Texas, one of the West South Central states of the United States. It borders Mexico on the southwest and the Gulf of Mexico on the southeast. To the west is New Mexico, to the north and northeast lie Oklahoma and Arkansas, and Louisiana bounds Texas on the east. Austin is the capital of Texas. Houston is the largest city.
Texas is the size of Ohio, Indiana, and all the New England and Middle Atlantic states combined, and its vast area encompasses forests, mountains, deserts and dry plains, and a long, humid, subtropical coastal lowland. Texas's wealth of mineral resources is almost unequaled among the other states. Its rapid economic development stimulated by these resources and its vast size have made Texas an American legend. Oil wells, chemicals, ranches, and cattle have played a major part in that legend.
For more than 100 years, Texas was part of the Spanish Empire in America. When Mexico gained its independence from Spain in 1821, Texas was for a while joined to Mexico. The section from San Antonio southward retains the flavor of the Hispano-Mexican period in its architecture, foods, and festivals.
The name Texas is derived from tejas or teyas, the rendering by the Spanish in the mid-16th century of the Caddo people's word for friends or allies. It gradually became used to denote the region north of the Río Grande and east of New Mexico, and was officially applied as Texas when the area was organized as a republic in 1836. Texas was an independent republic until it joined the Union on December 29, 1845, as the 28th state. Its single-star flag dates from its independent period and has given Texas the nickname the Lone Star State.
IIPHYSICAL GEOGRAPHY Texas is the second largest state in the nation, after Alaska, and has an area of 692,244 sq km (267,277 sq mi), including 12,844 sq km (4959 sq mi) of inland water and 1046 sq km (404 sq mi) of coastal water over which it has jurisdiction. Extending for about 1240 km (about 770 mi) from east to west and for about 1290 km (about 800 mi) from north to south, the state comprises about 7 percent of the land area of the United States. The mean elevation is about 500 m (1700 ft).
ANatural Regions Texas can be divided into four natural regions, or physiographic provinces: the Gulf Coastal Plain, the Central Lowland, the Great Plains, and the Basin and Range province.
Calvert, Robert A., Arnoldo De Leon and Gregg Cantrell. The History of Texas. 4th. Wheeling: Harlan Davidson, Inc., 2007. Print.
On June 23, 1845, the Republic of Texas was annexed to the U.S. as a slave state. Foley notes "the annexation of Texas as a slave state…became the great white hope of northern expansionists anxious to emancipate the nation from blacks, who, it was hoped, would find a home among the kindred population of 'colored races' in Mexico."(20) But rather than uniting as kindred races, discord between poor whites, African Americans and Mexicans resulted from competition for farmland as either tenant farmers or sharecroppers.
Texas won independence from Mexico in 1836. In the year 1844, James K. Polk was elected president. He was a strong believer in manifest destiny. Congress decided to annex Texas into the United States. Mexico felt that America stole Texas from them.
The American way of living and thinking in Texas have changed tremendously over the past century. Political ideals are one thing that changes with time, and have transformed with the changing times well. The Texas constitution of 1876 was a landmark for the state and has been part of the state’s history since then. The Texas constitution of 1876 is still in use today but with all its harsh restrictions it is considered one of the most confusing of all the state constitutions. The constitution became one of the most prominent changes to Texas education system and politics.
Just before Polk's presidency Texas had freed itself from Mexican rule and desired American annexation. This desire came from thousands of former American citizens that settled in Texas in the 1820s. This was due to the Mexican government supplying huge land grants to entice new settlers to Texas and secure its northern border from America. The Mexican government failed to realize the true impact that their persuasion of Americans for settlement would cause. In 1830, Mexico finally put a freeze on all American immigration due to the large number of American settlers and their certain revolution. In 1836, The Republic of Texas was est...
Texas is a unique place with a colorful history of legendary cowboys and tall tales. The state stretches over the middle section of the southern United States. Texas has experienced shifts in governmental control within the United States. French, Spanish, Mexican, and Confederacy, and all having once been in charge, not to mention the time Texas spent as an independent republic. Texas has had many battles and wars within its borders, resulting in seven different constitutions within a span of fifty years between each document.
