Texas divisionism

When Texas was annexed into the United States in 1845, the Joint Resolution of Annexation explicitly permitted Texas to be divided into as many as five states without requiring a constitutional amendment. Early in Texas's statehood, several proposals emerged to subdivide the territory, driven by the challenges of governing such a vast area and differing regional interests. For example, in the 1850s, some politicians from East Texas, which was more closely aligned with the Old South, advocated for separation from the western frontier regions. During the Civil War, Confederate leaders occasionally discussed reconfiguring state boundaries in the South, including Texas, to strengthen the Confederacy's hold over the region. However, no division plans materialized during or after. ==Federal constitutional process==

Article IV, Section 3, of the United States Constitution expressly prohibits any other state from dividing up and forming smaller states without congressional approval. The section states "New states may be admitted by the Congress into this union; but no new states shall be formed or erected within the jurisdiction of any other state; nor any state be formed by the junction of two or more states, or parts of states, without the consent of the legislatures of the states concerned as well as of the Congress." The Joint Resolution for Annexing Texas to the United States, Opponents of this proposal argue that there was no such "pre-approval" granted to Texas by Congress within the statute and that the Constitution requires future congressional approval of any new states that are proposed to be formed from what is now the state of Texas. According to opponents, the statute does not grant Texas any congressional "pre-approval" for partition, but the statute simply limits the number of new states that could be carved out of the annexed Texas territory to four. Opponents also argue that the statute has also been overridden and rendered moot by later legislation that was enacted by Congress, the Act which admitted Texas into the Union as a state. The text of the subsequent Texas Admission Act, signed on 29 December 1845, states that Texas would be admitted to the Union "on an equal footing with the original States in all respects whatever," which moots any supposed special right for Texas to divide itself up into five states without the future approval of Congress in accordance to Article V, Section 3, of the US Constitution. Texas divisionism argue that the division of their state could be desirable because, as the second-largest state in the United States in both area and population, Texas is too large to be governed efficiently as one political unit or that in several states, Texans would gain more power at the federal level, particularly in the U.S. Senate since each state elects two senators, and by extension in the Electoral College in which each state gets two electoral votes for their senators in addition to an electoral vote for each representative. However, others argue that division may be wastefully duplicative by requiring a new state government for each new state. == Legislative efforts ==

The division of the state of Texas was frequently proposed in the early decades of Texan statehood, particularly in the decades immediately prior to and following the American Civil War. Compromise of 1850 debates In the Compromise of 1850 debates, Tennessee Senator John Bell proposed division into two southern states, with the assent of Texas, in February 1850. New Mexico would get all Texas land north of the 34th parallel north, including today's Texas Panhandle, while the area to the south, including the southeastern part of today's New Mexico, would be divided at the Colorado River of Texas into two Southern states, balancing the admission of California and New Mexico as free states. State of Lincoln The State of Lincoln was proposed in 1869, to be carved out of the territory of Texas from the area south and west of the state's Colorado River. Unlike many other Texas division proposals of the Reconstruction period, this one, named after Abraham Lincoln, was presented to Congress, but the state legislature did not take final action. State of Jefferson The proposed State of Jefferson would have been a new state formed by one of two plans for the division of the State of Texas. The bill that annexed the Republic of Texas to the United States in 1845 allowed up to four new States, in addition to the State of Texas, to be formed out of the territory of the former Republic of Texas. 1870 With no plan from the Texas Convention, a Congressional plan was drafted to create a State of Lincoln from Texas. This plan never made it out of the committee. Instead, the Howard Bill was introduced calling for two territories and future states, Jefferson and Matagorda, to be formed from Texas. Texas east of the San Antonio River was designated as Jefferson. The rump Texas would then be admitted under Reconstruction plans. The new territories would join when they were considered able to function as states. A competing plan from the state in 1871 proposed a north, east, south, and west division. Neither legislature made final approval of either plan. in response to what proponents felt was lack of state attention to road infrastructure, A. P. Sights proposed that 46 northern Texas counties and 23 western Oklahoma counties secede to form a new, roughly rectangular state called Texlahoma. Legal and Constitutional Considerations In 2009, Nate Silver wrote an article covering the topic of dividing Texas. He argued that a division could slightly help Republicans in the Senate while slightly hurting them in the Electoral College, ultimately concluding that there was not much rationale for either political party to support such a division. Modern scholars note that even if Texas attempted division, numerous constitutional and logistical hurdles would stand in the way, including how to divide public debts, allocate resources, and reorganize major infrastructure (Texas Law Review, Federalism Articles). In a 2019 Yale lecture series called "Power and Politics in Today's World", Professor Ian Shapiro argues that splitting both Texas and California into two states each is an effective way of solving the disproportionate influence of the two biggest states in the electoral college to facilitate a more proportional state-wide representation. == Criticism and challenges ==

Critics of divisionism point out that breaking up Texas could potentially fragment a variety of industries from a statewide regulatory framework. Furthermore, it could also create disputes over shared resources such as the Ogallala Aquifer and the ERCOT electric grid. In addition, national political implications - particularly regarding Senate states and electoral votes - would likely make Congress cautious about approving any new states emerging from Texas. Pew Research Center studies on American political polarization (2014) suggest that division might further deepen partisan divides at the national level. Despite regional tensions, there is no strong, sustained public movement within Texas today demanding formal division. == See also ==