THE ANNEXATION OF TEXAS TO THE UNITED STATES

A contract between two Republics.

Annexation to the United States usually requires a two-thirds majority of both houses of congress for approval. However, because Texas was a Republic and considered of equal standing to the Republic of the United States, Texas became part of the United States by a contract approved by a simple majority in both republics in 1845 graranteeing certain powers extrodanary to the State of Texas. The concluding act in the drama took place in Austin, February 19th, 1846, when Anson Jones, president of the Republic of Texas, handed over the reins of authority  to J. Pickney Henderson, govenor of the State of Texas.

MAJOR CLAUSES IN THE CONTRACT ARE;

1. All public lands within Texas Boundaries are to be held by the state as a Public Domain.

2. Texas has the right to divide into as many as five states, such division to be actuated from within the commonwealth amd not without consent of the commonwealth as a whole. Each state so formed to be received into the Union on presentation of a constitution acceptable to the United States.

3. Texas would continue responsibility for its sizable public debt.

In its first state constitution, at the insistance of Don Antonio Navarro, the one native-born member of the constitutional convention [who spoke through an interpreter], the franchise was bestowed on all males 21 years of age except Indians not taxed, Africans and descendents of Africans. Thus women were lumped, indirectly, with Black folk and nomadic or tribal Indians, the latter being, at the same time distinguished from Indians "baptized and settled on the land."

Then Texas saddled on the United States for "unsettled" Indians--namely Apaches and Comanches, while retaining under the governors control its own frontier and border defensive units of the Texas Rangers. To accommodate its Indian responsibility the United States established a series of military posts rainbowing above the settlements from northeast corner of the state to the Rio Grande--meanwhile taking over the government or Santa Fe, Texas, [Now New Mexico] claiming the Public Domain extended to the headwaters of the Rio Grand. Texas was ready to declare the Annexation contract violated  and was threatening sucessision when Washington D. C. sent down cash to the amount of $10,000,000 --more than enough to cover the public debt. Texas accepted the peace offering and the boundaries were agreed upon as approximately what they are now.

The Lone Star flag remains--no dead emblem of past glory but the symbol of vestigial reminants of a nationhood still extant in the psychology of a folk element whose legislative fiat sets it alongside the stars and Stripes on a flag pole of equal height, requiring that it be made as nearly as possible  the same size. The Texas flag can never be exactly the same size  as the flag of the United States because it is a tricolor--the red, white and blue bars are of identical deminsion with the five pointed star as the center of the blue bar which is vertical to the white and red bar, the white bar at the top. The flag cannot be printed on any advertising material or displayed for any commercial purpose. It is always to the left of the United States flag. It can be reversed on the staff with the red bar on the top as a distress signal. The Same distress signal as with the United States flag.

By federal law,
Texas is the only state in the U...S That can fly its flag at the same height as the U.S. Flag. Think about that for a second. You fly the Stars and Stripes at 20 feet in Maryland , California , or Maine , and your state flag, whatever it is, goes at 17 feet. You fly the Stars and Stripes in front of Klein Oak High or anyplace else in Texas at 20 feet, the Lone Star flies at the same height - 20 feet. Do you know why?  Because it is the only state that was a Republic before it became a state .