Is rebel Texas on its way to leaving the union?
Austin, Sunday,
Could the coronavirus issue be the match in the powder barrel that leads to the splitting up of the United States? Well, in Texas, some people are certainly talking like that.
US states have argued about leaving the Union ever since the end of the Revolutionary War against Britain during the 18th century. And the issue has been a hot one in recent years, with campaigns for a ballot on leaving in California in 2021 while Florida, which actually did secede in 1861, has flatly rejected many of Joe Biden's federal mandates, particularly the coronavirus ones. Officially, however, states are simply not allowed to quit the union, even if the exact legal position is complicated, not least as each of the original colonies in the 'New World' started out with separate grants from the British Crown.
It was this that led the French philosopher, Alexis de Tocqueville to remark, in 1825: "If today one of these same states wanted to withdraw its name from the contract, it would be quite difficult to prove that it could not do so. To combat it, the federal government would have no evident support in either force or right." But that's ethics, not politics and in the eye of the Civil War, President Abraham Lincoln simply argued that states were not sovereign before the Constitution but instead were created by it. Addressing Texas in particular, which had just voted to secede by 166 to 8, Lincoln recognized Texas's history as an independent nation but said that by joining the Union it had forever lost the right to be independent.
Forty-four years later, the US Supreme Court described secession acts passed by states as "absolutely null" while, in 2006, Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia stated. "If there was any constitutional issue resolved by the Civil War, it is that there is no right to secede."
However, that's not how it looks from Texas, a state with a particularly independent streak, having originally seceded from Mexico in 1836. At this time, there were two different visions of the future: as a state and as an independent nation. Today, for many Texans, the lost Republic of Texas is considered a time of independence and self-determination, contrasted to today's subservience to the Feds in Washington. Schools in Texas require a history course echoing these ideas and Texas independence campaigners claim that the Union illegally annexed the state and is holding it captive! Today, the Texas Nationalist Movement wants a referendum. In June 2016, when the UK voted to leave the European Union using the hashtag #Brexit on social media, Texans started using the hashtag #Texit. On January 26, 2021, a Texas Independence Referendum Act was filed - but it was never voted on.
Meanwhile, queuing up to join…
Even if some states are increasingly discussing leaving the union, there are many lands keen to join:
• Columbia: The land of Washington DC has discussed statehood for decades and has many times come close to it.
• Puerto-Rico: The US's Caribbean gem is the most serious candidate for becoming a state and might just be about to succeed in the years to come.
• Guam: Meanwhile, on the discreet Pacific island. statehood seems closer than it's ever been and polling shows that a large chunk of the population would desire it.
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