Sam Houston on Louis Trezevant Wigfall
From Harper’s Magazine, August 1868:
The anecdotes of Ex-President Houston in the March Number of the Drawer remind a correspondent of a scene that occurred in the city of Houston in the summer of 1861. “I was wending my way,” says he, “from the Old Capitol down Main Street, when I learned that’ Old Sam’ had just come up from his plantation at the month of Cedar Bayou, and stopped at the Fannin House. Never having seen him I went there. He was seated on the veranda, surrounded by a crowd, who were listening eagerly to all he said. As I came up some one asked, ‘Well, Governor, what do you think of [Louis T.] Wigfall (right)?’ (then a Senator in the Confederate Congress, and Brigadier-General commanding the First Texas Brigade in Virginia, and very popular with Texans, notwithstanding the enmity between him and Houston.) ‘Wigfall,’ said Old Sam, ‘why, Wigfall has always been a good deal of a puppy, and if he continues on in his present course he will eventually become a good deal of a dog!'”
And this, from the April 1870 issue:
On the election of Mr. Wigfall to represent Texas in the United States Senate, Governor Houston was asked, in allusion to the excessively intemperate habits of the Senator-elect, whether he thought Wigfall would be able to make his way to Washington.
“I think he rather will,” replied Governor Houston, “if he avoids Cincinnati.”
“What do you mean, Governor, by avoiding Cincinnati?”
“Why, Sir, the strychnine in the whiskey there will kill any dog!”
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Dead Confederates, A Civil War Era Blog 
That reminds me of the line from the movie The Best Man (based on the Gore Vidal book) about a political convention where a savage anything goes politician played by Cliff Robertson is battling a principled Henry Fonda and someone says about the Robertson character “he has all the qualities of a dog except loyalty.”