Celebrating 150 Years of Texas Statehood

Essay by James L. Haley

With the successful conclusion of the Texas Revolution at the Battle of San Jacinto in April of 1836, most Texans assumed that annexation to the United States would occur as a matter of course. While they cherished their free-wheeling independence, ties of culture and commerce and family to their mother country were strong, and in a referendum held as part of Texas’ first national election, they voted overwhelmingly in favor of joining their destiny to that of the United States.

There were also compelling political considerations. The victory gained by capturing the person of Mexican President General Antonio Lopez de Santa Anna had left most of Mexico’s military might intact, and re-invasion was a daily threat. The war, fought on Texas soil, had devastated the country, leaving the people with a bump-and-rumble economy in which there was more barter than purchase. The burden of financing a continuing war to maintain what they had won might well prove insuperable. Texas’ first popularly elected President, Sam Houston, the victor of San Jacinto, had in his Tennessee youth been a protégé of Andrew Jackson, who in 1836 was closing down his eight-year tenure in the White House. In a surprisingly candid letter, Houston admitted to Jackson that the heart of Texas’ national posture was a bluff: "It is policy to hold out the idea … that we are able to sustain ourselves against any power … yet I am free to say to you that we cannot do it … I look to you as the friend and patron of my youth and the benefactor of mankind to interpose on our behalf and save us."

Gaunt and irascible, given to swearing "by the Eternal," Old Hickory had his own problems. An unabashed admirer of Houston, Jackson believed in the territorial expansion of the United States and ardently desired to see the vast province of Texas added to the Union. To abolitionists and most Northerners, however, the annexation of Texas was anathema. It would extend the territory (and the Congressional leverage) of the slave-holding states, who would gain a powerful sister in Texas and her cotton-based economy. Not coincidentally, admitting Texas would also mean war with Mexico, which if it were won, might extend the power of the South even further. Ultimately, Jackson had to back away from the Texas question because he had committed his support to his Vice President, Martin Van Buren, to succeed him in the White House. Van Buren was a weak candidate, and support of the anti-Texas contingent was crucial to his election. However much he coveted the spacious territory, the best Jackson could do was to extend diplomatic recognition to the Republic of Texas, which he did as the last act of his administration.

New countries generally solicit recognition by major powers, but Texans, most of whom had immigrated from the United States and expected to shortly become Americans again, were disgusted with Jackson’s timidity. They bided their time until Martin Van Buren was safely elected; then the Texan Minister in Washington, Memucan Hunt, approached the Van Buren administration in August of 1837 about annexation. Citing the certainty of war with Mexico and playing up a dubious legal ambiguity (that the U. S. Constitution made no provision for the acquisition of an independent country) Van Buren’s men showed Hunt the door. Friends of Texas in Washington did manage to get an annexation resolution introduced into Congress, but it was talked to death in a filibuster by former President John Quincy Adams of Massachusetts. Galled, Houston withdrew Texas’ offer of annexation in May of 1838.

Houston’s own presidential term expired that winter, and he was succeeded by his querulous Vice President, Mirabeau Buonaparte Lamar. A former newspaper editor, twice defeated for political office in Georgia before coming to Texas, Lamar handily won the election with the support of an anti-Houston coalition, bolstered by the suicides of the two other leading candidates. An imperial dreamer who envisioned Texas as sharing a continental condominium with the United States, he was scornful of the idea of annexation and did not raise the issue during the three years of his administration. Ironically, his policies of truculence toward Mexico (first by renting the Texas Navy to Mexican rebels in Yucatan, and second by mounting a "trade expedition" to Santa Fé in order to assert Texas’ claims to New Mexico) and of fiscal over-extension, made annexation an attractive alternative again by the time Sam Houston resumed the Presidency in December of 1841.

Lamar had left Houston a fascinating hand to play. With Texas nearly bankrupt and with Mexico hopping mad and threatening re-invasion, the sanctuary of annexation to the United States was more imperative than ever. Emotions in the United States were highly charged but ambivalent, with the irresistible force of Manifest Destiny crashing headlong into the immovable object of slavery. However, Lamar had cultivated the recognition of several European nations, which gave Houston powerful leverage. France had long desired an imperial presence in the region, and Mexico had fought off her advances with cannon at Tampico only two years before. Great Britain also desired Texas as a sphere of influence that would link the British West Indies with British Oregon and thwart continued American expansion. If they could keep Texas independent, both would have a source of fine, long-grain cotton that circumvented the United States’ aggressive tariffs, and also a prosperous market for their manufactured goods.

