Wilson was at a large disadvantage because he did not announce his candidacy until well after Lamar did, and only because two other previous candidates Peter W. Grayson and James Collinsworth had died earlier in the campaign process.

On December 1, 1837, eleven of the fourteen members of the Texas Senate addressed Vice President Mirabeau Lamar in a letter in which they encouraged him to accept a nomination.

On May 19, 1838, a large gathering took place in the Hall of the House of Representatives in Houston, where resolutions were adopted favoring Lamar for the presidency.

[2] In the May 26, 1838 issue of the Telegraph and Texas Register, at the request of William Pettus, Edward Burleson, Michel Menard, and Thomas F. McKinney, correspondence regarding Peter W. Grayon's nomination to the presidency was published.

Three days later, Grayson responded that he would accept a candidacy, but acknowledged that he would be absent from Texas during campaigning, as he would depart for Washington D.C. in his role as minister plenipotentiary to the United States.

First, in June 1838, Lamar's opponents claimed that he was constitutionally ineligible for the office of the presidency because he had not been a citizen of Texas for at least three years.

[7] In August, in the Telegraph and Texas Register a defensive editorial was published that refuted an accusation by the Galveston Civilian that Lamar had defrauded the government of one acre of land.