficulty. Houston—who had spent time living among the Cherokee—favoured a more conciliatory approach, a stance that did not endear him to settlers who preferred solutions involving expulsion and, ideally, a large map with fewer inconvenient inhabitants.

Hovering over everything was Houston’s great ambition: annexation by the United States. Unfortunately, the U.S. Senate—never a body to rush into anything, especially when slavery was involved—kept slamming the door. By 1838, Texas withdrew its request, perhaps in the manner of a suitor deciding to stop calling after several unanswered letters.

During this first term, the town of Houston (named with admirable efficiency after the man himself) briefly served as the capital. Then, owing to a constitutional clause forbidding consecutive terms—an early example of political systems ensuring nobody got too comfortable—Houston stepped down in December 1838.

What followed might best be described as a cautionary tale. His successor, Mirabeau B. Lamar, had once been his vice president but now behaved like a man determined to redecorate by setting fire to the furniture. Lamar reversed nearly everything Houston had done: he launched a brutal campaign against the Cherokee, pursued expansionist schemes such as the ill-fated Santa Fe Expedition, moved the capital to the freshly minted Austin, and spent money with the carefree abandon of someone who had not personally met the national debt.

Houston, relegated to the Texas House of Representatives as a congressman for San Augustine, became Lamar’s most persistent critic—a sort of political ghost at the banquet, reminding everyone how much better things had been before the host started smashing the crockery.

By 1841, the voters had had enough of adventure and voted Houston back in. He returned to find the republic financially battered and diplomatically overextended. Where Lamar had charged about like a man chasing a hat in the wind, Houston settled into a slower, subtler game—particularly on the question of annexation.

At first, Washington showed little enthusiasm. So Houston tried something rather clever: he courted Britain and France, hinting that Texas might align itself with European powers—or, in a move guaranteed to raise eyebrows in the American South, even consider abolishing slavery under British influence. This had the desired effect of alarming John Tyler, who suddenly found annexing Texas a far more attractive proposition than letting it drift into someone else’s orbit.

A treaty was duly signed in April 1844, only for the U.S. Senate to reject it two months later—proving once again that progress, like a mule, often requires considerable coaxing. The matter rolled into the 1844 election, where James K. Polk won on a pro-annexation platform. This gave Tyler just enough political cover to push annexation through Congress by joint resolution, sidestepping the treaty process altogether.

Houston left office on December 9, 1844, succeeded by Anson Jones. A year later, on December 29, 1845, Texas entered the Union as the 28th state. Houston, having spent the better part of a decade nudging, cajoling, and occasionally alarming the United States into action, might reasonably have felt he’d earned a quiet sit-down.

His presidency, taken as a whole, resembles a long and rather delicate balancing act performed over a pit of financial ruin, military threat, and diplomatic uncertainty. He kept Texas solvent enough, recognised enough, and intact enough to survive until it could be absorbed into the United States. His preference for negotiation over annihilation—whether with foreign powers or Native tribes—was not always popular, but it proved, in the end, remarkably effective.

In short, Houston’s two terms form the narrow but essential bridge between the gun smoke of San Jacinto and the neat addition of a star on the American flag—a journey that, like many in history, looks inevitable only after someone has gone to considerable trouble to make it so.

POLITICS Houston was one of the most remarkable political figures in American history — the only person ever elected governor of two different U.S. states (Tennessee and Texas), and the only former foreign head of state to serve in the U.S. Congress. 

He began as a Democratic-Republican and Jackson loyalist, becoming a Democrat, then briefly affiliating with the Know Nothing (American) Party in the 1850s, before standing as a Constitutional Unionist in 1860. 

His defining political conviction was an unwavering belief in the American Union. He voted for the Compromise of 1850, opposed the Kansas–Nebraska Act of 1854, and fought secession to the end of his political life. 

When Texas voted to leave the Union in February 1861, he refused to swear the Confederate oath: "In the name of my own conscience and manhood... I refuse to take this oath." He was removed from office. 

He also refused President Lincoln's offer of 50,000 troops to keep Texas in the Union, saying he loved Texas too much to impose that upon it.  (3)

SCANDAL The central scandal of Houston's life was the catastrophic collapse of his first marriage to Eliza Allen in January 1829 — after just eleven weeks. Neither party ever publicly revealed the cause, though the failure was immediate and total: Eliza was whispering against him by the following morning. The humiliation ended his political career in Tennessee and sent him into years of drinking and exile among the Cherokee. 

He was also convicted by the U.S. House of Representatives in 1832 for assaulting Congressman William Stanbery with a cane on a Washington street, after Stanbery accused him of a fraudulent government contract bid; he was reprimanded by the Speaker and fined $500 by a federal court. He owned enslaved people throughout his life — a moral failing his admirers have struggled to address given his otherwise progressive views on race. (5)

MILITARY RECORD Houston enlisted in the U.S. Army on March 24, 1813, at the age of 20. During the Creek War, he was grievously wounded at the Battle of Horseshoe Bend (March 27, 1814) — struck by an arrow in the groin and two musket balls in the right shoulder and arm. Army doctors expected him to die; he did not. He rose from private to second lieutenant and earned the enduring respect of General Andrew Jackson. He served as a sub-agent overseeing Cherokee resettlement in 1817–1818 before resigning from the army following his public clash with Secretary of War Calhoun.

