Into the Union: How Texas Joined The United States

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It was a long road to get to that point. Texas first had to fight a war for independence, which they managed to gain against all odds after the Battle of San Jacinto. Here to tell the rest of the story is Monty Monroe, the Texas state historian.

Take it away, Monty. The first national Texas election was a contest of personalities rather than politics. And Sam Houston was elected president over Stephen F. Austin and Henry Smith by an 80% vote.

That was quite a bit. Houston would dominate Texas in this era in the same way that Lyndon Baines Johnson did in the 20th century. He was an imposing figure. He was a close friend of Andrew Jackson. He had been a congressman, governor of Tennessee.

He ran on a platform of annexation. Like George Washington after the American Revolution, Houston would draw his cabinet from members of both revolutionary factions. He appointed Stephen F. Austin as the first Secretary of State, but Austin, unfortunately, the so-called father of Texas, died in December of 1836, cutting short his valuable career.

There was actually a 30-day period of mourning for him. Henry Smith became the Secretary of the Treasury. Thomas J. Rusk, another important Texas revolutionary name, would become Secretary of War. And Maribel B. Lamar, who would become the second president of Texas, was elected as vice president. He was the chief political opponent of Sam Houston during all of this. There were many issues that were problematic during the first Houston administration. The frontier was one of those. There was always fear of future Mexican invasion.

Indeed, that happened. Houston viewed a standing army as a problem. He was afraid that they would be agitating to invade Mexico. He didn't want that to happen because the Republic of Texas was a fragile state at that time, so he offered land to those who would agree to a discharge or he was going to disband the volunteers and ship them back to New Orleans.

Ultimately, there would be Texas ranger companies that would be organized to deal with the various Indian threats, particularly the Comanche and the Kiowas. Houston's inclinations to Indian relations tended to run contrary to the will of the general population in Texas. He signed a treaty with them guaranteeing them land in exchange for their neutrality with Mexico, but the Texas Senate refused to ratify that treaty. The Republic of Texas always had monetary problems and this would be a problem even for the state of Texas. During Houston's first term, the public debt suppressed two million dollars, which was a lot of money back in those days.

I don't know what the equivalent would be now, but it would be in the billions. Tariffs, custom duties at the ports and land fees, business taxes, all of these were imposed, but they were generally low and the problem was most people didn't have hard currency or specie, so they paid in kind. Many times I've said they paid with chickens or whatnot, but they paid with their crops and so Houston literally had to depend on his own personal credit to fund army supplies and some government operations. Paper money was used, but it ultimately, the Constitution, the Texas Constitution barred him from running for a second term, so he became the Republic's principal ambassador to the United States.

Maribel B. Lamar became the second president. He was opposed to annexation unlike his predecessor and he tried to make peace with Mexico, but he wasn't successful. Lamar drove the Indians from Texas or resettled them to parts of Texas and he was able to open up rich lands, particularly in East Texas for sale and settlement and it gave pioneers a bit of security, but it was costly. It took another two and a half million dollar toll on the treasury and so he issued what they call redbacks and they ultimately plummeted to 12 cents on the dollar and so when the next president, Sam Houston, who returned for a second term comes into office, he is faced or confronted by crippling debt and he drastically cut offices.

He has a very frugal second term, spending little money. He had a very generous land policy. He gave 4,000, over 4,600 acres of land to families and then single individuals could gain up to 1,400 acres of land and all of this led to a flood of immigration into Texas. The republic gave away, during its time, 41 million acres between 1836 and 1845. By 1846, the western edge of the Texas of the Texas frontier reached Dallas and Waco and Corpus Christi, almost along what is today interstate 35.

The population climbed from 40,000 in 1836 to 142,000 in 1847. So by that time, because most of the immigrants came from the American south, by 1845, Texas resembled the southern states of the United States for all purposes. Most settlers coming from the south grew cotton, corn, sugar cane and many brought slaves. As the last act of his presidency in 1837, Andrew Jackson grants diplomatic recognition of the independence of Texans. Texans immediately sought annexation but they were rebuffed because of this interest in maintaining good relations with Mexico and because of anti-slavery opposition in Congress. Consequently, talk about annexation would languish.

