My Top Texan — Thomas Jefferson Rusk
Mark Lambert is Deputy Director for Archives and Records at the Texas General Land Office.
Choosing a “Top Texan” is not an easy decision when considering almost 500 years of Texas history, but I think I am proposing a worthy candidate. This person had a tremendous impact on the Republic and state, at a time when even a single wrong action could have greatly changed the state that we know and love today. Thomas J. Rusk combined the skills of Edward Burleson as a frontiersman, the skills of Sam Houston as a politician and General, and the skills of Stephen F. Austin as a leader, peacemaker, and lawgiver. It’s a shame he is not better known today.
Thomas Jefferson Rusk was born in Pendleton District, South Carolina, on December 5, 1803. Rusk’s family rented land from U.S. Senator John C. Calhoun, who helped Rusk secure a position where he could clerk while studying law. After admission to the bar in 1825, Rusk began his law practice in Clarksville, Georgia, and afterward made significant investments in the Georgia Gold Rush of 1829.
In 1834, however, the managers of the company in which he had invested embezzled all the funds and fled to Texas. Rusk pursued them to Nacogdoches but never recovered the money. He did, however, decide to stay in Texas. Rusk received a land grant on November 5, 1835, for one league of land (4428.4 acres) in Nacogdoches for land that would later become Cherokee County.[i]
In the fall of 1835, at the start of the Texas Revolution, Rusk organized volunteers from Nacogdoches and hastened to Gonzales and participated in the “Come and Take It” incident. The troops then proceeded to San Antonio, where Rusk participated in the “Grass Fight,” but left the army before the siege of Bexar when recalled by the provisional government to help organize the war effort.
The provisional government named him Inspector General of the army in the Nacogdoches District, a position he filled from December 14, 1835, to February 26, 1836. As a delegate from Nacogdoches to the Convention of 1836, Rusk not only signed the Texas Declaration of Independence but also chaired the committee to revise the constitution, thus becoming more responsible than any other delegate for the final wording of the document.[ii]
The ad interim government, installed on March 17, 1836, appointed Rusk Secretary of War. Rusk helped President David Burnet move the government from Washington to Harrisburg, then joined Sam Houston’s forces. To his eternal credit, Rusk was smart enough and brave enough, to not remove Sam Houston from the Commanding Generalship after President Burnet requested it. Rusk also ordered Houston to take the road to Harrisburg and San Jacinto on April 17 when the troops reached the “Which Way Tree.” Rusk participated with bravery in the battle of San Jacinto and the defeat of Santa Anna on April 21, 1836.[iii]
Due to Sam Houston’s wounding at San Jacinto, from May 4 to October 31, 1836, Rusk served as commander in chief of the Army of the Republic of Texas, with the rank of brigadier general; he then resumed his duties as Secretary of War. Rusk followed the Mexican troops westward as they retired from Texas to be certain of their retreat beyond the Rio Grande. Then he conducted a military funeral for the troops massacred at Goliad.[iv]
After his election as the first President of the Republic of Texas, Sam Houston again appointed Rusk Secretary of War, but after a few weeks, Rusk resigned to take care of pressing domestic problems. At the insistence of friends, however, he represented Nacogdoches in the Second Congress of the Republic, from September 25, 1837, to May 24, 1838.
Rusk was so respected in the Republic, he most likely would have been elected the second President of the Republic of Texas in 1838, but he turned down the offer in order to practice law and rebuild his precarious finances after his financial ruin in 1834. In fact, Mirabeau Lamar only ran for President after asking Rusk if he intended to run for the position and receiving a negative response.
As chairman of the House Military Committee in 1837, Rusk sponsored a militia bill that passed over Houston’s veto, and Congress elected Rusk major general of the militia. In the summer of 1838, he commanded the Nacogdoches militia which suppressed the Córdova Rebellion. Rusk also commanded part of the troops in the battle of the Neches, in which the Cherokees were driven into Oklahoma.
