Restore the Republic?

Such is what filmmaker Ladd Ehlinger suggests that Texas do in his latest blog entry, "Dear Texas, Please Secede" (h/t Robert Stacy McCain). As regular readers of this blog know, that is a suggestion I fully endorse, especially since the election of the socialist scoundrel Barack Obama. The restoration of the Republic of Texas would surely warm this ninth-generation Texan's heart.

However, as an academic historian, I am bound to correct Ehlinger on this point:

Dear big beautiful Texas with all your gorgeous pageant women and crappy food: you are the only state that joined our Union with a treaty allowing for legal secession.

Of course, Ehlinger is wrong about "crappy food" - I'll put up San Antonio's fine Tex-Mex cuisine against that of New Orleans any day - but let's stick to the matter of secession and the non-existent treaty. Texas was admitted to the Union in 1845 not by an annexation treaty, but by a joint resolution of the Congress of the United States of America. President John Tyler signed the American joint resolution on March 1, 1845 offering Texas admission to the Union. On June 16, 1845 President Anson Jones of Texas called the Texas Congress into session and on July 4, 1845, a convention of elected Texan delegates met - both to decide whether or not to accept the American offer of annexation. Both bodies voted to accept annexation, with the convention then drawing up a state constitution for Texas that was approved by the Texas electorate in October 1845. The Congress of the United States then formally voted to admit Texas to the Union on December 29, 1845. The formal transfer of power took place at a special ceremony on February 19, 1846, when President Anson Jones handed control of the Texan government to the state's newly-elected governor, James Pinckney Henderson. At that time, Governor Henderson proclaimed: "The final act in this great drama is now performed; the Republic of Texas is no more."

At no point during the annexation proceedings was the issue of the legality of secession addressed. However, secession is certainly a viable option for Texas, as it is for any state. Secession is, legally, a gray area - it is neither legal or illegal. But that is a moot point. Our present union of states is a voluntary one, and as such any state has the implicit right to leave if it so chooses. I fervently hope that Texas does so in the near future - there is no need for the liberty-loving citizens of this state to remain tethered to the collectivist leviathan in Washington, D.C.

Although a majority of Texans favored annexation, one who was dead-set against it was former President Mirabeau B. Lamar (1838-41). A strong Texas nationalist, Lamar believed that nothing good would come of annexation. There is a connection between Lamar and my family. In 1847, during the Mexican-American War (1846-48), Lamar was serving as captain of the Texas Mounted Volunteers and was based in Laredo, Texas - my birthplace. In 1847, he helped organize Laredo's first municipal government as an American city and on April 29, 1847 he formally inaugurated my great-great-great grandfather, Juan Francisco Farias, as a citizen of the United States. Farias went on to serve as mayor of Laredo during the Civil War.

Farias's brother-in-law (and my great-great-great grand-uncle) was a man named Santos Benavides, who during the Civil War became the highest-ranking Hispanic to serve in the Confederate Army, attaining the rank of full colonel. In April 1865, Benavides was up for a promotion to brigadier general, but the Confederacy disbanded before the Confederate Congress in Richmond could approve the promotion.

Juan Francisco Farias - Mayor of Laredo, Texas during the Civil War

Col. Santos Benavides and his wife, Agustina

As for Benavides's exploits during the Civil War, here's a snippet from a write-up at the Handbook of Texas Online:

Commissioned a captain in the Thirty-third Texas Cavalry (or Benavides' Regiment) and assigned to the Rio Grande Military District, Benavides quickly won accolades as a fighter. He drove Juan Cortina back into Mexico in the battle of Carrizo on May 22, 1861, and quelled other local revolts against Confederate authority. In November 1863 Benavides was promoted to colonel and authorized to raise his own regiment of "Partisan Rangers," for which he used the remnants of the Thirty-third. His greatest military triumph was his defense of Laredo on March 19, 1864, with forty-two troops against 200 soldiers of the Union First Texas Cavalry, commanded by Col. Edmund J. Davis, who had, ironically, offered Benavides a Union generalship earlier.

My Uncle Santos was no dirty scalawag, that's for sure.

Deo Vindice, amigos. And God bless the once and future Republic of Texas!