Sam Houston's 1857 Campaign in Marshall

The man Houston faced in Marshall was a reluctant campaigner. The Handbook of Texas says Hardin Runnels won the Democratic nomination on the eighth ballot, made few appearances and left most of the stumping to his running mate, Francis Lubbock, while Houston ran as an independent Democrat in a race framed as Houston and Anti-Houston. Houston had little party machinery and little newspaper support. He lost in 1857, which makes Runnels the only man ever to beat him at the polls. In the 1859 rematch Houston won, 36,227 to 27,500.

What the plaque says

Sam Houston's 1857 Campaign in Marshall On May 23, 1857, during his first Texas gubernatorial race, Sam Houston came to Marshall, the hometown of two of his most outspoken critics, Robert Loughery and Louis T. Wigfall, for a much anticipated debate against his opponent Hardin Runnels. Here under an oak tree, in an overwhelmingly secessionist area, the Unionist Houston spoke so eloquently that Runnels, who was scheduled to follow, declined to speak. Though he lost the election, Houston's stirring oratory brought him forty-eight percent of the Harrison County vote. (1964)

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• Harrison County Historical Museum — 0.2 mi
  Galleries in Marshall's 1901 courthouse that run from the Caddo to the present, with Wiley College, Lady Bird Johnson's inaugural gown and a military gallery across the square in Memorial City Hall.
• Texas and Pacific Railway Depot and Museum — 0.3 mi
  The only surviving building of the Texas and Pacific shops at Marshall, a 1912 Mission Revival depot saved from demolition in the 1990s, still an Amtrak stop, with a railway museum and a Mikado locomotive.
• Starr Family Home State Historic Site — 0.4 mi
  Maplecroft, the 1871 Greek Revival house Frank Starr built in Marshall, with Ruth Starr Blake's glass and china, an 1880s kitchen restored in 2019 and a retirement home built for a formerly enslaved person.
• Caddo Lake National Wildlife Refuge — 14 mi
  Wetlands and woods on part of a former ammunition plant, now a refuge for wood ducks, prothonotary warblers and alligator snapping turtles, with four easy trails and a free visitor center on a Ramsar lake.

More markers nearby

• Site of Marshall Masonic Female Institute — steps away
• Girlhood Home of Southern Beauty Lucy Holcombe Pickens — steps away
• Site of Temple Moses Montefiore — steps away
• James L. Farmer, Jr. — steps away