The opium war, Texas style

The slanderous and libelous who lurk among us today have unprecedented platforms from which to launch an attack upon the character of any individual, public or private, with or without the benefit of facts. In days of yore, the platforms were few but the character assassins were just as reckless and relentless. 

Take Sam Houston, revered Father of Texas. In his day he was both loved and despised. Some people genuinely disliked him, some respectfully disagreed with him and others sought to discredit him to advance their own careers. Others were unwitting dupes, as are most dupes; we don’t hear a lot about witting dupes. 

Tales of Houston’s drunkenness and debauchery appeared in newspapers and pamphlets all over the state. A brief and mysterious marriage provided additional fodder. Even the Cherokees, whom he lived with for several years, nicknamed him Big Drunk. And they liked him. (His official tribal name was Colleneh, or the Raven.)

One of the most common charges against the Raven, aka Big Drunk, was that he was also an opium addict. One of Houston’s keenest and sleaziest rivals, Robert Potter, embedded a spy by the name of James Hazard Perry in the Texans camp during the war for independence.  Perry’s assignment was to dig up some dirt on Houston and  report on him at his worst. 

Houston figured it out when he randomly opened up a letter from Perry to Potter. Here’s what he read:  “We are in striking distance of the enemy and there are no signs of moving. Our men are loitering about without knowing more of military tactics at evening than they did in the morning. While the general either for want of his customary excitement… or as some say from the effect of opium is in a condition between sleeping and waking which amounts nearly to a constant state of insanity.” 

Perry left camp when Houston reprimanded him. Houston then had him arrested as a deserter but, oddly, Perry was present and accounted for at San Jacinto, site of Houston’s victory over Santa Anna and the Mexican army. 

Another ‘”loyal” aide, Robert Coleman, wrote an 1837 pamphlet titled “Houston Displayed” that pegged our hero as a drug-crazed lunatic. Coleman wrote: “[Houston’s] whiskey and opium gave out, and none could be procured; so that, from disappointment and the want of those stimulants, he became deranged. In one of his moments of delirium he drew a pistol and attempted to blow out his brains but was prevented by the untimely interference of [Jim] Bowie.”

Untimely?

Coleman went on to say that Houston spent his nights in the grog shops of Washington-on-the Brazos and devoted his days to sleep. Anson Jones, a surgeon for the Texas army, wrote in 1855 that Houston was “stupefied and stultified with opium during the San Jacinto campaign.” 

Opium was  not contraband; it was legal and sold over the counter in 19th century Texas. Opium was also one of the few medical options available to the military in the 1830s. Houston was wounded at San Jacinto and was reportedly given some opium to help with the pain while he negotiated terms of surrender with Santa Anna, who wanted some opium, too. 

Santa Anna suffered similar slings and arrows in regard to the opium thing. Here is a description of Santa Anna’s reaction when he was about to go ashore from the ship carrying him to Vera Cruz after his surrender to Houston: “No amount of explanation could persuade him that he would be safe ashore. He rushed around and took some opium— more opium, he said— he had taken so much, he averred, that he would soon die anyway.” 

As for Houston, though he undoubtedly used opium at least occasionally, there is no definitive record of it. But Coleman’s “Houston Displayed” kept the portrait of Houston as a degenerate  hophead alive for the rest of his life, and beyond, as the pamphlet has been reprinted several times. Houston’s real battle was with alcohol, which he referred to as his “fatal enchantress.” 

When a  Baptist preacher baptized the former president of the republic in a creek in 1852 and told him the water had washed away his sins, Houston cracked, “Lord help the fish down below.”