Nation of Texas had impeachment battle

The most recent impeachment approved by the House of Representatives charged a president who has since left office with inciting an insurrection. A Senate trial looms. Though two or three examples of bringing delayed proceedings against other federal officials have been identified during the current controversy, no postmortem, as it were, consideration of impeachment of a president of the United States has ever occurred before. Is it valid to do so?

Whether valid or not, a delayed presidential impeachment did occur in the Republic of Texas, a separate nation from its declaration of independence in 1836 until its annexation as a state in 1845. The new nation’s constitution was drafted rather hurriedly as independence was being proclaimed while the Mexican army approached. Haste meant adopting almost verbatim much of the U.S. Constitution, including the provision specifying the penalties for impeachment. The argument today is that because disqualification from holding future office can be imposed upon conviction, a former president remains subject to impeachment. A similar question and proposed answer arose in Texas about impeaching a just-departed president.

In the second Texas national elections, held in 1838, Mirabeau Buonaparte Lamar was elected president for a threeyear term. Lamar was only 40 years old when elected. He had been well-educated as the son of a wealthy Georgia planter and had arrived in Texas only in 1835. He could be, with fateful consequences for his young country, an impractical visionary who seemingly felt unconstrained by the law.

Lamar’s vision focused on the fact that the Texas Congress made the country’s western boundary the Rio Grande from its mouth to its source, even into present-day New Mexico and beyond. Without any authorization from the Texas Congress, Lamar sent an expedition to Santa Fe during his last year in office in an effort to assert control and begin trade. The part military, part commercial enterprise with 321 soldiers and civilians started from the Austin area in Central Texas in June 1841. They got lost, suffered terribly from lack of water, and in October, a month after a new president was elected, were met by Mexican soldiers who took them all prisoner.

The new president was the Hero of San Jacinto, Sam Houston, elected to his second nonconsecutive term on Sept. 6, 1841. The newly elected members of the Texas Congress took office before Houston

did. The House began its session in Austin on Nov. 1 in a log cabin with separate large rooms for each chamber. The Capitol itself was surrounded by a stockade to protect it from enemies of various kinds. Houston would not be inaugurated until Dec. 13. On Nov. 23, a representative introduced a resolution in the House that condemned Lamar’s authorizing and funding the Santa Fe Expedition. The speaker of the House named a special committee to investigate.

As with the current impeachment, the most significant member of the House urging it was the speaker. Kenneth L. Anderson, the 36-year-old speaker and Sam Houston ally, tellingly placed three other proponents of impeachment on the four-person special committee to consider the charges against Lamar. In contrast to Lamar’s affluent background, Anderson had grown up in poverty in North Carolina. He was largely self-educated, became a lawyer and came to Texas in 1837.

Two weeks after the resolution was introduced and just a week before the inauguration of a new president, the special committee reported that Lamar, “in fitting up and sending out the Santa Fe Expedition, acted without the authority of law or the sanction of reason.” He had summoned volunteers to serve in the expedition, forming in effect his own small army without congressional approval, and had overridden refusals by other officials to fund the expedition.

The committee thought it “the duty of the House” to impeach Lamar. The fact that Lamar’s term had almost expired should not matter. “The trial of the articles of impeachment, if once preferred, can be conducted as well after the expiration of their term of office as before.”

No vote was then taken. Sam Houston was inaugurated as president on Dec. 13. Four days later, the House voted on whether to authorize a committee to draft formal articles of impeachment. Speaker Anderson was among the 13 who voted in favor, while 25 opposed. Thus, impeachment ended with a whimper.

This one example of a delayed presidential impeachment in no way resolves the validity of the practice. Of note, none of the few officials who have been subjected to such action after leaving office have seen the entire progression of impeachment in the House, a trial in the Senate and a guilty verdict.

Maybe this time. Then again, maybe not.