Outraged by the General’s defense of the Cherokees, Col. Sam Jordan grabbed an ax handle and took a swing at Sam Houston on Dec. 11, 1840, but Adolphus Sterne blocked the blow, saving the intended victim from serious bodily harm.
Wherever he went in his illustrious life, Sam Houston made fast friends, who stuck by him through thick and thin, and bitter enemies, who would have cut off their right arm to see him burn in hell. The towering figure’s abrasive manner and personal eccentricities did nothing to defuse this ill will, which was a volatile mixture of unadulterated envy and honest criticism.
Even as a 25-year-old junior officer in the American army, Houston rubbed people in high places the wrong way. He accompanied his boyhood friends, the Cherokees, to Washington in 1818 to present a list of long ignored grievances to the U.S. government. Secretary of war John C. Calhoun politely received the delegation but chewed out the brash lieutenant for dressing like a “savage.”
