President Sam Houston nominated Fisher as Secretary of the Texas Navy and the appointment was confirmed by the Senate on October 28, 1836.
This event was a major incident in the early days of the Republic of Texas and added to the severe split between the various factions in the government.
Sam Houston Dixon wrote in The Men Who Made Texas Free: When Mr. Fisher died, Richard Ellis, who was president of the convention which declared Texas independent of Mexico, said from the floor of the Senate: 'In the death of Rhodes Fisher the Republic has lost one of its wisest defenders.
Well do some of us remember his cool and deliberate consideration of our acts at Old Washington, March, 1836; how his voice of caution rang out as men of zeal vied with one another in their precipitous rush to complete their labors of establishing a government and returning to their homes.
Albert G. Newton responded to legal charges in Fisher's death, but a grand jury refused to indict him.