On this day in 1845, six months after the Congress of the Republic of Texas voted for annexation by the United States, Texas was admitted into the Union as the 28th state when President James Polk, a Democrat, signed the annexation measure. Texas formally relinquished its sovereignty to the United States on Feb. 19, 1846.
After gaining independence from Spain in the 1820s, Mexico initially welcomed foreign settlers to sparsely populated Texas. Americans led by Stephen Austin settled along the Brazos River, soon outnumbering the resident Mexicans.
By 1836, the Mexicans’ efforts to exercise more control over the American communities led them to declare their independence. The Texan rebels suffered defeats against the forces of Gen. Antonio López de Santa Anna.
The Alamo fell as Sam Houston’s troops beat a retreat to the east. Subsequently, however, Houston’s troops surprised a Mexican force at San Jacinto. They captured Santa Anna, effectively ending Mexico’s efforts to subdue Texas.
The newly independent republic elected Houston as its president. But its citizens also favored joining the Union. That desired prospect was delayed for more than a decade, however, because many members of Congress in Washington opposed its entry as a slave state. Those tensions contributed to sparking the Mexican-American War in 1846.
Congress finally agreed to annex Texas on Feb. 28, 1845, and President John Tyler signed the bill into law on the following day, shortly before leaving office on March 4. The legislation was designed to provide the incoming president-elect the option of either the immediate annexation of Texas or new talks to revise the annexation terms.
The controversy over the legality of the annexation of Texas stemmed from the fact that Congress approved bringing Texas in the Union as a state, rather than as a territory. It did so through attaining simple majorities in each house, instead of annexing the land via a Senate treaty — as was done with prior Native American lands. That approach would have required what was then an unobtainable two-thirds’ support.
One motive behind the push on the Texans’ part for annexation was a $10 million public debt they had incurred — one that the federal government eventually agreed to assume.
At the time of statehood, Texas included part of present-day Colorado, Kansas, New Mexico, Oklahoma, and Wyoming. Texas sold territory to the United States in 1850 to assume generally the same boundary as the present state, but there were some subsequent revisions. In 1896, the Supreme Court ruled the Texas claim to the Greer County area in southwest Oklahoma to be invalid, and the area was officially deemed to be part of Oklahoma. An additional boundary dispute with Oklahoma was settled in 1930 by adding a narrow strip of territory to Texas. As the Rio Grande has changed its course, the United States and the Republic of Mexico have made periodic adjustments to their boundary that affected the boundary of Texas.
Uniquely, under the annexation terms, Texas could keep its public lands. That segment of the deal meant that the subsequent oil discoveries on state lands have been available to this day to help fund the state’s public universities.
Census data for Texas are available beginning with the 1850 census.
Source:
History.com
Census.gov