Even if technically in the cards, Texas historians say this proposal is more lore than a practical possibility.
Tom Fox/TNS
Residents of the Lone Star state have long flaunted the state’s unique independence: Don’t mess with Texas, lest Texas secede.
Or self-destruct. One reader asked Curious Texas, “Could Texas divide itself into five states?”
Here’s what we found out.
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Why could Texas divide itself into five?
In 1845, Texas was annexed to the United States via a joint congressional resolution. Within this legislation lies the roots of Texas’ potential to divide itself.
A provision within the annexation agreement pre-approved up to four additional states to be formed out of the territory, so long as Texas itself approved, said Brian Franklin, associate director of SMU’s Center for Presidential History.
“This was a unique moment in U.S. history, because the U.S. Constitution already stated in Article IV that new states may be admitted to the Union, but that no new state could be formed within the jurisdiction of any other state,” Franklin wrote in a statement to The Dallas Morning News.
Historians cited a number of reasons for the inclusion of this possibility.
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Franklin said that as part of the provision, any new states broken off from Texas would be subject to the requirements of the Missouri Compromise, which permitted territories south of a line running along Missouri’s southern border across the American West to choose whether or not they would allow slavery.
Rick McCaslin, the Texas State Historian and director of publications for the Texas State Historical Association, pointed to slavery as the reason this provision was included in the first place.
“It had everything to do with trying to get Congress to annex what was going to be the largest slave state in the Union,” McCaslin said. The understanding was that the potential of dividing the state would dilute the addition of two more slave state senators in Congress, because the state could be divided to theoretically add four new free states and corresponding senators, McCaslin said.
SMU Professor Calvin Jillson has written nine books on Texas and American politics. He said the stipulation was initially included in the annexation agreement because of the sheer size of the state in comparison to the rest of the country. Texas, at the time, was claiming the current boundaries but also New Mexico through Colorado, touching Kansas. “That huge territory was two to three times the size of New England,” Jillson said.
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Does this provision still allow Texas to break into five?
Historians say that despite legal disagreement over whether the provision technically still stands, in terms of practicality the answer is a resounding no.
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“It’s an interesting piece of local Texas mythology and trivia to ask these questions, but I think there are answers to them now,” Jillson said.
With the Compromise of 1850 came the settlement of current Texas boundaries. This did not necessarily change Texas’ ability to break into five states, Jillson said, but he believes the result of the Civil War did.
Jillson said when Texas was readmitted to the Union after breaking off to join the Confederacy, conditions dictated by the federal government meant, “those earlier questions of secession and whether Texas can break into four more states were effectively resolved.” Instead, Jillson believes Texas would have to defer to needing federal agreement moving forward.
Other legal scholars, according to McCaslin, say the annexation aspect of the agreement was never nullified.
Still, any attempts to defer back to the annexation agreement have failed.
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Historians cited a number of examples of the possibility arising. McCaslin pointed to a 1868 post-Civil War state constitutional convention where radical republicans attempted, unsuccessfully, to split off from southern conservative democrats in the state.
Jillson noted John Garner, Franklin Roosevelt’s vice president, was an advocate of splitting Texas into five. Additionally, pro-secession candidates, such as one going by “Larry SECEDE Kilgore” in 2012, often brought up the possibility of splitting up alongside the possibility of secession.
Franklin added that although multiple efforts to split were made in the 19th century, “to do so required the people of Texas to agree on this. And such agreement on everything from slavery, to railroads, to money, etc. was not going to happen.”
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Now, historians are in agreement that splitting would be near impossible.
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“As both a legal and practical matter, the answer is no,” Jillson said. Though the legal answer is a more resounding no for secession, he still believes it would not be allowed for Texas to divide itself.
Jillson does not believe that the Texas state government legislature and the governor would be able to agree upon new boundaries for the state, let alone the United States Congress and president, who Jillson believes would now have to approve the split.
With the division of boundaries would come the division of resources. “Texans would have to agree to find a way to split everything: oil money, roads and railroads, university systems and power grids,” Franklin wrote.
Jillson said the possibility of division often arises nowadays in the context of a potential jump to 10 United States senators assigned to what used to be Texas. “Before you can even think about that, you’ve got to think about how you can divide Texas up, and what the clout of each one of the new mini Texas delegations would be,” Jillson said.
Franklin said any potential gain in senators would come “at the cost of Texans’ wealth and pride.”
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What does this potential split say about Texas’ identity?
That this question comes up today is a reflection of Texas exceptionalism, Jillson said, the deep-rooted element of Texas’ sense of self that “there’s no other state like Texas.”
The possibility of splitting up goes hand in hand alongside secession as something to prove the state’s uniqueness, McCaslin said. “We like to think of ourselves as fiercely independent… We could do it if we wanted to. We could split into five states if we wanted to. You can’t name any other state that has that,” McCaslin said of Texans’ sense of self.
But actually splitting up would be antithetical to the state’s identity, Jillson said. “You wouldn’t be Texas. You would be five Louisianas, five Alabamas. That just does not conform with the Texas sense of self, the idea that everything is better in Texas, that we could be a whole country of our own, that we’d be the eighth largest economy in the world if we were. All of that goes out the window.”
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