The expansion of agriculture and railroads helped form Texas’s present economy. The invention of the steam engine not only allowed people to move across the country in 7 days, instead of 6 months, but it also allowed crops and livestock to be carried to markets and places where they would be sold anywhere in the country. They could be moved to another farm in Texas as well. Since it’s such a large state, railroads were a necessity for travel, and general transportation. The railroad-building boom lasted 40 years. The production of cotton in Texas introduced some of the first slave-based cotton farms, and was the dominant crop for a very long time. After this event, Texas’s economy was forever changed.
Narrative History of Texas Annexation, Secession, and Readmission to the Union. Texans voted in favor of annexation to the United States in the first election following independence in 1836. However, throughout the Republic period (1836-1845) no treaty of annexation negotiated between the Republic and the United States was ratified by both nations. When all attempts to arrive at a formal annexation treaty failed, the United States Congress passed--after much debate and only a simple majority--a Joint Resolution for Annexing Texas to the United States. Under these terms, Texas would keep both its public lands and its public debt, it would have the power to divide into four additional states "of convenient size" in the future if it so desired, and it would deliver all military, postal, and customs facilities and authority to the United States government.
There has been a huge question of why Texas has shifted from being mainly Democratic to Republican state. When reading “Cowboy Conservatism” by Sean P. Cunningham the most basic analysis of why there has been the drastic change was because rather than Texas leaving the Democratic Party the Democratic Party left Texas. Both parties went through a great amount of change on what each specific party views were. For example “Both parties experienced periods of factional discord and ideological readjustment” The democratic and republican parties had big changes in their political views. The economic changes that Texas was undergoing was one of the reasons that there was discord in the democratic and republican party. Increase in the population in the suburbs was a huge impact in the change of the political parties. The migration into the major cities such as Houston, Austin, and Fort Bend County had an influence on the votes. Since there was an influx of people from other places with republican views there was a tremendous increases of change in votes of political party’s from democratic to republican. There was also a decrease in conservative democrats in the U.S. furthermore having a decrease of conservatives demarcated and increase of more suburbs and the Republican Party is what changed Texas to republican. Texans had a view of the Democratic
Well before the beginning of the Civil War, Texas and some. of its surrounding territories were property of Spain just like its southern neighbor, Mexico. Soon after realizing their particular suppression by Spain, Mexico fought for, and won. independence from its mother country. Mexico now had control of their country and the territory of Texas.
Now, the Mexican Revolution was just a small beginning for the eventual state of Texas. Back in 1809, Texas was just a provenance in the Spanish Empire and its inhabitants were mostly converted Native Americans and people of Spanish descent, but not native born of Spain. The Spanish born people had more rights and were, according to the law, superior to all others. This and more oppression by the Spanish against the Mexicans (i.e. the Native Americans and non-Spanish born), caused an uprising by the common people that was started by a Catholic priest in 1809. It would take 16 more years before Mexico had won its independence from Spain like the US had from Great Britain.
13 October 1834 was the first revolutionary meeting of the American citizens who’d settled in Mexico, in the area soon to be known as Texas. The people attempted a movement that soon was laid to rest by the Mexican Congress. Attempts at independence were silenced for the time being and the elections of 1835 proceeded forward. With Santa Anna moving to control Mexico, and taxes increasing, Texans grew restless and rowdy.
Texas has a total land area of 261,914 square miles- making it the second largest state in the United States. Combined with a diverse geography, Texas has one of the most varied climates of any state. As the amount of carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases in the atmosphere increases year by year, causing an increase in the Earth’s average overall temperature, changes in our climate are inevitable. We will investigate how those changes will affect the life of the everyday Texan - from our water resources, to our cities and why they are important issues that need to be addressed by our society.
During the 18th and 19th centuries, what we now know as the western United States was under much contention with the federal government. This period was very difficult for the leaders of the government to decide how to divide up the vast regions of land in the west. It seems impossible to think of Silicon Valley, Oregon or even Washington as being barren, unsettled territory. But just a few centuries ago, those in power were making influential decisions that would effect us today.
Also the way Texas began in a way that said that they should be apart of the United States. In the end there were more important reasons for annexing Texas into the union, than to leave Texas the way she was. From the early days of pioneers and settlers, thousands of Americans began to move into what would become Texas. The Mexican government wanted to populate the Texas area to increase the economy. For a long period of time the Mexican government had placed many laws on the territory, but none that were deeply enforced.