CONFEDERATE BIOGRAPHY:   J. PINCKNEY HENDERSON - San Augustine, TX

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Submitted by Doris Peirce - ginlu@charter.net 28 December 2001 
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TEXANS WHO WORE THE GRAY by Sid S. Johnson 

J. PINCKNEY HENDERSON

J. Pinckney Henderson, of San Augustine, Tex., died nearly three 
years before the outbreak of the war between the states, but his 
public utterances and writings leave no doubt as to what his 
course would have been had he been alive in 1861/65, and so we 
deem it fitting to place in this book a sketch of this truly 
great man and his extraordinary career.  He was born in Lincoln 
county, North Carolina, March 31, 1809, and after graduating from 
the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill he studied law 
and was admitted to the bar before he was twenty one years of age.  
At twenty two he was aide de camp to Major General Dorrett of the 
Carolina militia and was afterward elected colonel of a regiment.  
He came to Texas in the spring of 1836 and the same year was 
appointed by President Sam Houston to be Attorney General of the 
young republic and a few months later was made Secretary of State.  
In 1837 he was sent as Minister Plenipotentiary and Envoy 
Extraordinary from the Republic of Texas to the Courts of France 
and England.  Through his exertions both of these great governments 
entered into cordial treaty relations with the new nation.  His 
eminent talents and noble bearing and the fidelity and zeal with 
which he urged the claims of his country to a place among the 
nations engaged for himself a warm personal consideration.  His 
appeals for the recognition of that independence which his country 
had so nobly achieved fell in stirring strains upon the proud ears 
of the great statesmen and diplomatists who at that time adorned 
the courts of St. Cloud and St. James.  It is said that in Paris 
he was looked upon as a new apparition of American glory  as 
another Franklin, fresh from the cradle of liberty.  In 1844 Gen. 
Henderson was sent to Washington as Minister Plenitorentiary to 
act in concert with Mr. Van Zandt, the Texan Charge d' Affairs, 
in negotiating a treaty for the annexation of Texas to the United 
States, which was presently accomplished.  In 1845 he was a member 
of the convention which framed the first constitution for the new 
state in the union, and in November was elected the first Governor 
of Texas.  In the war between Mexico and the United States in 1846 
he commanded the Texan troops and greatly distinguished himself in 
the battle of Monterey and was later appointed by Gen. Zachary 
Taylor to be one of the three commissioners (along with  Gen. 
Worth and Col. Jefferson Davis) to negotiate with Gen. Ampudia for 
the surrender of the city, and afterward congress voted him a sword a
nd commissioned him a Major General in the United States Army.  Upon 
the close of the war he resigned his commission and resumed his 
duties as Governor of Texas.  In 1857 he was elected United States 
Senator and was filling this office when he died in Washington, D. C., 
in June 1858.  While in Paris he met Miss Frances Cox, daughter  
of Mr. John Cox of Philadelphia, who was residing in France for the 
purpose of educating his daughters, and they were married in London 
in 1839.  Two of thier children survive them.  Gen. Henderson was 
one of the finest lawyers that every adorned the bar of the Lone Star 
State and in several respects was the greatest of the many great men 
of the Republic of Texas.