Obama Wins: Texas Talk Secession

By Eddie Griffin
Tuesday, November 13, 2012

 

We can understand some angry temperament after the election of President Barack Obama over Mitt Romney. But all this ranting about Texas seceding from the union is nonsensical. It is akin to a spoiled child who, when he cannot get his way, pitches a temper tantrum. Such a child, we recognize, needs a time-out to cool off and come to their senses.

 

Texas needs some time for self-reflection and soul-searching, lest we make ourselves a bigger laughing stock than our governor has made us. We, Texans, are more than just a crop of 25,000 signatures on a petition to secede from the union. This minority of dissenters cannot usurp the voice of the majority unless we let it. This is what happened with the writing of Ordinance of Secession in 1861 and the annulment of the Texas allegiance to the Union. The change in the state’s constitution was never being put before the populous for approval.

 

At the time secession, only one-fourth of the property holders in Texas owed slaves. This minority of pro-slavery advocates usurped state power and forcefully evicted Governor Sam Houston from office for his refusal to take an oath to the Confederacy.

 

Thus, Texas became a Confederate state through secession, not by popular consent, but by minority usurpation. Lest history repeats itself, someone must speak for the majority and set the records straight.

 

The United States of America came to the rescue of Texas during the Republic’s War for independence against Mexico. The nation absorbed the state’s $10 million debt and made it a part of the Union in 1845. And, even after Texas broke away to join the ill-fated Confederacy, the state was allowed to return to the Union fold on March 30, 1870, on nothing more than a promise to preserve the Union and write a new constitution that recognized the rights of African-American freedmen.

 

When we pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States of America, we proclaim that we are One Nation, under God, Indivisible, with Liberty and Justice for All. But there are some who would send a mixed message to our children after losing an election for the presidency in 2012:

 

“Why should Vermont and Texas live under the same government? Let each go her own way,” says Peter Morrison, treasurer of the Hardin County Republican Party.

 

Even more, a judge from Lubbock predicted over the summer that the president's reelection could even lead to a civil war. The Cincinnati Tea Party proclaimed the nation dead after the election.

 

Were these not the same sentiments of the slave states when Abraham Lincoln won the election of 1860?

 

The irony in all this is the fact that Governor Sam Houston opposed secession, wherein Governor Rick Perry talks out of both sides of his mouth. He was the first to raise the specter of secession. Now he is opposed to it… maybe. Nobody knows what Perry will do. If he opts for peace and reconciliation, then he has must realize that he has already kindled a fire in 20 states which will be hard to quench by only a few peacemakers.

 

What will become of all the defense industry contractors in the state of Texas? What will become of all the federal employees in the state? What will become of the federal highways passing through the state? What will become of all the federal dollars to colleges and universities in the state for research? What will become of federal Title 1 funds to public schools? If Texas expulsed everything associated with the United State of America, it will become another Mexico, begging for trade and commerce from the other 49 states.