Mirabeau Buonaparte Lamar

Lamar was a businessman, printer, and politician and the second elected president of the Republic of Texas. He was born in 1798 and raised in Georgia. He was publisher of the Cahawba Press for a brief time, secretary to Governor George Troup, and then started the Columbus Enquirer. He also served one term as a state senator before his wife died in 1830. He came to Texas in 1835 with James Fannin and settled in Velasco. When the Revolution started, he enlisted in the main army as a private, but promoted to a colonel of cavalry right before the Battle of San Jacinto began. He served as Secretary of War under President Burnet and commander in chief of the Texian Army, but the soldiers refused to follow him and he retired to private life. He was elected as Vice President in 1836, and then President in 1838 as an anti-Sam Houston candidate. Lamar opposed annexation, believing Texas was destined to be a great empire, as well as Houston’s conciliatory policies to Texas Indians. He also moved the capital to Austin, authorized the failed Texas/Santa Fe expedition, and spent far more money than he took in. His most lasting legacy of his presidency was passing legislation setting aside public lands to establish and fund public education. After his term, he returned to his plantation in Richmond. When the Mexican War broke out, he joined Zachary Taylor’s army and later captained a unit of Texas Mounted Volunteers on the Rio Grande. He helped organize the town of Laredo and represented San Patricio County in the Texas Legislature. In 1857 he was appointed the US Minister to Nicaragua and Costa Rica. In addition to his pollical life, Lamar was an artist and poet, with much of his poetry inspired by the tragedies of the death of his first wife and his daughter. He published a collection of his poems, Verse Memorials, in 1857. He died in 1859.