Chapter 3- Groundwork for understanding the current Texas constitution 1876: the constitutions of Texas, political culture, and the people of Texas

Question 1

Mexican war of independence

Answer 1

On September 16, 1810-during the height of napoleons occupation of Spain – father Miguel Hidalgo issued from his pulpit a cry for the end of Spanish rule in Mexico. In addition to a cry for revolution, Hidalgo’s impassioned speech called for the redistribution of land and a concept of racial equality for all people of indigenous decent. Hidalgo then led a militia from the city of Delores, where his church was located, to Mexico City, leaving a bloodbath in his wake. When the militia was defeated at Calderon in 1811, Hidalgo fled north to Chihuahua and was captured and executed by firing squad

Question 2

Grito de Delores

Answer 2

Militia members quickly assumed the helm, and rebellion continued throughout the cities and countryside of Mexico. Armies of indigenous and racially mixed revolutionaries fought against the Spanish royalists for the next decade

Question 3

Treaty of Cordoba

Answer 3

Signed on August 21, 1820 for the treaty of Córdoba granted Mexico independence from Spain

Question 4

Cinco de Mayo

Answer 4

Cinco de Mayo does not mark Mexican independence from Spain it marks the day of the anniversary of the battle of Puebla fought during the French Mexican war. Led by Texas born General Ignacio Zaragoza, the Mexican army defeated the French at the battle of Puebla on May 5, 1862. The battle itself was not a major strategic victory in the overall war; however, it did symbolize Mexico’s ability to defend its sovereignty against the powerful French army under the rule of Napoleon the third, and serve to tighten Mexican resistance against the French. Six years later, the French army withdrew from Mexico in 1867.

Question 5

Battle of the Alamo

Answer 5

In December 1835, a group of Texans overwhelm the Mexican garrison at the Alamo, capture the fort, and seized control of San Antonio

Question 6

Constitution of Coahuila y Tejas 1827

Answer 6

Under the newly independent Mexican government, the state of Coahuila and the sparsely populated province of Texas were combined. The new state was organized at Saltillo, Mexico in August 1824, with the Baron de Bastrop representing Texas. The constitution supported efforts to curtail and limit slavery; created a unicameral legislature charge with promoting education and freedom of the press; and named Roman Catholicism the official religion of Texas. But Texans soon grew discontent with the Mexican federal system

Question 7

Runaway Scrape

Answer 7

Houston’s retreat pressed further toward the Sabine River and, as Texans fled toward Galveston Island and Louisiana, all of the settlements between the Colorado and Brazos river was left unprotected. Many former settlers in Texas died as a result of disease, famine, cold and rain- with most being buried where they fell

Question 8

Battle of San Jacinto

Answer 8

By the time the new Constitution was written, Sam Houston had gathered some 900 Texan soldiers and again met up with Santa Anna’s troops (1,250) at the battle of San Jacinto near present-day Houston. Spurred on by the cries of “remember the Alamo” the Texan forces defeated Santa Anna’s army on April 21, 1836. The capture of the commanding general insured Texas independence

Question 9

Emily West

Answer 9

Thought to have been an orphan who came to Texas from New York in 1835. In Texas she fell in love with a black man, a musician, thought to be a runaway slave. Bountyhunters and pressures of the fast approaching war for independence from Mexico interrupted their relationship. The plantation on which Emily worked was in direct path of Mexican soldiers marching to fight General Sam Houston at San Jacinto. The soldiers burned most of the plantation and killed several of its inhabitants; Emily was saved and held captive by Santa Ana. Emily was said to have been a beautiful woman of mixed African – Caucasian blood, a race that was both legally and popularly referred to at the time as mulatto, or, in the south, yellow. Emily distracted Santa Anna as Houston’s troops swooped in and captured San Jacinto.

Question 10

Constitution of 1836

Answer 10

The constitution of 1836 used large portions of the United States Constitution to create a document that consisted of the preamble, separation of powers among three branches of government, checks and balances on government power, and a bill of rights. The republics defense of slavery as an institution largely explains why Texas remained independent from the United States for the next nine years since the state, if admitted into the union, would be admitted as a slave state

Question 11

Angelina Belle Eberly

Answer 11

A widowed boarding house owner in Austin took on Sam Houston in the archives war of 1842. In December 1842, after Texas had won it’s independence from Mexico at the battle of San Jacinto, Houston ordered his secretary of state to remove the state archives from the city of Austin and transport them to Houston – the new capital of the republic. Colonel Thomas Smith, Captain Eli Chandler, and 20 men traveled to Austin to retrieve and transport the state archives. Upon their arrival in the city limits, Eberly fired a canon to alert the local towns people. Heading Eberly‘s warning, a vigilante group of Austin citizens descended on the men and chased them to Brushy Creek, just north of Austin. Smith and Chandler were forced to surrender at gunpoint.

