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Could the Republic of Texas survive, even as a rump republic?

Kimkatya

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Now, I know legitimately nothing about 19th century American politics, but what I have been doing is reading Caro's Path to Power, and I'm extremely curious. So, how about it? Could it survive, even for a couple decades before being absorbed into the US?
 
Now, I know legitimately nothing about 19th century American politics, but what I have been doing is reading Caro's Path to Power, and I'm extremely curious. So, how about it? Could it survive, even for a couple decades before being absorbed into the US?
I think it probably requires a POD in the USA rather than in Texas - AIUI annexation was a lot more controversial in the US whilst it was really the entire point of the Republic in the first place. Maybe something with the 1844 presidential election could delay it a bit?
 
I think it probably requires a POD in the USA rather than in Texas - AIUI annexation was a lot more controversial in the US whilst it was really the entire point of the Republic in the first place. Maybe something with the 1844 presidential election could delay it a bit?
Specifically it was quite close between Polk (pro-annexation Democrat) and Clay (waffly Whig). The initial frontrunner for the Democratic nomination, however, was staunchly anti-annexation former President Martin Van Buren, and he actually started with a majority of delegates, but couldn't get that majority to support dropping the two-thirds rule for a nomination, and more than a third of delegates were Southerners who would only accept an annexationist.
Maybe Van Buren could have gotten that rule change through, but in that case the incumbent President, Tyler probably runs on a third party annexationist ticket - I can't really see a path for Van Buren to win, I think the most difference is Clay. That might prevent annexation for another term, Congress having previously opposed it, but I'm not sure it does more than kick the can down the road to 1848. It might depend a lot on the exact circumstances.
@Ares96 is probably the best person to ask more about this period - I'm also currently listening to the audiobook of This Vast Southern Empire about it, on his (rather a long time ago now) recommendation.
 
Specifically it was quite close between Polk (pro-annexation Democrat) and Clay (waffly Whig). The initial frontrunner for the Democratic nomination, however, was staunchly anti-annexation former President Martin Van Buren, and he actually started with a majority of delegates, but couldn't get that majority to support dropping the two-thirds rule for a nomination, and more than a third of delegates were Southerners who would only accept an annexationist.
Maybe Van Buren could have gotten that rule change through, but in that case the incumbent President, Tyler probably runs on a third party annexationist ticket - I can't really see a path for Van Buren to win, I think the most difference is Clay. That might prevent annexation for another term, Congress having previously opposed it, but I'm not sure it does more than kick the can down the road to 1848. It might depend a lot on the exact circumstances.
@Ares96 is probably the best person to ask more about this period - I'm also currently listening to the audiobook of This Vast Southern Empire about it, on his (rather a long time ago now) recommendation.
sigh
I feel as if I’d be doing a disservice if I don’t post this
 
Now, I know legitimately nothing about 19th century American politics, but what I have been doing is reading Caro's Path to Power, and I'm extremely curious. So, how about it? Could it survive, even for a couple decades before being absorbed into the US?

A problem is that the Texas Republic was bankrupt. Indeed, it was pretty close to a failed state.
 
A problem is that the Texas Republic was bankrupt. Indeed, it was pretty close to a failed state.
That could also be a solution, though - combined with other factors, it could help make the US more leery of incorporating Texas.
Another option would be to increase European immigration through things like a larger, more successful Adelsverein (Sicarius had a TL on the Other Place that used an agreement with France to the same effect), which could lead to tensions with American nativists.
One problem is that if Texas isn’t part of the US, it’s going to have Mexican reannexation hanging over its head for a long time.
 
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That could also be a solution, though - combined with other factors, it could help make the US more leery of incorporating Texas.
Another option would be to increase European immigration through things like a larger, more successful Adelsverein (Sicarius had a TL on the Other Place that used an agreement with France to the same effect), which could lead to tensions with American nativists.
One problem is that if Texas isn’t part of the US, it’s going to have Mexican reannexation hanging over its head for a long time.
To add to this, because I am working on a TL that has this as the main PoD, Texan independence has as its likely necessary preconditions:
  1. Whig ascendancy in the United States through the early 1840s. Harrison surviving to the end of his term might work for this, as might Clay being nominated in 1840, but I really don't know.
  2. Mexico being too distracted with internal problems to do anything about Texas in the early period, and either continuing to be so or ending up willing to make some sort of formal agreement for peace. I don't know if the latter would be feasible - aside from the thorny issue of the Nueces Strip (which is good ranchland even without irrigation - there's a reason the King Ranch is there), Mexico needs Texas to stop filibustering its northern states in a way that Texas has neither the inclination nor the actual ability to do.
    1. The California Gold Rush is really going to mess things up - if independentists in California succeed, it's likely that they go for American annexation immediately, which is both going to strengthen annexationism in Texas and deeply increase tensions between Mexico and the Anglophone world. And when gold is found, the population dynamics would seem to make it a lot more likely that the regions in question look to Washington than to Mexico City - there are just more people, closer, who can strike out for the West in the Anglosphere than the Hispanosphere.
  3. Texas being uninterested in either pursuing annexation or antagonizing Mexico. This is kind of difficult, because it requires neither of the major strains of independent Texan politics to win out - and the nationalists had good reason to be concerned that Texas could at any point face the empire striking back. Plus which, the nationalists' policy towards the Comanche would have required a highly resourced army that could have been turned on Mexico if necessary.
It's all doable, I think, but it's tricky. The main issues seem to be having Texas as enough of a dumpster fire for neither country to be interested in admitting peacefully but not enough of one for Mexico to feel able to reconquer (though the fact that the number of American citizens involved might provoke a war with the United States even under an anti-annexation President might help with that) and not having things spiral out of control in California.

