President Lamar and cabinet arrive in new capital of Austin

On this day in 1839, Mirabeau B. Lamar, second president of the Republic of Texas, and his cabinet arrived in the new capital city of Austin. Lamar had appointed Edwin Waller to lay out the new capital at the site of the community of Waterloo, on what was then the Indian frontier, as the first step in a grand scheme to extend the republic all the way to the Pacific Ocean. When Sam Houston was elected president for the second time, in 1841, he feared a Mexican attack on Austin. Houston declared Washington-on-the-Brazos the capital of the republic and ordered the government archives removed from Austin, but his order touched off the Archive War, and Austin was ultimately reaffirmed as capital in 1844.