Texas Joins the United States

Texas Joins the United States
Author: Christy Steele
Publisher: Gareth Stevens
Total Pages: 52
Release: 2004-12-30
Genre: History
ISBN: 9780836857917

Discover what role Texas played in helping the United States achieve its "Manifest Destiny" of stretching from coast to coast. As the only state to have been its own nation, Texas has a unique history. This book chronicles its journey from frontier province of Spain and Mexico to the Texas Republic and its current status as a U.S. state. Along the way, readers discover the fascinating people, places, and events that shaped the Lone Star State. Book jacket.

Texas Joins the United States

Texas Joins the United States
Author: Russell Roberts
Publisher: Mitchell Lane Publishers, Inc.
Total Pages: 52
Release: 2010-12-23
Genre: Juvenile Nonfiction
ISBN: 1612280161

Few states have gone the route that Texas did to become part of the Union. First a part of Spain, then Mexico, Texas faced a very uncertain future when it opted to revolt against the regime of Santa Anna. On the plains of San Jacinto, a ragtag Texas army won immortality by defeating Santa Anna and gaining independence for Texas. The path to Texas statehood shines brightly with some of the memorable names in American history, such as Davy Crockett, Sam Houston, Jim Bowie, Stephen F. Austin, William Barret Travis, and Andrew Jackson. That same path is also glorified by the legendary Battle of the Alamo, at which people died willingly in the defense of an idea they believed in. The route to Texas statehood is long, thrilling, sometimes desperate, and an overall triumph of the spirit of freedom.

As Texas Goes...: How the Lone Star State Hijacked the American Agenda

As Texas Goes...: How the Lone Star State Hijacked the American Agenda
Author: Gail Collins
Publisher: W. W. Norton & Company
Total Pages: 462
Release: 2012-06-04
Genre: Political Science
ISBN: 0871404753

“Gail Collins is the funniest serious political commentator in America. Reading As Texas Goes… is pure pleasure from page one.” —Rachel Maddow A Kirkus Reviews Best Book of the Year (Nonfiction) As Texas Goes . . . provides a trenchant yet often hilarious look into American politics and the disproportional influence of Texas, which has become the model for not just the Tea Party but also the Republican Party. Now with an expanded introduction and a new concluding chapter that will assess the influence of the Texas way of thinking on the 2012 election, Collins shows how the presidential race devolved into a clash between the so-called “empty places” and the crowded places that became a central theme in her book. The expanded edition will also feature more examples of the Texas style, such as Governor Rick Perry’s nearsighted refusal to accept federal Medicaid funding as well as the proposed ban on teaching “critical thinking” in the classroom. As Texas Goes . . . will prove to be even more relevant to American politics by the dawn of a new political era in January 2013.

Storm over Texas

Storm over Texas
Author: Joel H. Silbey
Publisher: Oxford University Press
Total Pages: 253
Release: 2005-08-01
Genre: History
ISBN: 0198031920

In the spring of 1844, a fiery political conflict erupted over the admission of Texas into the Union. This hard-fought and bitter controversy profoundly changed the course of American history. Indeed, as Joel Silbey argues in Storm Over Texas, it marked the crucial moment when partisan differences were transformed into a North-vs-South antagonism, and the momentum towards Civil War leaped into high gear. Silbey, one of America's most renowned political historians, offers a swiftly paced and compelling narrative of the Texas imbroglio, which included an exceptional cast of characters, from John C. Calhoun and John Quincy Adams, to James K. Polk and Martin Van Buren. We see how a series of unexpected moves, some planned, some inadvertent, sparked a crisis that intensified and crystallized the North-South divide. Sectionalism, Silbey shows, had often been intense, but rarely widespread and generally well contained by other forces. After Texas statehood, it became a driving force in national affairs, ultimately leading to Southern secession and Civil War. With subtlety, great care, and much imagination, Joel Silbey shows that this brief political struggle became, in the words of an Alabama congressman, "the greatest question of the age"--and a pivotal moment in American history.

The Handbook of Texas

The Handbook of Texas
Author: Walter Prescott Webb
Publisher:
Total Pages: 1176
Release: 1952
Genre: Texas
ISBN:

Vol. 3: A supplement, edited by Eldon Stephen Branda. Includes bibliographical references.

The Laws of Slavery in Texas

The Laws of Slavery in Texas
Author: Randolph B. Campbell
Publisher: University of Texas Press
Total Pages: 209
Release: 2010-02-15
Genre: History
ISBN: 0292721889

The laws that governed the institution of slavery in early Texas were enacted over a fifty-year period in which Texas moved through incarnations as a Spanish colony, a Mexican state, an independent republic, a part of the United States, and a Confederate state. This unusual legal heritage sets Texas apart from the other slave-holding states and provides a unique opportunity to examine how slave laws were enacted and upheld as political and legal structures changed. The Laws of Slavery in Texas makes that examination possible by combining seminal historical essays with excerpts from key legal documents from the slave period and tying them together with interpretive commentary by the foremost scholar on the subject, Randolph B. Campbell. Campbell's commentary focuses on an aspect of slave law that was particularly evident in the evolving legal system of early Texas: the dilemma that arose when human beings were treated as property. As Campbell points out, defining slaves as moveable property, or chattel, presented a serious difficulty to those who wrote and interpreted the law because, unlike any other form of property, slaves were sentient beings. They were held responsible for their crimes, and in numerous other ways statute and case law dealing with slavery recognized the humanness of the enslaved. Attempts to protect the property rights of slave owners led to increasingly restrictive laws—including laws concerning free blacks—that were difficult to uphold. The documents in this collection reveal both the roots of the dilemma and its inevitable outcome.

The Texas Navy

The Texas Navy
Author: United States. Naval History Division
Publisher:
Total Pages: 44
Release: 1968
Genre: Ships
ISBN:

Remember the Alamo

Remember the Alamo
Author: Victor South
Publisher:
Total Pages: 0
Release: 2012-09
Genre: Alamo (San Antonio, Tex.)
ISBN: 9781422224021

The United States' boundaries have expanded over the centuries- and at the same time, American's ideas about their country have grown as well. The nation the world knows today was shaped by centuries of thinkers and events. When Moses Austin first brought American settlers into Texas in 1820, little did he realize the far-reaching consequences of his action. Despite years of conflict and bloodshed, those settlers would eventually join the United States as a new state, adding nearly a million square miles to America's land. Texas changed the shape of America forever! Book jacket.