Question 12

Constitution of 1845

Answer 12

Contained important features such as a bicameral legislature, a governor and lieutenant governor, and the Supreme Court composed of three judges. The constitution also contained a provision that the state could divide into as many as five states if it chose to do so. The constitution of 1845 stayed in effect until 1861 when Texas seceded from the union to join the confederacy.

Question 13

Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo

Answer 13

Resulted in the United States gaining not only Texas but also northern parts of Mexico that would later become part of Arizona and New Mexico, thus allowing the United States a significant landmass upon which to build a southern transcontinental railroad.

Question 14

Texas geography

Answer 14

Played a large role in the issue of secession. Cotton was king in the golf coastal Plains of East Texas and slavery had become a vital institution to the economy of that part of the state. In large sections of the north and west, however, the economy was based primarily on ranching or corn and wheat production and slavery was virtually nonexistent.

Question 15

Constitution of 1861

Answer 15

Under which Texas joined the confederacy, was remarkably similar to the constitution of 1845 with one glaring exception: all references to the United States of America were replaced with references to the Confederate states of America

Question 16

Constitution of 1869

Answer 16

Also known as the reconstruction constitution, goes a very long way in explaining the complicated system of state government we have today in Texas. The constitution of 1869 was written to comply with the mandates of the United States reconstruction act, passed by the United States Congress after the union defeated the confederacy in the Civil War. First, critical changes were made to the Texas executive branch, and the powers of the governor were greatly expanded. Second, article 5 of the Constitution established a Supreme Court consisting of only three judges appointed by the governor with the advice and consent of the Senate.

Question 17

Edmund E.J. Davis

Answer 17

A reconstruction Republican and former union general, was named governor of the state. Texans despised Davis, who used the newly expanded powers of the governor to preside over what many perceive to be a corrupt, extravagant administration.

Question 18

Coke-Davis Controversy

Answer 18

After Davis was defeated by Richard Coke, a Democrat, in the goober national election of 1873, Davis appealed the election to the Texas supreme court. The court ruled the election illegal and Davis proclaimed his right to finish out his four-year term as governor and barricaded himself in the Texas capital. Texas democrats secured the keys to the second floor of the capital and took possession of the building. Coke then summoned the Travis guard and rifles but the rifles converted from the state guard into a sheriffs posse and instead of protecting Davis protected Coke. Davis then appealed to the United States president Ulysses S Grant who responded by sending a telegram that he would not be sending federal troops to keep Davis in office. The Coke Davis controversy ended with E.J.Davis resigning his office on January 19, 1874.

Question 19

Political culture

Answer 19

Elazar describes a political subcultures in the United States as moralistic, individualistic, and traditionalist, and provides an excellent framework for understanding Texas political culture and the Texas constitution. Limited government is central to Texas political culture and underlies the individualistic and traditionalist political culture that mark the states ideology.

Question 20

Travis Guard And Rifles

Answer 20

A Texas militia name for Alamo defender William B. Travis, Organized in 1840 to protect the state

Question 21

Political ideology

Answer 21

The constitution had to embody the values and believes upon which the American colonist declared and waged a war of independence against Great Britain. The ideology conveyed in the Declaration of Independence- life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness -was a reflection of a larger movement in western political culture that emphasize reason, scientific method, religious tolerance, and the centrality of the individual over the monarchy and the hierarchy of the church.

Question 22

Elements of Texas political culture

Answer 22

Individualism strongly related to a free market and a sense of capitalist economic expression.

Question 23

Public service

Answer 23

A service which is provided by government to people living within its jurisdiction, either directly (through the public sector) or by financing provision of services

Question 24

Daniel J. Elazar

Answer 24

A political scientists who described Texas political culture

Question 25

Spindletop- Lucas Gusher

Answer 25

The discovery of oil at Spindletop near Beaumont on January 10, 1901, dramatically transformed the Texas economy and strengthened Texans’ attachment not only to the land but to the natural resources it contained. Lucas Gusher resulted in rapid industrialization of the gulf coast with companies now known as Exxon mobile and Texaco developing and building large scale refineries, pipelines, and export facilities.

Question 26

Barbara Jordan

Answer 26

During the civil rights movement of the 20th century, Joseph Lockridge of Dallas and Curtis graves of Houston one seeds in the Texas house of representatives, and Barbara Jordan of Houston want to see in the Texas Senate and was subsequently elected in 1972 to represent Texas in the US House of Representatives ( The first African-American to represent Texas in the national Congress).

