SAM HOUSTON 337 1859. The election of Mr. Lincoln in i860 precipitated events; and though Houston used all his mighty personal influence, and all his charmful, potent elo- quence to keep Texas in the Unioii, he failed, and was deposed from the Gov ernorship on his refusal to sign the Ordinance of Secession. Then he calmly withdrew from the scene, and there are many living who remember his pathetic parting words. " I have seen," he said, " the statesmen and patriots of my youth gathered to their fathers, and the government which they had reared rent in twain, and none like them are now left to re-unite it again. I stand almost the last of a race who learned from them the lessons of human freedom ! " These events inflicted a mortal wound upon his great spirit, and when he heard the roar of the cannon announcing the secession of Texas, he turned to his wife and said, " My heart is broken ! " The words were only too true ; for two years he lingered a sad and solemn old man, mourning for the woes of his country and for the defection of his eldest son Sam, who had joined the Confed- erates, and been taken prisoner by the Northern army. He was also suff"ering from the wounds received both in the war of 181 2 and also at San Jacinto ; and it was evident that he had come to the close of life. He himself looked forward to the event without fear, and with a wise and well-grounded hope. On March 2, 1863, Houston was seventy, and in response to an ovation in his own city of Houston, he made a short, broken little speech. It was his last public eff"ort, and from it he went back home to Huntsville, to die. His last days were spent in incessant and heart-broken prayers for his country and for his family ; and on July 26, 1863, three weeks after the fall of Vicksburg, he breathed his last to the words " Texas! Texas /" So honestly and unselfishly had this great man lived that he died in poverty, needing many comforts ; this hero, who by his valor and statesmanship had in- ( reased the territory of the United States by more than eight hundred thousand square miles, or about the equivalent of the thirteen original States ! But the splendor of his name is not to be touched by such an accident as poverty ;' to the people of Texas, Houston will ever be a beloved memory ; and on the Roll of Fame he shines forth, the noblest, the most princely, the most picturesque and chivalrous character in American histor>'. 22
