In 1840s America, the “Texas Question” (should Texas be let into the United States) caused great division among Americans even in the same party. Now, instead of whether Texas should join the U.S, the new Texas Question is, “Should Texas Secede?”

American interest in what became the Republic of Texas dates back to Aaron Burr’s abortive attempt to create an Anglo-American settlement west of the Mississippi (perhaps violently) that was “exposed” as so-called “treason” in 1807. In 1813 a more substantive attempt to take part of Texas in the Gutiérrez–Magee Expedition was crushed with help from a young royalist Spanish officer Antonio López de Santa Anna. Nevertheless, American settlement into Spanish and then Mexican Texas reached a significant milestone in 1821 with the “empresario” [entrepreneur] Stephen F. Austin leading 300 families from the US to Northern Mexico. As the flow of foreigners (including Englishmen and Germans) increased from a stream to a flood the native Tejanos and Indians of the area were displaced and the Indians, especially the Comanche were aggressive towards the new settlers. Militias were formed to defend against Indian attacks. Most empresarios from America including Austin were very pro-slavery and their settlers brought in thousands of enslaved blacks. Mexico, desperate for settlers in its sparse Northern frontier, granted Texas an exception to its general abolitionist policy.

Santa Anna will play an important part of the run up to the Texan Revolution, as having climbed through the ranks of the Mexican military, in 1833 he succeeded in a coup placing him in charge of Mexico, from which he engineered a centralizing government, in contrast to the 1824 constitution that respected the rights of the constituent states of former New Spain. The Centralists were broadly the old aristocrats of the colonial days, seeking to curtail the political rights of the bourgeois and other upstarts while recognizing certain fundamental changes such as the abolition of slavery. While conflict over slavery was part of the tensions in Mexican Texas, it was ultimately the reactionary Centralist counter-revolution of 1834 that convinced Texians (among other liberal mexican groups) to resist the Mexican Government. From the Zacatecas just north of Mexico city, to Texas’ sister state of Rio Grande, to the Yucatan in the South, the new military dictatorship of Mexico was plagued by internal enemies. The Yucatan Republic actually received direct naval support from the Republic of Texas later on. When the Texians chased off Mexican government forces in 1835, they considered their independence secured among the chaos. However, as the other rebellious states were crushed one by one, Santa Anna, now General and Head of State came to destroy the revolutionaries of Texas in early 1836.

Most Americans know at least something about the battle of the Alamo in modern day San Antonio, but to make a long story short, after the defenders of the Alamo mission were slaughtered, Sam Houston, a Texian revolutionary, led his forces to an absolute rout of the Mexican Army in April 1836, capturing Santa Anna and securing a tentative peace treaty for his release. From 1836 the new Texas government was able to administer most of their claimed territories without interference. The Mexican government still claimed their Republic however, and Santa Anna, who had lost face and political power with his capture, was intent on reclaiming the territory and his honor. In 1842, the re-elected Santa Anna led an expedition into Texian territory that killed dozens of Texian militiamen. At this point, calls for union with the United States rose to a fever pitch, and the faction in Texas that favored an expansionist, independent republic led by Mirabeau Lamar was disempowered in favor of pro-annexation but also radically laissez-faire Sam Houston. The United States had much internal pressure to annex Texas as a slave state too, but sitting libertarian President Martin van Buren refused to goad Mexico into a war during his term 1837-1841. Likewise the successive Whig president John Tyler sat on the issue and it wasn’t till an expansionist Democrat, James K. Polk took power in 1845 that Texas annexation occured. Polk did try initially to peacefully “purchase” Texas from Mexico but the authoritarian government had purged anyone who was pro-negotiation, and Polk then turned to more crafty means. The U.S. army was placed well south of the negotiated territory of Texas, and in April 1846 Mexico retaliated and started attacking American patrols and forts in Texas. Polk used this provocation to accuse the Mexicans of starting a War and congress duly voted to crush their southern neighbors. 

Mexico was unprepared for full scale war and fared extremely poorly. In 1848 they were forced to recognize not only the Annexation of Texas but a giant share of their territory in what became the Western United States. Texas settled in as a reliable Democrat voting state, growing to 600,000 people in 1860, 30% of whom were enslaved. Like the other Deep South slave states, Texas voted for John C. Breckinridge in 1860 and when Abraham Lincoln, who opposed the expansion of slavery was elected, Texas joined the rest of the Deep South in forming the Confederacy to preserve the institution. Texas mostly avoided the ravages of the Northern War of Aggression but its troops fought prominently in the war and the Texas Brigade led by General Hood was one of the fiercest formations of either side. When the confederates lost, Texas was governed directly by the U.S. Government and was not restored to the Union until 1870. Still defiant, white Texans stripped blacks of many of the rights granted by the federal government when the compromise of 1877 (engineered to prevent another war over libertarian Democrat Samuel Tilden having the presidency stolen from him in 1876) finally ended “Reconstruction” aka military occupation of the South. To this day the State of Texas celebrates Confederate Heroes Day every January 19th. Ezra Heywood, individualist anarchist was proved correct when he said in 1863: “As to the radical scheme, supposing you succeed in the field; supposing Vicksburg falls, Lee is beaten, and Richmond and Charleston surrender… What then? The old questions are upon you; we are two nations still.”

Through most of the 20th century, Texan nationalism was fairly dormant, although in the 50s and 60s it became one of the hearts of right-wing minarchism and constitutional conservatism in the country, funded in large part by Texas oil tycoons such as H. L. Hunt. In 1995, a group named the Republic of Texas was founded by secessionist Rick McClaren, partially in response to the Waco Texas standoff where ATF goons murdered dozens of children in 1993. McClaren believed that the federal government of the United States had become tyrannical and that it had to be fought. In 1997, McClaren had his own standoff with the feds including hostages and was given 99 years for kidnapping. Less extreme patriots formed Texas Nationalist Movement (or TNM) in 2005 and was the most prominent group proposing secession until the Texas GOP took up the cause in 2022, petitioning the Texas legislature to adopt a popular referendum on independence modeled after the 2014 Scottish vote. Currently Texas has the largest proportion of any state population that supports secession. 

Texan culture has ALWAYS been individualist and something more than just American. Its wild west ethos and its proud history of treason (as centralizers call lovers of liberty) makes it the most prominent real life example for the possibility of a successful secession from the United States. God bless Texas, and may 1000 flowers bloom!