By 1843, however, things are starting to change in the United States. President John Tyler revives the annexation issue because he starts to fear a growing British interest in Texas, which is a whole different story. In 1844, Texas emissaries and the US Secretary of State, then John C. Calhoun, hammer out a treaty of annexation that would have established Texas as a territory.

The treaty was defeated in the US Senate because, again, of anti-slavery opposition during an election year. Despite that fact, Texas did become a major election issue in 1844 because the Democratic candidate at that time, James K. Polk, openly favored annexation and ran on a strong expansionist platform. He claimed that he would bring in Oregon, Texas and California into the union in response to these mounting sentiments in the United States of so-called manifest destiny.

This notion that Americans were God's chosen people and that they were to spread their culture and religion across the North American continent from the Atlantic to the Pacific. These notions were fanned in the American press at the time and Polk capitalized on that sentiment. He was elected by an overwhelming majority and Polk's election in that mandate allows President Tyler, or encouraged him, to prompt Congress to pass a joint resolution on February the 28th, 1845, simple majority resolution to annex Texas.

And that happened. Anson Jones becomes the last president of the Republic of Texas. And you're listening to Texas state historian Monty Monroe tell one heck of a story about how Texas became a state. And my goodness, what a land grab between 1836 and 1845, 41 million acres.

Of course, southerners came, mostly southerners, with their slaves, many of them, and it was cotton and it was sugar that they would be forming. The story of how Texas became a state continues here on Our American Story. And we return to Our American Stories and the story of how the Republic of Texas became a state. When we last left off Monty Monroe, the Texas state historian was telling us about the challenges the Republic of Texas faced with crippling debt and constant threats of invasion. Most Texans supported annexation into the United States, but it was a long road to get there. Nevertheless, in 1845, President Polk saw Texas welcomed into the union and it will be up to his minister to Mexico, John Slidell, to iron out the detail. Let's get back to the story.

Here again is Monty Monroe. The provisions of the annexation resolutions allowed that Texas would enter the union as a state because it had been an independent nation and keep her public lands. And that would be important, particularly in the 20th century when the United States is trying to carve out national park lands. Texas was unique in that it possessed all of its public lands and so it made it a little bit easier to create national parks in Texas.

The U.S., on the other hand, would decide all boundary questions and that's going to be critical. Texas was to surrender all of her forts and military equipment to the U.S., but Texas could retain its navy and to this day the governor can appoint admirals of the Texas navy, which is an honorary position. With the agreement of Texas citizens, Texas could be split into four additional states aside from the state of Texas.

Any new state that would be established from Texas could permit slavery and this is always going to be a problem. The state constitution of 1845 provided for a bicameral legislature of two-year terms for house members and four-year terms for senators that still exist today. The legislature was to meet every two years. There are reasons for that and the reasons were that there was this concern to impose restrictions on the legislature because there was a fear of government, a big government.

They had just gone through this whole period of Mexican centralist government and so this was very cognizant in their minds. The meeting time of the legislature is limited. There were low pay for legislators. They didn't want people sitting in the legislature spending tax money all the time. The governor would be the chief executive.

There was a lieutenant governor, which in today's terms is probably even more politically powerful because he is the head of the senate than the governor. The Texas constitution of 1845, and there have been subsequent constitutions, was influenced by Jacksonian thought. There were strict prohibitions against state banks because many Jacksonians believed, as did these Texans of the time, that bankers were thieves. There were also prohibitions against establishing big business corporations, especially monopolies.

There were strict prohibitions against any minister of the gospel holding public office. Nobody who had been in a duel could hold public office and most importantly for women today, women could own property in their own name and this didn't happen throughout the United States at that time. In their own name, especially married women and this notion was unique to Texas and was probably part of our Texas Spanish legacy.

