Ghana's ideas have made no progress. But the congressman from Houbart Day, a hilly area in western San Antonio, has a long tradition in West Texas, trying to turn this lone star state into a constellation. When Texas became a state, and in the following decades, it was seriously considered to divide Texas into many Little Texas. This idea exists today as a quirk of American law, which is a remnant of Texas's short history as an independent country. This is also the uniqueness of Texas as such a big state. It can split itself, even if it loves its size too much to do so.
"We are the only state that can split itself without anyone's permission," said Donald W. Huisen Hunter, the author of Five Texans: An Immoral Proposal, published in 1987. Article 4, paragraph 3, of the American Constitution stipulates that any new state must be approved by Congress. However, Texas's claim for exception comes directly from the joint congressional resolution of 1845, which allows Texas to add * * * states. Its content is: "outside Texas, with the consent of the state, no more than four new States can be established outside the territory of the state in the future, and the population is sufficient." Supporters of the Texas branch say this means that Congress approved the separation in advance.
This map shows the slavery on the border between the United States and Texas in 1839 (Atlas of Perry castaneda Library of the University of Texas) and the tense balance between the north and the south in 19 in the 1940s, explaining this clause. Nine years later, when Texas joined the United States as an independent republic, its claimed territory even exceeded today's 268,580 square miles. It claims to own half of today's New Mexico and a strange chimney-shaped land, partly composed of the Rio Grande and the Arkansas River, extending northward to present-day central Colorado and Oklahoma, Kansas and even Wyoming. That northern end pokes on the Missouri compromise line 1820, and the Missouri compromise line does not allow slavery at 36 degrees 30 minutes north latitude.
How to divide such a huge western region? 1845 At the beginning of the year, when the Congress debated the admission of Texas, the Northern Councillors wanted to split Texas in two, from the coast east of Corpus Christi to the northwest corner of the state, and diagonally split the state in two, with Austin in the east and San Antonio in the west. In sparsely populated West Texas, slavery will be banned, and many anti-slavery Germans have settled there.
However, southerners rejected this proposal as an excessive restriction on slavery. On the contrary, Isaac Van Zandt, the top diplomat of Texas and China in Washington, saw this new state clause as an alternative to friendship with the South. "Van Zant ... is very close to senators and representatives from southern States," Weston Joseph McConnell wrote in his book "Social Differentiation in Texas" published in 1925. Like southerners, Van Zant divided Texas into several states and gave the South more power. Texas plus * * * states, including new state clauses, passed Congress 120-98. The only concession of the North was to ban slavery in any state north of the Missouri compromise line. 1847, Van Zant ran for governor of Texas and promised to divide the state into four states. Van Zandt believes that splitting the state will give Texas more power in Washington. He also believes that Texas, a small settlement hundreds of miles apart, cannot be effectively governed. (Obviously, making himself the governor of a smaller state didn't bother Van Zant. Historians in Texas tend to think that Van Zant is likely to win and split the state. If he had not died of yellow fever a month before the election,
When Congress redrawed the northern and western boundaries of Texas, as part of the 1850 compromise, it paid Texas $1000000 as part of the eastern part of New Mexico and four other states, and the law included a line to keep the provisions of the new state. However, in 1852, the legislature of Texas divided Texas into two states on the Brazzaville River with 33 votes in favor and 15 votes against. Most of its supporters come from eastern Brazil, which is another example of widespread dissatisfaction between East Texas and West Texas. Everyone accused each other of inexperience and negligence. But this quarrel finally lost to Texans' pride in their history. "Which state will have a star sign? The Texas Gazette asked, "Who will give up the bloody walls of the Alamo?
During the reconstruction period, Texas was on the verge of collapse again. Radical Republicans were elected when most former Federations could not vote. They tried to carve up Texas at the Constitutional Convention of 1868- 1869. Their declared goal is to establish a federal friendly west Texas, which may rejoin the United States earlier than other States; Critics believe that they really want to set up more state offices for themselves. Delegates who supported separatism were in the majority at the meeting, but they couldn't agree on a map-this was an obstacle that Texas separatism repeatedly encountered in its early years. "It is impossible to get Texans to agree to a plan, even though they have a bad temper," Wissenmont said.
This map of 1842 shows the boundary between Texas and China at that time. (Map Collection of Perry castaneda Library, University of Texas) "KDSP" prevented radical Republicans from writing a "West Texas Constitution", which promised civil rights to blacks and proposed to reject the votes of former rebels, Ku Klux Klan members and newspaper editors and ministers who supported the Confederacy. This provocative and possibly unconstitutional idea reflects the reconstruction debate on restoring the rights and citizenship of former confederate members. But public opinion opposes their plan. Support department meetings are rarely attractive. Almost all the newspapers in the state are against the idea. Some people scoffed at the idea of establishing a state in sparsely populated West Texas and proposed another name: "Cactaea" or "Coyote State". Frustrated, the activists visited President-elect Ulysses S. Grant and asked the general to mediate. He didn't. Grant told reporters: "One Texas is enough to make people shine." After that, Texas has never approached the organization, although coyotes in West Texas will howl and leave when they feel neglected. 1921April, Governor Pat M. Neve vetoed the bill to build a university in West Texas, and they threatened to dissolve the state. On the same day of the veto, 5,000 angry West Texans met in Sweetwater and drafted a resolution calling for dissolution unless the legislature redistributed the states and established colleges. Their threats may have prompted Ghana to have a dialogue with the Bureau later that month.
"In the next three years, West Texans took a radical attitude both inside and outside the legislature," Ernest Wallace wrote in his book Howling Man 1979. In 1923, the legislature established Texas Technical College in Lubbock, now Texas Technical University. "This symbolic appeasement calmed separatist sentiment," Wallace wrote. "1930, out of anger at the smoot-Hawley tariff passed by Congress, Ghana once again proposed division." Texas will make 220 states Rhode Island, 54 states Connecticut and 6 states New York, "said Ghana, who still hopes that divided Texas can surpass Yankee.
Ghana was the last outstanding politician to support the Texas branch, but this idea still exists in the blue-red map game that political enthusiasts are obsessed with. In 2009, Nate, five and eight years old? Nate Silver designed a fantastic five-party split scheme, creating three small Republican Texas, a blue state along Rio Grande and a swing state around Austin. In 2004, a Texas law review paper, Let's Chaos with Texas, argued that crafty Texas and Republicans could use the new state clause 1845 to change their ways and vote for eight Senate seats and electoral college. Ralph H.Brock, director of the former Texas Bar Association, responded that the new state clause would violate the equality principle of the Supreme Court.
The idea that Texas can be subdivided into eight Senate seats conforms to Texas's self-image as a unique, vast and powerful state. But the same self-awareness will prevent Texans from really trying.
"This is a novel idea, and they may like it at first sight," Wissenmont said. But 30 years ago, he wrote a book to encourage the Texas branch, and now he is convinced that this is basically impossible. How is the oil wealth that Texas finances its major state universities divided? In addition, 78-year-old Hu Sen Haute recalled the trauma to Texas when Alaska replaced Texas as the largest state in the United States in 1959. He said: "It is a strong sense of pride to be the biggest, best and first person in the world."