One thing that I forgot (source):
In Break It Up, Kreitner details stories overlooked in most histories of the country’s nineteenth century. For instance, thanks to Texas’s success in cracking off of Mexico, the leading American separatist group at the time—thousands of Mormons, restless in Illinois, looking to find a home beyond the reach of Washington—nearly chose South Texas over Salt Lake City. The Mormons “had closely followed Texan developments, sympathizing with another experiment in independence,” Kreitner writes. Perhaps the Republic of Texas could host the wayward Latter-day Saints. Perhaps Texas could be their new Zion. Kreitner continues:
Sam Houston was all ears. Warring with Comanches, wary of Mexico’s attempts to reclaim its lost province, worried that annexation to the United States would never happen, Houston believed that allowing the Mormons to settle in southern Texas offered advantages for both sides: Texas would have a buffer, defended by the Mormons’ impressive militia, between itself and Mexico, while the Saints could finally have a land all their own, far from their American tormentors.
Those dreams of a Texan-Mormon alliance never came to fruition, largely because raging Americans murdered Mormon founder Joseph Smith soon thereafter. The new leader, Brigham Young, Kreitner says, broke off talks with Texas because he believed, rightly, that the Lone Star Republic was gravitating toward eventual American annexation. And so Texas’s underbelly remained soft, ripe for a revanchist Mexico to come storming northward once more. Rather than the Mormons and the Texans allying in mutually reinforcing independence, both went their separate ways—and, perhaps as a result, ended up in America’s embrace.
If this ends up working out and Texas ends up full of unreconstructed Mormons (as well as Germans - the Adelsverein was kind of a dumpster fire, with the first leader making a bunch of really terrible decisions in order to try to create a German colony in the middle of Texas, blowing through all of the money, and screwing off to Galveston to get drunk; meanwhile, a lot of the Forty-Eighter colonies failed pretty much immediately, and it still made much of Central Texas majority-German-speaking well into the 20th century), I have to imagine that the timeline for annexation gets pushed way back. (The problem is then, I think, that the American settlers in Texas aren't likely to think any more highly of the Mormons than the ones in America, which could lead to problems, especially given how crucial the border is to Texan defense and how lucrative its land could be to mainline-Protestant empresarios - but that's a bridge to be crossed when come to.)
 
I didn't know about the Mormons and South Texas before, so now I'll wonder "where are mormons" in every independent Texas timeline. Certainly doesn't seem likely the American & Germanic settlers and the Mormons are going to get on well for long, which I can see

a) Putting off the United States from annexing it, "we don't want this crap"

b) Something Mexico could surely take advantage of, if not to retake Texas than to go "look how that turned out, Texas is a dumphole now, secession doesn't work"
 
Getting the US into a (losing) war with Britain over the Oregon territory would probably help. That would heighten internal tensions in the US, as well as giving the economy a body blow (of course, it would give the UK an economic body blow as well, which is always a key problem with hypothetical Anglo-American wars.)

Britain's then put in the position of worrying that once America licks its wounds it'll have another go at British Columbia. Britain never recognised Texas, but it did quietly trade with them- here they've got a reason to try and shore up the independent state in the hopes of providing another check on the US's westward impulse.

I dunno, it's a bit thin- but I do think you need some combination of American weakness and a Great Power sponsor, and though France recognised Texas I'm not sure they'd be as useful an ally as the Brits.
 
Though actually, there's that old (somewhat racist) cliché of 'the surviving CSA is Central America'- coups, corruption, racial elites, a few exotic cities like New Orleans amidst abject poverty etc.

Texas as Argentina- an unofficial British Dominion, with oil instead of beef- would be fascinating. You've even got the same cowboy myths!
 
My god, we could get people to film entries for a 'dance your vignette' contest.
I could ineffectively 30s Charleston.

And I unironically have an idea for an AH story about swing dance so I want @Charles EP M. to get to this pronto. I will invoke my three competition victories if I have to.
 
Getting the US into a (losing) war with Britain over the Oregon territory would probably help. That would heighten internal tensions in the US, as well as giving the economy a body blow (of course, it would give the UK an economic body blow as well, which is always a key problem with hypothetical Anglo-American wars.)
One thought about that would be that if the United States wants to prove its strength and take care of those expansionist sentiments, it might attempt to filibuster Texas in on the grounds of “after all, they’re practically Americans anyway”. And if that goes badly, that could take care of those annexationist sentiments within Texas pretty quickly.
 
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