Storm over Texas: The Annexation Controversy and the Road to Civil War

A volume in Oxford University Press's Pivotal Moments in American History series, Joel H. Silbey's Storm over Texas argues that conflict over the annexation of Texas and the political fallout from that controversy "has fair claim to be considered as the critical base point on which the rest of the crisis of the Union grew" (p. xvii). Silbey, a much-published expert on American politics during the antebellum years, provides a deft description of the rise of annexation as a sectional issue and how the resulting angry divisions would not go away. Above all, he contends, the insistence on Texas annexation by southern Democrats alienated northern Democrats led by former president, Martin Van Buren, leading the latter to think that their party had been hijacked by followers of John C. Calhoun. The decline in party unity brought a corresponding rise in national disunity, and the South moved on toward secession in 1860–1861.

Silbey is a careful historian, and he admits that there are difficulties in sustaining his thesis. Annexation of Texas soon led to war with Mexico, and the acquisition of territory resulting from that conflict brought on a serious sectional crisis in 1849–1850. To this point, his argument holds. However, the Compromise of 1850 quieted conflict between the sections and, in Silbey's words, "for a time thereafter confidence returned" (p. 179). Sectional calm prevailed for nearly four years, but then Stephen A. Douglas's Kansas-Nebraska Act destroyed the Whig Party, bitterly divided the Democrats, and led to violence that extended from Kansas to the Senate Chamber in the national capitol. There would be no more compromises as the nation moved toward secession and war. So, given how sectionalism calmed from 1850 to 1854, was the annexation of Texas truly the "pivotal moment" on the road to secession, or did the Kansas-Nebraska Act constitute the pivot? Silbey's answer is that in 1854 "memories of Texas were again brought to the surface of public affairs," and the nation "found that it had moved very far along the road toward the sectionalizing of its politics, both rhetorically and behaviorally" (pp. 179–180). Thus, the argument is: Texas annexation was a pivotal moment in American history, but it may not have been without the Kansas-Nebraska Act.

Storm over Texas may disappoint Texas history enthusiasts in that Sam Houston, the state's best-known leader who served in the United States Senate through most of the period that Silbey discusses, has virtually no role in the story. Houston strongly and consistently supported the Union during the 1850s, and his opposition to extremism should have provided at least some measure of proof to northern Democrats that Calhoun-style southerners had not taken total control of their party. Perhaps one person, even one as spectacular as Houston, could make little difference, but given the book's focus on how Texas annexation divided the Democratic Party, his role probably should have received more attention. (One minor error that is likely to make Texas readers flinch is a reference to the last president of the republic as "Ansel" Jones.)

Storm over Texas may strain to maintain its argument that annexation constituted a pivotal moment in American history and will likely leave Texas readers wishing for more emphasis on Texans. However, it is a readable overview of the ways annexation of the Lone Star State moved the nation along the road to the Civil War.