Constitutional rules, political accidents, and the course of history: new light on the annexation of Texas.

• Author: Morse, Jennifer Roback

Personalities of such dramatic dimensions so dominated the struggle over the annexation of Texas that one can hardly imagine the events without these particular characters. The proponents, John Tyler and John C. Calhoun, worked furiously toward the immediate annexation of Texas, for what they regarded as the good of their country, their party, their constituents, and their own political careers. Their political opponents, Thomas Hart Benton and Martin Van Buren, resisted forcefully, not only over Texas with all its implications and symbolism, but also for control of the Democratic party. From the very beginning of the American debate over Texas, the opponents of slavery contributed passion and color to the drama: Benjamin Lundy with his fiery pamphlet, John Quincy Adams with his heroic filibuster, and ultimately David Wilmot with his proviso to divide the territory acquired through the war that the annexation provoked.

And yet, as colorful and influential as these larger-than-life characters were, it was not so much the individual actors as the Constitution that determined the outcome of this great drama of American history. For the Constitution, by stipulating permissible actions, defines how Americans make collective decisions. More important with regard to the annexation of Texas, the Constitution actively encourages certain types of strategies. Even if we grant the premise of Manifest Destiny -- that the territory of Texas was destined to become part of the United States -- we still need to consider when, how, by whom, and under what terms this absorption was accomplished. Reflecting upon the governing structure established by the Constitution can help us answer these questions. We can even show how constitutional rules called certain types of people onto the political stage.

Of course, many modern students of the political process appreciate that institutions matter. Rational-choice theories of politics -- law and economics, public choice, and the new institutional economics -- deal with exactly this point. But because so much of this work is abstract, it is especially valuable to demonstrate the critical influence of constitutional rules on issues of decisive importance in determining the course of American history.

Without doubt, the annexation of the Republic of Texas by the United States was a critical event in North American history. In the view of many historians, the annexation of Texas marked the point at which the Civil War became unavoidable. The annexation itself provoked partisan polarization, sectional acrimony, and political upheaval serious enough to prompt a realignment of the political parties. The Mexican War followed quite directly from the annexation. The Compromise of 1850 arose from the attempts to allocate between free and slave states the territory acquired from both the annexation of Texas and the Mexican War. This compromise was so fragile that very small events could easily disrupt it, and in the following decade many large and dramatic changes occurred.

Institutions matter directly, as when the policy a group chooses changes with changes in the voting rules, but institutions may also matter indirectly. Politicians, in both the legislative and the executive branches, may react to the incentives and constraints created by institutions. In particular, the constitutional rules may shape the choice of issues on which to campaign. The decision-making rules in the U.S. Constitution shaped many of the details of the annexation of Texas in this way. The Constitution allowed particular strategies for winning elections and achieving policy outcomes. And these strategies, in turn, invited politicians to frame the issues surrounding the annexation of Texas in distinctive ways. So profound was the influence of the Constitution on the selection of issues that we may make the following bold statement: if the constitutional rules had been different, the outcome would have differed in predictable ways.

In the first section of this article, I lay out the variety and complexity of the issues presented by the annexation of Texas. Politicians had substantial latitude in their choice of issues to emphasize or ignore. The rich menu of choices invited politicians to frame the debate over Texas for particular kinds of political advantage.

In the second section, I defend the claim that Texas, which was barely annexed by a simple majority rule, could have been annexed under a supermajority procedure.(1) Moreover, the process would have gone more smoothly and with less acrimony if some supermajority procedure had been used. On the face of it, this claim appears to be false -- after all, if 66 percent of the voters prefer A to B, then trivially, 51 percent do also.

The resolution of this apparent paradox lies in recognizing that the decision to annex Texas was not a simple yes-or-no choice. The voting rule determines the size of the winning coalition. Under simple majority rules, the winning 51 percent of the voters could be put together from many different possible constituencies, supporting the annexation for many different possible reasons. Most of the time, politicians cannot find issues that will attract new voters without repelling old voters. But repelling one set of voters while gaining another set of voters may be a cost-effective strategy in some circumstances. For instance, one set of voters might be more committed to a particular party or candidate for president. Some politicians might have found it advantageous to annex Texas on terms that appealed strongly to a particular set of voters, willingly sacrificing the support of other voters. With simple majority rules, politicians can quite readily find more issues around which to split up and reconfigure coalitions.

On the other hand, with a supermajority rule such as a two-thirds rule, politicians must convince a larger number of people to support them. Politicians will have little if any incentive to raise divisive side issues or to frame the major issue in a divisive way. Under supermajority rules, a politician who alienates coalition partners cannot achieve his main objective.

Americans could negotiate with each other, and with the Texans, along many different margins over the transfer of Texas to the United States. Under a supermajority rule, no politician who ultimately wanted the annexation to occur would have raised some of these issues. On the other hand, under a simple majority rule, there were plenty of possible sets of terms under which the annexation could take place.

To state the proposition more strongly: under simple majority rule, no set of terms for the annexation could dominate every other set of terms in pairwise competition; that is, no "Condorcet winner" existed over this domain of issues.(2) Therefore, the vote-cycling deadlock would have to be broken by the decision-making rules.(3) A supermajority requirement for the addition of new territory or new states would have eliminated a significant set of possible terms of annexation from the political bargaining table.

In the third section, I discuss the four Constitutional rules that were relevant to the annexation. First, the Constitution assigns to the president the power to set the agenda for treaties with foreign powers. Second, the Constitution requires the Senate to ratify treaties by a margin of two-thirds. Third, the Constitution allows new states to be admitted to the Union by a simple majority. And finally, the House of Representatives resolves presidential elections in which no candidate wins by a majority. I show how these rules determined the broad outlines of the timing and terms of the annexation.

In the conclusion, I show that President John Tyler used annexation as a political issue, to extract the greatest advantage possible for himself and his constituents. As president, he had the power to set the foreign policy agenda. As a potential third candidate in the presidential election of 1844, he had an incentive to divide the polity in order to throw the election into the House. And because the Constitution allowed the admission of new states by simple majority, he could frame the Texas issue to improve his prospects as a third-party candidate as well as to achieve the greatest benefit for his Southern constituents.

Foreign Policy Issues in the Annexation of Texas

The Republic of Texas came into existence in 1836, after separating itself from the Mexican Republic. Several questions immediately arose. Could Texas maintain itself as an independent country? If so, with which other countries would it be most likely to ally? If Texas could not remain independent, which other country might ultimately absorb it?(4)

Part of the value of Texas to all the possible contenders arose because of the vast expanse of Mexican territory west and north of Texas. Mexico's ability to hold and govern this territory was extremely limited, even before the Texas revolt. Mexico simply did not have the wealth to reconquer the heart of Texas or to maintain effective control over its other northern provinces. Therefore, the owner of Texas might ultimately possess present-day California, Utah, Nevada, New Mexico, and Arizona as well. For both Mexico and the United States, Texas had intrinsic and strategic value.

Although it quickly became obvious that Mexico could not reconquer the heart of its former province of Texas, the Texas revolutionaries and the Mexican government continued to dispute a large area, over which neither could exercise decisive and final military control. In these circumstances a truly independent Texas would probably consist of roughly the old Mexican province of Texas rather than the entire area in dispute. So, an independent Texas would be a truncated Texas (see map). In that event, Texas would lie between its powerful American neighbor and an unstable Mexican neighbor. Although many Texans cherished hopes of independence, the likelihood that...