Ya I seen Mr Hardin speak at a symposium in San Antonio a couple of years back, I was favorably impressed. He did mention all the ire his thoroughly objective and in some ways irreverent work had drawn down upon his head from certain elements here in Texas.
Back to Hardin...
Things are changing in Texas, probably not for the better. Among visitors to the Alamo, even from Texas, its almost always a few of the older guys who are well informed about ANY take on Texas history and have strong opinions on it, anyone else in the crowd and you could claim that Sam Houston was a rank coward who slept with sheep and they wouldn't care or take it personal.
Not so with the older guys of whom I speak. Probably ain't anyone in the story of Texas who draws more wildly divergent strong opinions than Sam Houston: Put him on a pedestal or despise the man, ain't too many in between.
I will say that a probable majority of those who actually had contact with him during the events of 1835/36 spoke ill of him the rest of their lives, and it seems that most of those present at the victory at San Jacinto were OK with leaving a critically wounded Houston on the field, sitting against a tree, and were emphatic in stating that Houston was not responsible for that victory.
Indisputably though, Sam Houston DID play a major part in shaping the events that led up to that victory, whether the eventual outcome was a mere fluke or a result of uncommon foresight on Houston's part is open to interpretation.
As to WHY Houston was so disliked, this from Hardin on the conniving and manipulative character of the man. Here's Houston, at 43 just a year older than Santa Anna, on his way to Gonzales, March 6 through the 11th of '36, to take command of Texian forces in the field. The Alamo had just fallen.
Although Houston had pledged to exert all "mortal power" to save the Alamo garrison, he did not strain his horse on the ride from Washington-on-the-Brazos to Gonzales. It took Houston five days to complete a journey that should have required, at most, two. The Alamo, of course, had already fallen but Houston could not have been aware of that intelligence.
At a time when Texians were wrought with anxiety over the fate of Travis and his men, their commander in chief dawdled. Why did Houston take so long? Texian settler W.W. Thompson, who spoke with him at Burnham's Crossing on the Colorado River, provided a possible answer.
...Houston lingered at Burnham's "all night & all that day and all night again." When Thompson sought the general's opinion concerning the siege of the Alamo, Houston "swore that he believed it to be a damned lies, & that all those reports from Travis and Fannin were lies, for there were no Mexican forces there and that he believed it was only electioneering schemes on Travis & Fannin to sustain their own popularity."
In life I have observed that what we assume are the motives of others sheds a lot of light on our own personality.
Houston's subsequent acclaim came from those who had taken no personal part in the events of '35/'36. Houston was President Andrew Jackson's man in Texas, and when the wounded and critically ill Houston arrived in New Orleans on the deck of a steamer after San Jacinto, he was acclaimed the hero of Texas independence by both the popular press and by the Jackson Administration.
Recall that few of the 30,000 Americans already living in Texas by then had taken any part in the fighting (other than fleeing during the Runaway Scrape) and that a flood of immigration into Texas commenced soon after. Houston's subsequent political support came from among these people.
Birdwatcher
