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The Social Security Act of 1935, which created federal subsidies for state-administered programs for the elderly; people with handicaps; dependent mothers; and children, gave state and local officials wide discretion over eligibility and benefit levels. The unemployment insurance program, also created by the Social Security Act, requires states ...
- Overview
- Immigration and slavery fuel tensions
- War breaks out
- Seeking U.S. statehood
After fighting a revolution against Mexico, the Republic of Texas was briefly a sovereign nation. Self-rule wouldn’t last long—but its legacy has endured.
Texans have a unique sense of pride in the history of their state, which was a nation itself for nearly 10 years after it won independence from Mexico. The pride is no accident: In schools and elsewhere, generations of young Texans have been taught that their state is special in its history and independence.
In Texas’s public schools there is a statewide mandate that children be taught Texas history. For decades, the youngest schoolchildren in Texas began their morning by singing the state song, “Texas, Our Texas,” along with reciting the Pledge of Allegiance to the U.S. flag. More recently, elementary and middle school children—many of whom attend schools named after early Texas leaders—start the day by reciting a pledge of allegiance to Texas’s flag in addition to the U.S. pledge. The recognition of Texas’s history goes well beyond that: Cities across the state bear the names of the state’s founders, as do colleges such as Sam Houston State University and Stephen F. Austin State University.
“Texas has constructed for itself a very unique culture and a unique kind of mythology around independence,” writes Angela Diaz, a postdoctoral teaching fellow in the Texas Tech University Department of History. But the reality of the state’s revolutionary history is complicated. Here’s what really happened.
Long before Texas declared its independence in 1836, it was a region of Mexico controlled by Spain. During this time, Texas was comprised of Mexican-born residents, immigrants from the United States, and Europeans seeking to build new lives on a frontier where clashes between new settlers and Native Americans were still common. Spain allowed newcomers to buy land for cheap.
In 1821, Mexico gained its independence from Spain. It initially encouraged immigration to Texas, but the Mexican government soon started to worry about the influx of settlers from the United States, which had begun to expand west of the Mississippi River when Louisiana, a state that allowed slavery, was admitted into the Union in 1812. In 1829, the Mexican government banned slavery to discourage further immigration among Anglos, many of them slave owners. But the ban was not well enforced.
The tipping point for many Texans came in 1830, when the Mexican government ordered a ban on most legal immigration from the United States and again banned any further introduction of slavery. With that, the relationship between Anglo settlers and the Mexican government began to collapse. (Enslaved people in Texas were the last to learn about Lincoln's Emancipation Proclamation.)
Texans began to consider seceding from Mexico and becoming part of the United States. To avert that outcome, Mexico initially gave Texas greater independence. In 1834, Mexico granted the region more delegates in the state government, introduced trial by jury, and authorized English as a second language.
In October 1835, amid rising tensions, Mexican troops tried to retrieve a cannon that had been given to the city of Gonzales to protect Texan colonists from Native American attacks. Gonzales residents unfurled a banner daring the Mexican troops to "come and take it,” and the ensuing clash is considered the opening battle of the Texas Revolution.
The Mexican soldiers retreated from the confrontation, fueling pride among the Texans. They began forming armed militias throughout the territory and engaged in a few skirmishes with Mexican forces.
In late February 1836, Santa Anna led thousands of troops across the Rio Grande into what is now known as San Antonio, to attack Texas troops occupying the Alamo, a former Spanish mission that had become a military compound. For 13 days, the Mexican army laid siege to the Alamo. As the siege raged, on March 2, Texas revolutionary leaders met more than 160 miles away at Washington-on-the-Brazos, where they officially declared independence from Mexico. Four days later, Santa Anna ordered his troops into the Alamo, killing nearly all of the roughly 200 Texas soldiers, including legendary frontiersman Davy Crockett and the Alamo’s commander, William B. Travis.
Meanwhile, a smaller force of Mexican troops was making its way north to Goliad, about 90 miles southeast of San Antonio. On March 27, they executed nearly 350 Texan prisoners, including their commander James Fannin, in what became known as the Goliad massacre.
It seemed as if the Texans had nothing left in the fight, but the losses at the Alamo and Goliad became the Texans’ motivation to keep pushing for independence. On April 21, 1836, nearly a month after Goliad, about 800 Texan troops led by Sam Houston surprised the Mexican army at San Jacinto, near present-day Houston. The Texas were reported to have shouted, “Remember the Alamo,” as they swamped the Mexicans in a battle that lasted only 18 minutes.
The Texans not only were victorious, they captured Santa Anna the day after the battle. Texas achieved de facto independence with the surrender of Santa Anna, who ordered his battered troops to retreat and agreed to support recognition of Texas independence.
With Texas now an independent nation—called the Republic of Texas—in September 1836 colonists began to set up a new government and national constitution, electing Houston as their first president. They also debated the question of annexation to the United States, a proposition that Texans overwhelmingly favored.
Santa Anna had renounced all guarantees he had made to the Republic of Texas after returning home from captivity. Not knowing how or when he would try to regain control of the territory, Texans saw U.S. annexation as a form of protection.
In 1837, the Republic of Texas began taking steps to join the United States. In January, a resolution to recognize Texas was introduced in the U.S. Senate and approved two months later. But annexation was a different question. Many members of the U.S. Congress didn’t want to admit another slave state to the union and feared war with Mexico.
From 1838 to 1845, Texas officials made multiple failed attempts to gain annexation to the U.S. Finally, in March 1845—after the election of expansionist President James Polk—the U.S. Congress passed a joint resolution to annex Texas, which officially became the 28th state on December 29, 1845.
Texas’ admission to the Union, with the new-states clause included, passed Congress 120-98. The only concession to the North: Slavery would be prohibited in any states formed north of the ...
This means that the states have to get along with each other by respecting their laws and people. In Constitutional law, the Comity Clause refers to Article IV, § 2, Clause 2 of the U.S. Constitution (also known as the Privileges and Immunities Clause), which ensures that “The Citizens of each State shall be entitled to all Privileges and ...
Apr 19, 2024 · Sam Houston. Antonio López de Santa Anna. Texas Revolution, war fought from October 1835 to April 1836 between Mexico and Texas colonists that resulted in Texas’s independence from Mexico and the founding of the Republic of Texas (1836–45). Although the Texas Revolution was bookended by the Battles of Gonzales and San Jacinto, armed ...
Article I, Section 10, prohibits the states from entering into treaties with other countries, coining money, and levying taxes on imports and exports. Like the federal government, the states cannot violate personal freedoms by suspending the writ of habeas corpus, passing bills of attainder, or enacting ex post facto laws.
Dec 7, 2023 · In many ways, Texas is the center of red-state America. Unlike several Western states, it remains solidly Republican at the presidential level. Over the last 20 years, the West has politically ...
