Felix Huston Felix Huston ( 1800 – 1857 ) was a lawyer , soldier , military opportunist and the first commanding general of the Army of the Republic of Texas . Early life and career . Huston was born in Kentucky . He was a slave trader , planter and Whig politician and attorney in Natchez , Mississippi . Receiving news of the Texas Revolution , he raised and equipped troops ( often at his own expense ) and money throughout Mississippi and Kentucky . Move to Texas . He left Natchez on May 5 , 1836 , with 500 to 700 volunteers to join the Texian army , but arrived well after the Battle of San Jacinto in which Mexican President General Santa Anna ceded defeat and , in effect , granted Texas her independence . Militia commander . On June 25 , Texas President David G . Burnet appointed Major General Mirabeau B . Lamar as secretary of war , to succeed the resigning Thomas J . Rusk . Texas received word that Mexico had rejected the Treaty of Velasco and had sent General José de Urrea to attack Goliad , Rusk immediately rescinded his resignation . Huston and Thomas Jefferson Green teamed up to get the army to oppose Lamar , and Rusk resumed command . However , the Mexican attack failed to materialize , and Rusk retired . The Texan army picked Huston to replace him . Discontent continued and army officers openly defied the government and threatened to impose a military dictatorship . Army commander . On December 20 , 1836 , Sam Houston commissioned Huston as a brigadier general in the 2 , 000 - man army and temporary commander - in - chief . His men referred to him as " Old Long Shanks " or " Old Leather Breeches " , and Huston attracted adventurers and men of little discipline to his " Camp Independence " in Jackson County . He feared San Antonio could not be defended in the event of another Mexican invasion , and ordered the town and the nearby Alamo to be burned . However , Juan Seguín intervened , and the town and historic mission were spared from destruction . Later in the year , Sam Houston appointed Albert Sidney Johnston as the senior brigadier general and permanent commander of the Texan army . Huston felt slighted , and challenged Johnston to a duel on February 5 , 1837 , wounding him in the right hip . In November 1839 , Huston was elected as major general of the militia , defeating James C . Neill and other candidates . He developed an aggressive scheme to capture Matamoros , Tamaulipas , in 1840 , believing that Texas should expand its borders southward beyond the Rio Grande . However , his desires were thwarted by moderates . Indian wars . In August , war chief Little Buffalo Hump and 500 Comanche Indians attacked Victoria , Texas , and other nearby towns , stealing horses and livestock and killing dozens of white settlers . Huston led 200 Texans and Chief Placido and his Tonkawa scouts against the raiders at Plum Creek near Lockhart on the evening of August 11 , killing 80 Comanches while only losing one man . Decommission . In May 1837 , President Sam Houston furlough ed much of the Texas army , leaving Huston a general without troops to command . Shortly after the Battle of Plum Creek , Huston left Texas and co - founded a law firm in New Orleans . In 1844 , he supported a movement to annex the republic to the United States . However , by the late 1850s , Huston had become an ardent secessionist . In 1851 , he spoke at a rally in New Orleans supporting Cuban independence from Spain . Death . In 1857 , he died in Natchez , Mississippi .