One of the most picturesque figures of this period was General Sam Houston, who was a prominent figure at Washington during the Taylor administration. Because of trouble with his wife he resigned the governorship of Tennessee, went into the Cherokee country, adopted the Indian costume and became an Indian trader and so dissipated that his Indian name was "Big-drunk." He wore a waistcoat made from the skin of a panther dressed with the hair on, and was conspicuous in the Senate for whittling soft pine sticks, which were provided him by the seargeant-at-arms. He was the best customer supplied from his own whiskey barrel, until one day after a prolonged debauch he heard that the Mexicans had taken up arms against their revolted province. He cast off his Indian attire, dressed like a white man, and never touched a drop of any intoxicating beverage afterwards. CHAPTER VII _The Slave Trade_ In no branch of history is the culpability of the liquor traffic more thoroughly shown than in its relation to the slave trade. The making of rum aided and almost supported the slave trade in this country. The poor negroes were bought on the coast of Africa by New England sea captains and paid for with barrels of New England rum. These slaves were then carried on slave ships to the West Indies and sold at a large profit to planters and slave dealers for a cargo of molasses. This was brought to New England, distilled into rum, and sent off to Africa; thus the circle of molasses, slaves, and rum was completed. In 1708 the West Indies afforded the great demand for negroes; they also furnished the raw material supplying the manufacture of the main merchandise which the thirsty Gold Coast drank up in barter for its poor, banished children. Governor Hopkins stated that for more than thirty years prior to 1764 Rhode Island sent to the Coast annually eighteen vessels carrying 1,800 hogsheads of rum. It displaced French brandies in the trade of the Coast after 1723. The commerce in rum and slaves afforded about £40,000 per annum for remittance from Rhode Island to Great Britain. Molasses and poor sugar, distilled in Boston and more especially in Newport into rum, made the staple export to Africa. Some obtained gallon for gallon of molasses, but the average was 96 to 100. Newport had twenty-two still houses. Boston had the best example, owned by a Mr. Childs. The cost of distilling was five and a half pence per gallon. Cisterns and vats cost fourteen to sixteen shillings per one hundred gallons, in 1735, not including lumber. The quantity of rum distilled was enormous, and in 1750 it was estimated that Massachusetts alone consumed more than 15,000 hogsheads of molasses for this purpose. The average price of molasses in the West Indies was thirteen or fourteen pence per gallon. The consumption of rum in the fisheries and lumbering and ship-building districts was large.