Texas is well-known as the “Lone Star State” and is the site of perhaps the strongest secessionist impulse in the United States today. But what if the way in which Texas was annexed into the Union in the first place was ill-advised and questionably accomplished?
In 1840, Martin van Buren ran for his second term as president. He ran in opposition to westward expansion because he believed, and it appears that he was right, that the westward movement would turn people’s attention to the question of slavery and create division. He believed—as a Jacksonian and as one who Jeffrey Hummel called the most libertarian of the presidents—that the small government model was desirable and had demonstrated that it was a winning ticket.
However, he lost in the election of 1840, mostly as a result of the pushback regarding the Panic of 1837. He refused to use the central government to address the issues, and recovery came relatively quickly. Further, he rejected the annexation of Texas on constitutional grounds.
William Henry Harrison won the election, but died after only 32 days in office. John Tyler took over. His story is amazing. He left the Democratic Party in opposition to Jackson’s power demands over state authority, demonstrated in his tariffs and the Force Bill. But just because he joined the opposition Whigs didn’t mean he was in favor of their Hamiltonian political and economic commitments. In reality, he was quite Jeffersonian. He went against the Whigs so much, he was kicked out of their party.
That said, John Tyler was in favor of westward expansion in light of concepts like Manifest Destiny. When Texas won its independence and appealed for statehood, Tyler and his Secretary of State, John C. Calhoun, drew up an annexation treaty. But, a treaty required ⅔ of the Senate and, given that Texas was going to come in as a slave state, it did not pass.
In 1844, Tyler had decided not to run for president, in part because he had no party behind him. However, James K. Polk—a dark horse Democrat—won the election campaigning on a pro-annexation platform.
Before Polk was inaugurated, John Tyler asked Congress to “invite” Texas in as a state without a treaty. This, they concluded, only required a simple majority, which he was able to get. Opponents argued that annexing demanded a treaty because Texas was a foreign nation.
Because Texans and—as evidenced by Polk’s election—Americans supported Texas annexation, the joint resolution passed. Many of the supporters had given loans to Texas and wanted them to be admitted to the Union so that they would be paid by the US government. Others were land speculators, like Nicholas Biddle. Others were concerned about an independent Texan’s cotton competition. As Patrick Newman shows, cronyism was running amok. Then, in his last act as President, John Tyler signed the resolution admitting Texas into the Union as a slave state.
While I appreciate many of the things that John Tyler did and many of the ideas that John Calhoun expressed, the fact that Tyler had to find a lower threshold of agreement in order to bring Texas into the Union pointed to major divisions and, perhaps, it should have given pause. While the annexation of Texas did not lead, immediately, to conflict in the Union, it previewed the issues that westward expansion would produce. Not only did it preview the intensification of sectional crises, but it created border disputes with Mexico that would be used and construed as a justification for war.
Indeed, it is right, in my view, to see that the early United States was much more restrained and controlled in its foreign policy. That said, this was arguably a preview of an early imperialism, sometimes described in the phrase of “Manifest Destiny.” This westward expansion would, within just a few years, take the US all the way to the Pacific, and they would go further—tied into the Asian continent—in the decades to come.
