Like I say, intrigue....and there is great controversy regarding his generalship, though seldom spoken in other than hushed tones amongst native Texans, and nearly never brought up in polite conversation in east Texas.
My Aunt Thelma was from Hemphill, lived in Beaumont and made quite a point of taking me as a child to the San Jacinto battlefield.
Houston to her was a magnificent General, a perfect gentleman and the "Father of Texas".
But I had a mean old woman Texas history teacher, a Daughter of the Republic, who, on the second day of class (Junior year, Ray High in Corpus) tossed the textbook onto a pile of others, and said "this is ****! I'll tell you how it happened."
She did too, from her point of view, and according to her years of study. She was a passionate Texan, an iconoclast of the first water, and a fine storyteller.
There are answers to most questions asked regarding "how", my vote goes with the willingness of the Texians, in spite of Houston. Faced with mutiny, he acquiesced to his troops, and followed them into battle, rather than led. (They turned south at the whichaway tree, Houston wanted to go north.)
The Generalship of Sam Houston