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Archiver > GERMAN-TEXAN > 2002-04 > 1018245397


From: Dave Crane <>
Subject: Re: [G-T] Re: Texas Myths?
Date: Mon, 08 Apr 2002 00:57:11 -0500
In-Reply-To: <3CB12B99.8EB80E00@ghg.net>


How about:
"28th Congress of the United States, Session II, No. 8 Joint Resolution for
Annexing Texas to the United States, 1 March A.D.
1845 (U.S. Statutes at Large, Vol. 5, p. 797)

Resolved by the Senate and House of Representatives of the
United States of America in Congress assembled, ] That Congress
doth consent that...the Republic of Texas, may be erected into a
new State...in order that the same may be admitted as one of the
States of this Union.

2. [ And be it further resolved, ] That the foregoing consent of
Congress is given upon the following conditions, and with the
following guarantees...New States, of convenient size, not
exceeding four in number, in addition to said State of Texas,
and having sufficient population, may hereafter, by consent of
said State, be formed out of the territory thereof, which shall
be entitled to admission under the provisions of the Federal
Constitution...

(This awas conditional on Texas ceding the territories to the north which
became parts of Colorado, Wyoming, etc.).

At 12:33 AM 4/8/02, you wrote:
>Back before the much-lamented demise of the Houston Post, editor Lynn
>Ashby did a column on the two commonly-held bits of lore about the
>conditions under which Texas joined the union. One bit of lore was that,
>since Texas had been a nation, it could always fly its State flag at the
>same height as, and on the same level with, with the U.S. flag, when
>both were flown above some institution. The other was that Texas could
>secede from the union at any time if it further divided itself into six
>states at the time of secession. He used as sources noted historians
>from Rice and UT, I believe. It was a bit strange that none of his
>sources would absolutely refute those bits of lore, but none of them
>could find any evidence that they were true. It would certainly seem
>that, if those bits of lore were fact, they would have been explicitly
>written into the articles of annexation somewhere. They aren't. So Ashby
>concluded that though he could find no hard evidence that the lore was
>myth, nor could any of his sources verify them. That was a bit
>disappointing. I'd always heard those claims all through my growing-up
>years, but I, personally , have never seen kind of documentation that
>backs them up.
>
>Bob Schulz

The idea that the Texas flag may be flown at the same height as tha US flag
comes from the (almost) unique fact that Texas was a republic when it was
admitted to the union Granted that California had been a rather shaky
republic for a short period of time but the situation in California was a
bit different. They became a republic on the model of the state of Texas
but their sole purpose at all times was to become a state. Texas was a
republic for ten years and only became a state after it was clear that
self-determination would be an expensive proposition for a border
state. The Texas state flag code (see
http://tlo2.tlc.state.tx.us/cgi-bin/tlo/viewtext.cmd?LEG=77&SESS=R&CHAMBER=H&BILLTYPE=B&BILLSUFFIX=02812&VERSION=5&TYPE=B)
is fairly clear that the Texas flag can be flown at the same heighth as the
US flag, provided thay are on poles of the same heighth and not on the same
pole.

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