Annexation of Texas (1845): The Lone Star Joins the Union

The annexation of Texas made the independent Republic of Texas part of the United States in 1845. After years of debate dominated by the question of slavery, Congress approved a joint resolution signed by President John Tyler on 1 March 1845, and Texas became the 28th state on 29 December. Mexico never accepted the loss of Texas, and the dispute over its border led directly to the Mexican-American War.

The Republic of Texas

Texas won its independence from Mexico after the Battle of San Jacinto on 21 April 1836. Most of its settlers had come from the United States, and in September 1836 Texan voters overwhelmingly backed joining the Union. President Andrew Jackson recognised Texan independence in March 1837 but avoided annexation, and his successor Martin Van Buren turned down a Texan offer.

The reason was slavery. Texas was a slave-holding republic, and its admission would add a large slave state, possibly several, upsetting the balance in Congress set by the Missouri Compromise. Abolitionists and many Northern Whigs, led in Congress by John Quincy Adams, fought hard against it. Mexico, which still claimed Texas, warned that annexation would mean war.

The young republic itself struggled. It was heavily in debt, its currency lost most of its value, and Mexican forces briefly occupied San Antonio twice in 1842. Sam Houston, who served twice as president, played a careful game, seeking closer ties with Britain and France partly to make the United States more eager to annex Texas before a rival power gained influence there.

Tyler’s campaign and the failed treaty

John Tyler, who became president in April 1841, made annexation his chief goal. He was worried by British efforts to win influence in Texas and perhaps encourage the end of slavery there. His secretary of state Abel Upshur opened secret talks, and after Upshur was killed in the explosion of a gun aboard USS Princeton in February 1844, his successor John C. Calhoun signed a treaty with Texas on 12 April 1844.

Calhoun then published a letter to the British minister defending annexation as a way to protect slavery. This tied the treaty openly to the slavery question, and on 8 June 1844 the Senate rejected it by 35 votes to 16.

The election of 1844 and the joint resolution

Texas became the central issue of the 1844 presidential election. The Democrat James K. Polk called for the “re-annexation” of Texas and the “re-occupation” of Oregon, while the Whig Henry Clay hesitated. Polk’s narrow victory was taken as a mandate for expansion.

Tyler, now a lame-duck president, proposed annexation by a joint resolution of Congress, which needed only simple majorities. The House passed it in January 1845 and the Senate on 27 February by 27 votes to 25. Tyler signed it on 1 March 1845, three days before leaving office.

The terms were unusual. Texas would keep its public lands and pay its own debts, and up to four more states could later be carved from its territory, with slavery banned in any part north of the Missouri Compromise line of 36°30'.

Texas decides

Britain and France persuaded Mexico to offer recognition of Texan independence if Texas stayed independent, but the offer came too late. On 4 July 1845 a convention in Austin accepted annexation, and Texan voters approved it and a state constitution in October. Polk signed the act of admission on 29 December 1845.

On 19 February 1846, in Austin, the last president of the republic, Anson Jones, lowered its flag and handed power to the new state governor, J. Pinckney Henderson. Jones declared that “the Republic of Texas is no more.”

Road to war

Mexico broke off diplomatic relations with the United States in March 1845. The two sides also disagreed about the border: Texas claimed the Rio Grande, while Mexico treated the Nueces River, further north, as the historic limit of the province. Polk sent General Zachary Taylor’s army to Corpus Christi in mid-1845 and in January 1846 ordered it to the Rio Grande, which it reached in late March. A clash with Mexican cavalry in April 1846 began the Mexican-American War.

Timeline

• 1836, 2 March: Texas declares independence from Mexico.
• 1837, March: The United States recognises the Republic of Texas.
• 1844, 12 April: Calhoun signs an annexation treaty with Texas.
• 1844, 8 June: The US Senate rejects the treaty, 35-16.
• 1845, 1 March: Tyler signs the joint resolution for annexation.
• 1845, 4 July: A Texan convention accepts annexation.
• 1845, 29 December: Texas becomes the 28th state.
• 1846, 19 February: The Republic of Texas formally hands over power.

Why it matters

The annexation of Texas added a vast territory to the United States and set off the war that brought California and the Southwest into the country. It also sharpened the sectional conflict over the expansion of slavery, a quarrel that would grow through the 1850s until the Civil War, when Texas itself seceded from the Union in 1861. Texas remained the largest US state by area until Alaska was admitted in 1959.