On December 12, 1838, Congress elected Rusk chief justice of the Supreme Court. He served until June 30, 1840, when he resigned to resume his law practice. He and J. Pinckney Henderson, later the first governor of the state of Texas, formed a law partnership on February 25, 1841, that was the most famous law firm in Texas of that day.
Rusk was president of the Constitutional Convention of 1845, which accepted the annexation terms from the United States and drafted a new constitution for the new state. The Convention has been called the finest legislative body of Texans ever assembled, and Rusk was its elected leader. Rusk’s legal knowledge also contributed significantly to the constitution of the new state.[v]
The first state legislature elected him and Sam Houston to the United States Senate in February 1846. Evidence of their high respect for Rusk is shown by his having received the larger number of votes and the longer term of office than Sam Houston.
In the Congressional debate over the Compromise of 1850, he vigorously defended Texas claims to New Mexico and argued forcefully for just financial compensation for both the loss of revenue from import duties as well as the loss of territory, which resulted in a ten-million-dollar payment to Texas, which finally retired the Republic’s debts and finally set the state on the road to economic growth.[vi]
Rusk was popular enough to be encouraged to become a presidential candidate in 1856. Supporting James Buchanan for President instead, Rusk supposedly was offered but declined the position of postmaster general by the new President. As a sign of the high esteem of his colleagues, during the special session of Congress in March 1857, the Senate elected him president pro tem, the second-highest-ranking officer after the Vice-President.[vii]
While Rusk attended the spring session of Congress in 1856, Mrs. Rusk succumbed to tuberculosis, on April 23, 1856. Despondent over the recent death of his wife and ill from a tumor at the base of his neck, Rusk committed suicide on July 29, 1857. Rusk County and the town of Rusk were named in his honor.[viii]
The 2017 Top Texan contest is live! Build your bracket here: www.savetexashistory.org/toptexan
[i] Title for Thomas Jefferson Rusk, 5 November 1835, Box 47, Folder 57, Spanish Collection, Archives and Records Program, Texas General Land Office, Austin, TX.
[ii] Cleburn Huston, Towering Texan: A Biography of Thomas J. Rusk. (Waco, Tex.: Texian Press, 1971), 33.
[iii] Cleburn Huston, 40.
[iv] Benham, Priscilla Myers, “Rusk, Thomas Jefferson,” Handbook of Texas Online, accessed February 28, 2017, http://www.tshaonline.org/handbook/online/articles/fru16. Uploaded on June 15, 2010. Modified on July 18, 2016. Published by the Texas State Historical Association.
[v] Ralph W. Steen, “Convention of 1845,” Handbook of Texas Online, accessed February 28, 2017, http://www.tshaonline.org/handbook/online/articles/mjc13. Uploaded on June 12, 2010. Modified on March 28, 2016. Published by the Texas State Historical Association.
[vi] Cleburn Huston, 148–51.
[vii] U. S. Senate Historical Office. Pro Tem: Presidents pro tempore of the United States Senate since 1789. (Washington: GPO, 2008), 52. Available courtesy of the Internet Archive at https://archive.org/details/protempresidents00wash
[viii] Benham, Priscilla Myers, “Rusk, Thomas Jefferson.”
[ix] Courtesy U.S. Senate Historical Office.
[x] Title for Thomas Jefferson Rusk, 5 November 1835, Box 47, Folder 57, Spanish Collection, Archives and Records Program, Texas General Land Office, Austin, TX.
[xi] Character Certificate for Thomas J. Rusk, 23 May 1835, Box 64, Folder 28, Spanish Collection, Archives and Records Program, Texas General Land Office, Austin, TX.
[xii] Nacogdoches Bounty Certificate #879 for Thomas J. Rusk, 9 December 1837, Nacogdoches B-000359, and Fannin Donation Certificate #291 for Thomas J. Rusk, 19 April 1855, Fannin D-000291, Texas Land Grant Records, Archives and Records Program, Texas General Land Office, Austin, TX.
[xiii] Portraits of United States Senators and with a Biographical Sketch of Each. (Claremont, N.H.: Tracy, Kenney & Co., 1856), 553. Available courtesy of the Internet Archive at <https://archive.org/details/portraitsofunite00traciala>