Question 27

Asian American migration

Answer 27

The Asian population in Texas is more than doubled between 2005 and 2013, and the state now ranks third in the nation in Asian migration. The majority of Asian Americans in Texas are of Chinese, Indian, and Vietnamese dissent with most concentrated in the greater Houston area.

Question 28

African-American migration

Answer 28

A “Great Remigration” of African Americans from the north to the south began in the 1970s. The New York Times reported in the early 1970s that, for the first time, more blacks are moving from the north to the south then vice versa. Many of the migrants are young, college educated, upwardly mobile black professionals – an older retirees. The 2000 sensors noted that in the decades 1970 through 1990, Texas along with other southern states witness large gains in black population. Reports indicate that African-Americans have begun to return to Texas because taxes tend to be lower than in the north; three of the countries fastest growing cities in terms of job creation are located in Texas (Austin, San Antonio and Houston); and housing prices and the cost of living are lower in taxes urban areas then they are in northern cities.

Question 29

Hispanic demographics

Answer 29

Significant increases in Hispanic migration to Texas occurred in the late 1850s through the 1920s as a result of political and economic instability in Mexico, and again grew from an estimated 700,000 in 1930 to 1,400,000 in 1960. In 2015, Hispanics constituted 38.8% of the states population. By 2003, 38 Hispanics had been elected to statewide office in Texas, and dominated local politics in some sections of South Texas, the golf coast, and in the San Antonio area. In a state were 30% of all registered voters are Hispanic. Furthermore, a 2014 report from the office of the state demographer indicates that Hispanics will outnumber whites in Texas by 2020 and make up the states majority population by 2042

Question 30

Regional divisions

Answer 30

Ranching, corn and wheat production dominating large sections of the north and west, and “king cotton“ dominating the gulf coastal Plains of east and central Texas. Giant cattle ranches in south and west Texas developed a “cowboy culture“ in Texas that was marked by fears individualism, determination, hard work, and independence. Tenant farming and sharecropping resulted economic dependency on land odors and landlords by many rural Texans resulting in the grange and populist movement of the era. Cotton has a major commercial good in the state later decline further with infamous Bollweevil infestations, the great depression, and World War II. Tenant farming and sharecropping resulted economic dependency on landowners and landlords by many rural Texans resulting in the grange and populist movement of the era.

Question 31

Native American migration

Answer 31

The rise in the native American Indian population from 1900 to 2010 may be attributed to both the cessation of government relocation efforts from Texas and a relatively recent return to native American culture to the state. The native American Indian population in Texas rose substantially from the 1950s and until 1980 through a federal government effort to resettle as many as 40,000 Indians in the Dallas-Fort Worth area.

Question 32

Women’s suffrage movement

Answer 32

In 1919, Minnie Fisher Cunningham, the president of the Texas equal suffrage Association, wrote that suffrage passing taxes due to “intra- party competition, the need for something to trade, and a leader politically shrewd enough to recognize it“. When the Texas legislator convened in January 1919, hobby send a message recommending that the Texas constitution be amended to extend for suffrage to women. The amendment passed, and an amazing number of women – 386,000 – quickly register to vote. The 19th amendment ensuring women the national constitutional right to vote was formally ratified on August 26, 1920.

Question 33

Miriam “Ma” Ferguson

Answer 33

The second female governor in United States history.

Question 34

Texas equal rights amendment

Answer 34

Was first introduced in the Texas legislator more than a decade before the US Congress passed and submitted to the state federal ERA, but the first amendment fell to pass the state legislature. A later state equal rights bill, introduce by state representative Rex Braun and cosponsored in the Texas house by Francis sissie farenthold and in the Texas Senate by Barbara Jordan, cleared the legislature in 1972, and in November Texas approved a Texas equal rights amendment.

Question 35

Frances “Sissie” Farenthold

Answer 35

A politician, attorney, activists and educator who introduced a later version of the Equal Rights Amendment.

Question 36

William P. Hobby

Answer 36

lieutenant governor that was friendly toward women suffrage and entered into a deal with the suffragettes: if the Texas equal suffrage Association would support his candidacy for governor fruitful term, he would ensure women the right to vote in the state. Hobby first pushed for women to gain the right to vote in the state primary – a measure that was adopted by the Democratic Party in 1918. Hobby won the governorship by 80% of the total vote.

Question 37

Ann Richards

Answer 37

In 1990, was elected governor of Texas

Question 38

Kay Bailey Hutchinson

Answer 38

Was elected state treasurer becoming the first republican woman elected to statewide office in Texas