Re: CHAT: national identity

Hmmm... seems there was more interest in this thread than
I had thought...

Hawksinger wrote:

> John Cowan wrote:
> >
> > Tom Wier scripsit:
> >
> > > After all, there are only *two* states that can claim to have existed
> > > in their own right as nation states before becoming part of the United States,
> > > and only one of those was a democratic republic (Texas).
> >
> > Eh?  The flag of California says "California Republic" on it.
>
> It was a republic in name only and for a few days at that.  It never
> funcioned as a truly independent country.  Several of the states that
> seceded from the Union at the start of Civil did so as independent
> countries but again, this was not as true countries as might be
> generally recognized at that time and was certainly transient.
I think that, technically speaking, Texas seceded from the Union in
just such a way, because there was a clause in the Treaty of Annexation
(ratified by a referendum at the time) that stated that Texas could, if it
so chose, break away as a separate nation again*. Thereafter it existed
in something like a "firm league of friendship" with the Confederacy, which
later became simple representation in the Confederacy's Congress. That,
and the fact that supposedly the normal procedures for admitting a state were not
followed in the US Congress, give rise to those kooks in Texas now
who allege that the US illegally annexed them (they ignore the overwhelming
support the referendum gave for it, of course).

*(It could also do other nifty things like choose to break up into five
smaller states because people out east just couldn't imagine a state ever
needing to be that big... and it was even bigger then than it is now, claiming
sovereignty over half of New Mexico, and bits of Oklahoma, Colorado,
Kansas, and Wyoming)