Thomas Jefferson Rusk (December 5, 1803 – July
29, 1857) was an early political and military
leader of the Republic of Texas, serving as
its first Secretary of War as well as a general
at the Battle of San Jacinto.
He was later a US politician and served as
a Senator from Texas from 1846 until his suicide.
He served as the President pro tempore of
the United States Senate in 1857.
== Early life ==
Rusk was born in Pendleton, South Carolina,
to John Rusk, a stonemason, and Mary Sterritt
Rusk.
After being admitted to the bar in 1825, Rusk
began his law practice in Clarkesville, Georgia.
In 1827, he married Mary F. (Polly) Cleveland,
the daughter of General John Cleveland.
Rusk became a business partner of his father-in-law
after the marriage.
He lived in the gold region of Georgia and
made sizable mining investments.
In 1834, however, the managers of the company
in which he had invested embezzled all the
funds and fled to Mexican Texas.
Rusk pursued them to Nacogdoches, but never
recovered the money.
== Texas Revolution ==
Rusk decided to stay in Texas and became a
citizen of Mexico in 1835, applied for a headright
in David G. Burnet's colony, and sent for
his family.
After hearing Nacogdoches citizens denounce
the despotism of Mexico, Rusk became involved
in the independence movement.
He organized volunteers from Nacogdoches and
hastened to Gonzales, where his men joined
Stephen F. Austin's army in preventing the
Mexicans from seizing their cannon.
They proceeded to San Antonio, but Rusk left
the army before the Siege of Bexar.
The provisional government named him inspector
general of the army in the Nacogdoches District.
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 of the Republic
of Texas.
The ad interim government, installed on March
17, 1836, appointed Rusk as Secretary of War.
When informed that the Alamo had fallen and
the Mexican army was moving eastward, Rusk
helped President David Burnet to move the
government to Harrisburg.
After the Mexicans killed all James W. Fannin's
Texan army at Goliad, Burnet sent Rusk with
orders for General Sam Houston to make a stand
against the enemy.
Rusk participated with bravery in the defeat
of Santa Anna on April 21, 1836, in the Battle
of San Jacinto.
From May to October 1836, he served as commander-in-chief
of the Army of the Republic of Texas, with
the rank of brigadier general.
He 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 killed at Goliad.
== Republic of Texas ==
In the first regularly elected administration,
President Houston 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 (1837–1838).
Rusk was a Mason.
He joined Milam Lodge No. 40 (Later Milam
Lodge #2) in Nacogdoches in 1837 and was a
founding member of the Grand Lodge of Texas,
organized in Houston on December 20, 1837.
As chairman of the House Military Committee
in 1837, he 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.
In October, when Mexican agents were discovered
among the Kickapoo Indians, Rusk defeated
those Indians and their Indian allies.
He captured marauding Caddo Indians in November
1838 and risked an international incident
when he invaded United States territory to
return them to the Indian agent in Shreveport,
Louisiana.
On December 12, 1838, the Texas Congress elected
Rusk Chief Justice of the Republic's Supreme
Court.
He served until June 30, 1840, when he resigned
to resume his law practice.
Later he headed the bar of the Republic of
Texas.
He and J. Pinckney Henderson, later the first
governor of the state of Texas, formed a law
partnership in 1841.
Early in 1843, Rusk was called upon once again
to serve as a military commander.
Concern over the lack of protection on the
frontier caused Congress, in a joint ballot
on January 16, 1843, to elect Rusk major general
of the militia of the Republic of Texas.
But he resigned in June when Houston obstructed
his plans for aggressive warfare against Mexico.
Rusk then turned his energies to establishing
Nacogdoches University (operated 1845–1895).
He served as vice president of the university
when the charter was granted in 1845 and president
in 1846.
== State of Texas ==
Rusk supported Sam Houston and the growing
movement to annex Texas to the United States.
He was president of the Republic's Convention
of 1845, which accepted the annexation terms.
The first Texas state legislature elected
him and Houston to the United States Senate
in February 1846.
Rusk received the larger number of votes and
the longer term of office.
Rusk and Houston forgot past differences as
they worked to settle the southwest boundary
question in favor of Texas' claim to the Rio
Grande.
Rusk supported the position of US President
James K. Polk on the necessity of the Mexican
War and the acquisition of California.
In the debate over the Compromise of 1850,
Rusk refused to endorse secession, proposed
by some in the caucus of Southern congressmen.
He vigorously defended Texas' claims to the
land used to create the New Mexico Territory
in 1850, arguing for financial compensation
for Texas.
As an early advocate of a transcontinental
railroad through Texas, Senator Rusk made
speeches in the Senate and throughout Texas
in support of a southern route.
The Gadsden Purchase received his support.
Rusk was in favor of the Kansas–Nebraska
Act.
President James Buchanan offered him the position
of United States Postmaster General in 1857,
but he turned it down.
(Buchanan gave the post to Aaron V. Brown)
While Rusk attended to duties in Washington,
D.C., his wife died of tuberculosis on April
23, 1856.
Five of their seven children were still living
at the time.
During a special session in March 1857, he
was elected president pro tempore of the United
States Senate.
Missing his wife and ill from a tumor at the
base of his neck, Rusk committed suicide by
a self-inflicted gunshot wound on July 29,
1857.
He was 53 years old.
== Legacy ==
The State of Texas placed a monument at the
graves of Rusk and his wife, Mary, in Oak
Grove Cemetery in Nacogdoches, Texas.
Rusk County and the town of Rusk were named
in his honor.
Part of his homestead became the campus of
Stephen F. Austin State University.
== See also ==
Timeline of the Texas Revolution
List of United States Congress members who
died in office (1790–1899)
== Notes
