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Secession Time?
It happens that I ran across these two articles at about the same time so I might as well combine them into one thread. Please note that I do not favor secession.Will there be a vote on TEXIT?
By Michelle Dillon, Jacksonville Daily Progress
Texas was once a self-governing country for a brief period from March 2, 1836, when it declared independence from Mexico, until Dec. 29, 1845, when Texas was admitted as the 28th state of the Union.
The goal of the Texas Nationalist Movement, organized in 2005, is to once again establish Texas as an independent nation. Their mission, as stated on their website, is to “secure and protect the political, cultural and economic independence of Texas.”
Some may view a Texas exit, or TEXIT, from the United States as an impossibility considering Texas has been a part of the US for 175 years. Furthermore, TNM appears to have made little or no tangible progress in its mission to “secure” the “independence of Texas.” However, this may be the year for that to change.
On Tuesday, Dec. 8, State Representative Kyle Biedermann announced, via Facebook, that he is committed to filing legislation that would “allow a referendum to give Texans a vote for the State of Texas to reassert its status as an independent nation.”
The goal of the Texas Nationalist Movement, organized in 2005, is to once again establish Texas as an independent nation. Their mission, as stated on their website, is to “secure and protect the political, cultural and economic independence of Texas.”
Some may view a Texas exit, or TEXIT, from the United States as an impossibility considering Texas has been a part of the US for 175 years. Furthermore, TNM appears to have made little or no tangible progress in its mission to “secure” the “independence of Texas.” However, this may be the year for that to change.
On Tuesday, Dec. 8, State Representative Kyle Biedermann announced, via Facebook, that he is committed to filing legislation that would “allow a referendum to give Texans a vote for the State of Texas to reassert its status as an independent nation.”
Read more: https://www.jacksonvilleprogress.com/news/will-there-be-a-vote-on-texit/article_224072a8-3eed-11eb-bf40-e71774f23bd1.html
==============
We Need to Talk About Secession
By Casey Michel, Texas Monthly
December 29, 2020, marks the 175th anniversary of the United States’ annexation of the Republic of Texas, an occasion that Texans seem to have mixed feelings about. On the one hand, Texans love their country as much as any other Americans. On the other hand, nostalgia for the republic’s decade of independence is ingrained in the Texas character. And talk of secession seems to be on the rise during this politically fraught time—after the presidential election was called for Joe Biden, Texas congressman Randy Weber posted a pro-secession meme on his Facebook page and state representative Kyle Biedermann threatened to file legislation that would give Texans the opportunity to vote on a secession referendum. A pair of recently published books offer sharp insights into what we should make of this contradiction. Journalist Richard Kreitner’s Break It Up: Secession, Division, and the Secret History of America’s Imperfect Union (Little, Brown and Company) and historian Thomas Richards Jr.’s Breakaway Americas: The Unmanifest Future of the Jacksonian United States (Johns Hopkins University Press) demonstrate that the Republic of Texas played an outsized role in our nation’s development by inspiring other groups to strike out on their own. And they prompt us to ask some hard questions: What would have happened if Washington had rejected Texas’s entreaties to be annexed? Would Texas have managed to carve out an independent path and spurred others to do the same, upending the map of North America as we know it? Or would a Republic of Texas that never joined the Union have eventually wrecked on the shore of its own ambitions? Kreitner and Richards don’t explicitly address such counterfactuals, but they both point to some pretty clear answers.
Neither book focuses exclusively on Texas. Break It Up ranges more widely, from New England’s and California’s separatist flirtations during the antebellum period to the anarchist and feminist secessionisms that proliferated after the Civil War and continue to this day. Kreitner, a contributor to the liberal magazine The Nation, particularly shines when he focuses on the pre–Civil War era of disunionism. “The Age of Breakaway Republics,” he calls it, making clear that Texas served as the model for other regions in the United States that were looking, in Sam Houston’s words, to lift their heads “and stand among the nations.”
Others, though—including many Texans involved in wresting the territory from Mexico—saw Texas not as a model of independence but as the very opposite: yet another building block in the creation of the U.S. empire. “Generations of American expansionists and adventurers had schemed to pry Texas from Spain by means fair or foul,” Kreitner writes. Aaron Burr, a man who plotted to create his own North American polity west of the Mississippi, viewed Texas “as the shimmering Western gem in his new imperial crown.” In many ways, the American obsession with that jewel—and the fact that Texas could provide yet another outpost for slavery—inspired many of the rebels of the Texas Revolution, who had every intention of joining the United States once they extricated themselves from Mexico.
“Without American support, the Texan revolution would have failed, as the American one would have without French assistance,” Kreitner writes of the enthusiastic provision of arms, munitions, and bodies to the rebels. “After 1821, when Mexico won independence from Spain, hard-liners in the United States”—i.e., those dedicated to Texas annexation—“vowed to take the region one way or another.” Eventually, those hard-liners won out: in 1845, after a decade of propping up the nascent Texas republic, the United States plucked that jewel, pocketing it in its parade to the Pacific.
Neither book focuses exclusively on Texas. Break It Up ranges more widely, from New England’s and California’s separatist flirtations during the antebellum period to the anarchist and feminist secessionisms that proliferated after the Civil War and continue to this day. Kreitner, a contributor to the liberal magazine The Nation, particularly shines when he focuses on the pre–Civil War era of disunionism. “The Age of Breakaway Republics,” he calls it, making clear that Texas served as the model for other regions in the United States that were looking, in Sam Houston’s words, to lift their heads “and stand among the nations.”
Others, though—including many Texans involved in wresting the territory from Mexico—saw Texas not as a model of independence but as the very opposite: yet another building block in the creation of the U.S. empire. “Generations of American expansionists and adventurers had schemed to pry Texas from Spain by means fair or foul,” Kreitner writes. Aaron Burr, a man who plotted to create his own North American polity west of the Mississippi, viewed Texas “as the shimmering Western gem in his new imperial crown.” In many ways, the American obsession with that jewel—and the fact that Texas could provide yet another outpost for slavery—inspired many of the rebels of the Texas Revolution, who had every intention of joining the United States once they extricated themselves from Mexico.
“Without American support, the Texan revolution would have failed, as the American one would have without French assistance,” Kreitner writes of the enthusiastic provision of arms, munitions, and bodies to the rebels. “After 1821, when Mexico won independence from Spain, hard-liners in the United States”—i.e., those dedicated to Texas annexation—“vowed to take the region one way or another.” Eventually, those hard-liners won out: in 1845, after a decade of propping up the nascent Texas republic, the United States plucked that jewel, pocketing it in its parade to the Pacific.
Read more: https://www.texasmonthly.com/the-culture/was-the-republic-of-texas-doomed-from-the-start/
11 replies
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from which it was stolen. A goodwill gesture from President Biden. 