Sam Houston, delighting in his alter ego as the "Talleyrand of the Brazos," could not have been dealt more challenging cards. No brief essay could hope to adequately reflect the labyrinth of diplomatic maneuvering and the strategies that went on, but in short, he played them this way: Lamar’s "trading expedition" to Santa Fé had ended in disaster. The men who survived thirst, famine and hostile Indians straggled into Santa Fé, and those who were not summarily executed by the Mexican authorities were marched off to imprisonment at Perote Castle. Houston contacted the British chargé, Charles Elliot. First idly mentioning in a bye-the-bye how the independence of Texas helped the British keep a grip on Oregon, he sought Elliot’s intercession in winning the release of the Santa Fé prisoners. The British ambassador in Mexico enlisted American aid in the negotiations, and news of the Texas rapprochement with the English sounded in Washington like a firebell. Houston also promoted the "Franco-Texienne" bill, a scheme to plant a huge colony of French émigrés deep in Texas’ interior. In the meantime, Mexico reasserted her claims by invading Texas twice during 1842, but quickly retreated.

Houston’s sudden assumption of the role of major international wheeler-dealer shook the United States to the core. Politicians and newspapers who formerly lauded Houston for his loyalty to Old Glory and Old Hickory now excoriated him for his treachery. At the Hermitage, Jackson himself was taken in by the charade, and wrote alarmed letters to Houston probing for some reassurance. He got it--privately--and gloated admiringly that he knew British gold could not buy Sam Houston. Only later did Houston clarify his game for the people in general, and when he did, it proved to be a very old strategy:

Supposing a charming lady has two suitors. One of them she is inclined to believe would make the better husband, but is a little slow to make interesting propositions. Do you think if she was a skillful practitioner in Cupid’s court she would pretend that she loved the other "feller" the best and be sure that her favorite would know it?

If ladies are justified in making use of coquetry in securing their annexation to agreeable husbands, you must excuse me for making use of the same means to annex Texas to Uncle Sam.

Back in Washington, John Tyler, a pro-annexation slave owner from Virginia, became President in April of 1841. By the time Houston played out his British "coquetry," the United States was more than ready to deal. Compromising none of its independent posture, Texas negotiated a treaty that provided for the United States to take possession of her debts and her public domain, and admit her as a territory, with individual states to be excised and admitted as they qualified for admission. Houston was less than enthusiastic, but believing it to be the best deal obtainable, endorsed it. "My venerated friend," he wrote the aging Jackson, "you will perceive that Texas is presented . . . as a bride adorned for her espousal. . . . Were she now to be spurned, it would forever terminate expectation on her part, and . . . she would seek some other friend." He did not have to name what "friend" that would be.

It was now June of 1844 and the American Congress, then as later unwilling to take a controversial step in an election year, rejected the treaty. The Texas Congress also rejected it, for the brilliance of Houston’s "coquetry" was that now, unlike 1837 and 1842, Texas could, indeed, stand as a nation, thanks to the interest of France and Great Britain.

In the United States, the 1844 election revolved so furiously around annexation that it became a virtual referendum on the subject. The Democrats nominated James Knox Polk of Tennessee, on a platform of annexing both Texas and Oregon. The Whigs stood Senator Henry Clay of Kentucky, whose campaign ribbons touted, "No Annexation of Texas, No Extension of Slavery." Polk routed him. Now a lame duck, Tyler took Polk’s election as a mandate from the people, and with the English threat still looming, made a novel suggestion. Texas could be annexed by Joint Resolution of the Congress. It was faster than a treaty, and could be passed by a simple majority of both houses rather than the two-thirds that a treaty required. Under this new deal, Texas would keep both her debt and her public domain, and enter directly as a state, although four other states might be carved out if Texas consented. These terms were a vast improvement over the rejected treaty.

The Joint Resolution passed the House of Representatives comfortably, but debate teetered in the Senate. Both Northern and Southern cohesion broke down, until by a scramble of individual votes cast for individual reasons, Texas was offered statehood--by a Senate vote of 27 to 25. It was February 28, 1845, and the offer was good until the end of the year. Andrew Jackson Donelson, the American chargé d’affaires to the Republic of Texas, hustled westward with the documents and instructions to press the issue vigorously with Texas.