In Texas, he was appointed Commander-in-Chief of the Texian Army by the Convention of 1836. Despite enormous pressure from the provisional government and his own officers, he conducted a disciplined strategic retreat following the fall of the Alamo before turning to strike at the Battle of San Jacinto (April 21, 1836). The Texian force of 783 men routed Santa Anna's 1,350-strong army. Houston's horse was shot from under him and his ankle shattered by a stray bullet during the battle. The victory secured Texan independence. He rose to the rank of Major General. (1)  (3)

Surrender of Santa Anna by William Henry Huddle 

HEALTH AND PHYSICAL FITNESS Houston's body bore the marks of a violent life. His groin wound from Horseshoe Bend (1814) never fully healed and caused him pain for years. The ankle shattered at San Jacinto (1836) left him with a permanent limp. 

Biographers have speculated that he suffered from clinical depression and possibly bipolar disorder, as suggested by his long periods of self-destructive withdrawal. His decades of heavy drinking took a further toll. (9)

HOMES Houston lived a notably peripatetic life, moving between frontier cabins, Cherokee settlements, rented accommodation, and executive mansions. The principal homes of his life were:

Timber Ridge Plantation, Rockbridge County, Virginia — birthplace (1793)

Maryville, Tennessee — family home from 1807

Hiwassee Island, Cherokee territory — lived with Chief Jolly's tribe, 1809–1812 and again 1829–1832

Nashville, Tennessee — law practice and political career, 1818–1829

Governor's Mansion, Nashville — 1827–1829

Various locations in Arkansas Territory/Texas — itinerant years, 1829–1835

Cedar Point, Trinity Bay, Texas (1840–1862) — the one home maintained continuously throughout his marriage to Margaret Lea; a farm in Chambers County

Governor's Mansion, Austin, Texas — 1859–1861

Woodland Home, Huntsville, Texas — the log cabin he shared with Margaret and their family, now part of the Sam Houston Memorial Museum complex. 

Woodland home By Pma03

Steamboat House, Huntsville, Texas — his final home, rented from 1862 until his death on July 26, 1863; a uniquely designed two-storey wooden house modelled by its builder on a steamboat  (9) (14)

TRAVEL Houston's life was defined by movement. He ranged across Virginia, Tennessee, Arkansas, Washington D.C., and deep into the Cherokee territories before making his way to Texas in 1832. 

He visited Washington D.C. repeatedly over four decades, first as a young soldier seeking to expose fraud against the Indians and later as congressman, senator, and would-be presidential candidate. His journeys were often made on horseback through dangerous frontier territory. (3)

DEATH Sam Houston died of pneumonia on July 26, 1863, at the Steamboat House in Huntsville, Texas, at the age of 70. He had been in declining health since April of that year. The Civil War he had warned against and fought to prevent was still raging. As he lay dying, his wife Margaret sat by his bedside reading to him from the 23rd Psalm. His last words, according to tradition, were simply: "Texas... Texas... Margaret..."

His funeral was held in the upstairs parlour of the Steamboat House. He was buried in Huntsville. (7) (9)

APPEARANCES IN MEDIA Houston has been portrayed in numerous films and television productions:

Man of Conquest (1939) — portrayed by Richard Dix in an early Hollywood biopic

The Alamo (1960) — portrayed by Richard Boone

Gone to Texas (1986, TV film) — portrayed by Sam Elliott

Texas (1994, TV miniseries)

Texas Rising (2015, History Channel miniseries) — portrayed by Bill Paxton

He was inducted into the Hall of Great Westerners of the National Cowboy & Western Heritage Museum in 1960. 

A 67-foot statue by sculptor David Adickes, A Tribute to Courage (1994), stands beside Interstate 45 between Dallas and Houston in Huntsville, Texas — the ninth-tallest statue in the United States. 

Along with Stephen F. Austin, Houston is one of only two Texans represented by a statue in the U.S. National Statuary Hall in Washington D.C. 

ACHIEVEMENTS Led the Texian Army to victory at the Battle of San Jacinto (April 21, 1836), securing Texas independence from Mexico

First and third President of the Republic of Texas (1836–1838; 1841–1844)

Instrumental in Texas's annexation as the 28th U.S. state (December 29, 1845)

The only person in American history elected governor of two different U.S. states (Tennessee and Texas)

One of the first two U.S. Senators from Texas; the only former foreign head of state to serve in the U.S. Congress

Stood against secession at enormous personal cost, opposing the Confederacy when virtually all around him acquiesced

The city of Houston, Texas — the fourth most populous city in the United States — bears his name

Sam Houston State University, Fort Sam Houston, Sam Houston National Forest, and numerous other institutions and landmarks are named in his honour

Sources: (1) Britannica – Sam Houston (2) Wikipedia – Sam Houston (3) Texas State Historical Association – Sam Houston (4) EBSCO Research Starters – Sam Houston (5) HistoryNet – Sam Houston (6) Texas Standard – Sam Houston (7) Wikipedia – Margaret Lea Houston (8) Texas State Historical Association – Margaret Lea Houston (9) Texas Highways – Steamboat House (10) Sam Houston State University – Houston and Alcohol (11) Texas Monthly – Little-Known Facts About Sam Houston (12) Istoria Ministries – How Sam Houston Became a Baptist (13) Discover Texas – Sam Houston's Baptism (14) Texas State Historical Association – Steamboat House