J. Pinkney Henderson was elected the first governor of the state. Sam Houston and Thomas Jefferson Rusk, two of the great revolutionaries of the republic era, became the first U.S. senators from Texas. So, Texas becomes a state, but what was one of the problems that that might bring about? Mexico was against annexation. Mexico was certainly against Texas becoming a state of the United States. Mexico had said that the annexation of Texas would lead to war and this was the most important cause. Also, there was another reason that led to the so-called U.S.-Mexican war. Mexico refused to pay debt claims to Americans for losses and debts of property and various things of that nature. France and Britain used their influence to collect their debts, but the United States could not and there was much political instability in Mexico at this time.

This was the period of the Caudillos where military strongmen were constantly coming in, building an army, overthrowing the central government. In the United States, you have this sense of manifest destiny. There's a fear by the Mexican governments of land hunger of the Americans because of manifest destiny and this desire to acquire California. The U.S. wanted California for its natural harbors. They believed it would make the United States a strong Pacific power and open Asian markets to the United States. There were some attempts at diplomacy at diplomacy.

There's no need to go into all of that at this time with John Slidell. President Pope knew that Mexico had severe financial problems, so he sent Slidell to try and purchase California, which only had about 3,000 Mexican citizens living there at the time. He met with the current Mexican president at that time, Jose Herrera, who stated that Texas was the key issue. If the U.S. would return Texas to Mexico, Mexico might consider selling California to the U.S. That didn't happen, and it couldn't happen. Slidell returns to the U.S. convinced that military versus diplomatic means was the only way for the U.S. to achieve its goals, particularly in relation to the Mexican owned and controlled what would become the American West.

When Pope learned of Slidell's failure, he immediately sends General Zachary Taylor, old, rough, and ready to move to the Rio Grande. So he goes down and he starts building fortifications on the Texas side of the Rio Grande. Mexico claimed that Taylor's move was an invasion of Mexican territory, and ultimately they positioned Mexican troops across the river from Taylor, and on October the 24th, President Paredes declares a defensive war against the U.S. and Mexican troops skirmish with Taylor's troops, and Taylor wires poke that war exists, and ultimately would end in the Treaty of Velasco after the United States is victorious in the war with Mexico, and the Treaty of Hidalgo says more or less the following, that Texas is recognized as a state of the United States with the boundary at the Rio Grande River. California and the New Mexico territory, which encompassed at that time Arizona and what would become Nevada, the Mexican session, was ceded to the United States in return for 15 million dollars. The U.S. also assumes three and a quarter million in debt claims against Mexico by American citizens, and of critical importance to Texas, the boundary description allowed Texas to retain control over its tidelands 10 miles out into the Gulf, and after World War II that would become a major issue, or during World War II become a major issue, particularly because of oil development in the post-war era in the Gulf of Mexico.

This would be a great windfall when offshore oil production takes place in the Gulf of Mexico. Following the war and as a consequence of the border now being secure, settlement increases dramatically in Texas, and of course that will cause a problem with the issue of slavery and ultimately leading to the Civil War, which Texas of course will join the confederacy, and that is beyond the purview of our discussions today. And I hope in this little brief talk that you have gotten a thumbnail sketch of the 500-year history of Texas. Texas brings that legacy to the United States. It is today, because of many things that have happened since Texas became a state and after the Civil War and returning to the Union during Reconstruction, is now if it was an independent nation today, it would be the fourth largest economy in the world. But Texas contributes mightily to the nation during World War II. It sent over 750,000 Texans to the war effort. The oil production during the war fueled the arsenal of democracy and led to our ultimate victory in World War II. So Texas has an interesting history and it continues to contribute mightily to the United States. And a terrific job on the storytelling and production by our own Monty Montgomery and a special thanks to Monty Monroe, the Texas State Historian. And my goodness, how the Mexican-American War started, we learned a lot more about a subject that was at best really boring when we learned about it in high school.

The story of how Texas became a state here on Our American Story. I heart this holiday season and shop sound. That's more than just a present.

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