England and France did not surrender the field, however. Houston’s second term had expired, and he was succeeded by his Secretary of State, Dr. Anson Jones. European hopes rose, for Jones was elected without uttering a word on annexation, and with only lukewarm support from Houston. They had every reason to think that Jones was amenable to continued independence.

After the United States offered its sweetened annexation deal, France and England prevailed on Jones to postpone consideration of it for ninety days, giving them time to pressure Mexico into recognizing Texas’ independence. Mexico, while threatening to renew hostilities if no agreement could be reached, allowed France and England to convene an arbitration of "umpires" at Washington-on-the-Brazos. Jones, was himself flexible on the question, but he could not mistake that the popular sentiment in Texas was overwhelming in its clamor for annexation, and he convened the Texas Congress on June 16, 1845.

The umpires of arbitration gathered with a sense of urgency, and convinced Mexico to agree to a treaty recognizing an independent Texas, providing annexation to the United States be forever rejected. When the Texas Congress assembled, President Jones laid both documents before them: the proposed treaty with Mexico, and the Joint Resolution offering American statehood. Suspicious that Jones secretly favored independence, the Congress dealt with the issue summarily: the Mexican treaty was rejected by the Senate, unanimously. The American Joint Resolution was accepted by both houses, unanimously.

Foreseeing this result, Jones had already called a convention of the people to meet on July 4, and as stipulated in the American offer, those delegates passed an ordinance accepting statehood and drafted a state constitution. In an autumn referendum the men of Texas approved annexation by a vote of 4,254 to 257. With the American offer good only until the end of the year, the documents were rushed to Washington. President Polk, worried that Senate opposition might delay action beyond the deadline, sat up late Christmas night writing a letter to Vice President Dallas, recalling him from his holiday in Philadelphia, to preside over the Senate. The documents were accepted on December 29, 1845--and Texas was in.

President Jones called the first election of state officials, and J. Pinckney Henderson, erstwhile minister to France and England, was elected Texas’ first governor. The transfer of authority took place on February 19, 1846, at the log capitol in Austin. President Jones concluded his speech, "The final act of this great drama is now performed. The Republic of Texas is no more." As the Lone Star tricolor descended the flagpole, Sam Houston stepped forward and took it in his arms.

President Jones was only partially correct, however. The Republic of Texas had indeed expired, but the great drama had not by any means played itself out. Two months later Mexico declared war on the United States in a contest that proved nearly suicidal. Thus the annexation of Texas not only added the Lone Star to the American galaxy, but the war with Mexico, which resulted from it, established the United States as a continental power stretching from the Atlantic to the Pacific. The deep harbors of the West Coast greatly improved the American trade position with the Orient; the acquisition of the Southwest and California added one and a quarter million square miles of territory and--as was soon discovered--mineral wealth almost beyond comprehension. The British loss of influence in Texas helped loosen their grip on Oregon as well, half of which was signed over to the Americans even as the latter were mobilizing to fight Mexico. Nor were all the effects material; the sudden acquisition of so much empty land reinforced the American "frontier" psyche in ways that are felt down to the present hour.

Other results of Texas annexation rippled far into the future of both the state and the nation. Under the terms of the Treaty of Guadalupe-Hidalgo, which ended the Mexican War, the United States obligated itself to prevent Native Americans now under her jurisdiction from raiding into Mexico, thus setting up a series of draining, bloody wars with Apache Indians that stretched over thirty years. Texas’ retention of her public domain allowed her to stake thousands of small homesteaders with pre-emption grants, construct a web of internal improvements (largely railroads), build the largest of all state capitols, fund public schools, and endow a state university system.

The relationship of Texas with the federal government was not always smooth. In 1848 a dispute over Texas’ claims to New Mexico east of the Rio Grande almost caused a confrontation, but instead resulted in the Compromise of 1850, by which Texas received a cash settlement for the payment of her national debt, in exchange for the present boundaries. A century later, the federal government asserted its claim to royalties on oil lying under Texas’ coastal tidelands, an area Texas claimed by virtue of Spanish law and her terms of admission, and which the United States had itself recognized until large sums of money were at stake. Texas lost the battle in the Supreme Court but won the war in Congress, when she gained title to her former national sea margin.

The great drama, as Anson Jones called it, is still playing itself out. Texas, at the time of its sesquicentennial of statehood, maintains a prominent place in both the economy and the imagination of the American people.