Slavery in the Houston Household

By Danielle R. Brissette, Historical Interpreter

If you’ve been to the Sam Houston Memorial Museum recently, you might have read accounts of some of Sam Houston’s slaves.  In our Rotunda, you saw part of a yoke forged by Joshua Houston, the father of esteemed educator Samuel Walker Houston, and body servant of General Houston.  Or maybe, while strolling near the duck pond, you stopped to look into the museum’s log kitchen; a replica of the building in which Eliza Revel, the cook, worked, slept, and lived.  Although we tell their stories often, Joshua and Eliza are just two of the many who were Sam Houston’s slaves. There are other people about whom we speak less frequently of or not at all. 

Margaret and Sam kept about a dozen slaves at a time.  We know that they ranged in ages from the very young, like four-year-old Sotte, to the more middling fifty-five years of age, like Lewis.  Eliza stayed with the family from the time she was young (maybe around eleven) until her death at age seventy-five.  Some, like Warner and Betsy, stayed for a short while.  Some, like Mary or Hannah, were born into their life.  With different jobs and missions, the experience of being a slave for Sam Houston was different for every individual.  Joshua and Eliza were closest to the family, but Jeff Hamilton and Sam Houston shared a close relationship as well.  Jeff replaced Sam’s bandages (which covered oozing wounds earned at the Battle of Horseshoe Bend and the Battle of San Jacinto) daily, and on trips, often shared lunches from the same basket.  Bingley and Prince, however, were field hands, working long hours with mule and plow, planting corn, harvesting pumpkins, and, in the off season, being rented out to neighbors for other tasks.  Sam trusted Jeff, offering him advice and telling him stories, but warned Margaret that Bingley would cheat her given a chance.  “You know Bingley is not honest,” he writes “and the corn… will all be stolen.”  Some of Sam’s slaves stayed with the family for life, even after emancipation, while others ran away to Mexico and freedom at the first opportunity. 

The institution of slavery was wrong.  There is no denial or obfuscation of that fact.  However, Sam Houston’s slaves do not appear to have been mistreated.  The Gibbs Brother’s account books list charges made for “shoes for Albert,” a slave who knew a little carpentry.  Joshua Houston was taught to read by Sam himself, which was in violation of the law at that time.  The slave’s cabins were kept neat and clean, and in winter months Margaret saw that there were enough blankets to go around.  When slaves were ill, Houston worried about them. In letters he asked after the health and condition of “his people,” as he called them, and recommended doctors for them to visit.  Jeff Hamilton said that Houston didn’t allow his slaves to be whipped.  The only time Jeff was ever struck by Sam was after he had played a prank, which resulted in the near drowning of one of Houston’s daughters. 

As Sam Houston’s life was coming to a close, so too was slavery.  In September of 1862, President Abraham Lincoln released a Preliminary Emancipation Proclamation which stated that “on the first day of January in the year of our Lord, one thousand eight hundred and sixty-three, all persons held as slaves within any State… the people whereof shall then be in rebellion against the United States shall be then, thenceforward, and forever free.”  This New Year’s Day will mark the 150^th Anniversary of the emancipation of all the slaves in the South.  As with many aspects of Sam Houston’s life, his slave-owning isn’t clear-cut or easy to explain.  Although Sam stood with President Lincoln on the Union, Sam was an anti-abolitionist, and said that slavery was an economic necessity for the South.  Furthermore, he argued that freeing all of the slaves was cruel to them.  “No one would take care of him. His toil would stop… and he would be cast into the streets…  You might call him free, but he would be an object of want and wretchedness.” 

Despite this, there is a story that Sam Houston did free his slaves.  Sometime in October of 1862, Sam gathered his entire family and all of his slaves on the front porch of the Steamboat House.  One can imagine General Sam leaning on his cane with a newspaper in hand, surrounded by his entire household, cleaning his spectacles with a handkerchief and beginning to read the Emancipation Proclamation in its entirety.  Jeff Hamilton recalls that Sam was emotional.  “You, and each of you, are now free,” he said.  “I know I am your friend, and I know you are my friends.  If you want to stay here and work for me, I will pay you good wages as long as I can.”  Sam had freed his slaves but offered them a chance to stay in exactly the same position, this time as “servants.”  Many did stay with Sam until his death the next year. And some stayed with Margaret and the children after that, even when money became tight and the wages must have diminished or disappeared altogether.  And some left the Houston’s service.  Joshua, Eliza, Pearl, Nash, Dolly, Lizzie, Solomon, Sotte, Jeff, Jack, Lewis, and Mariah, for once, made their own decision.

Many scholars wonder if Sam really did free his slaves, or if he did, why he did it?  I don’t know the answers to these questions.  But I do know that is important that we talk about Sam Houston’s slaves and their experiences and stories.  I’ve made a point of using as many names as I could find in this article, but it’s hard to fit them all in.  I missed Billy, the young boy who worked at Raven Hill, and Smith who drove a wagon, and Jim, Nancy, Tom Blue, Charlotte, Louis, Esau, Mary, Nash, Lucy Neal, Martha, and Vina.  All have unique stories and important lives that we know so little about.  They, as much as Sam or Margaret, helped to shape Huntsville and the land on which our museum stands.  They, as much as Juan Seguin or Stephen F. Austin, are a part of our Texas story; an important, vital part that is far too often overlooked.  It is our goal, at the Sam Houston Memorial Museum, to tell the whole story, if we can, and I like to hope that every day we get better at it.