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Okay, so, back in 1835, Texas, which was part of Mexico, thought to itself, “hey, you
know what would be kind of fun?
If we weren’t part of Mexico!”
But, Mexico didn’t think that was fun at all, and so they did a war about it, which
lasted from 1835 to 1836, at which point the fighting stopped and Texas said “we won;
we’re independent now” but Mexico said “you didn’t win, we’re just… like…
taking a break because we have some really important stuff to do.”
But seeing as Mexico wasn’t fighting them anymore, the Texans took it as a win, and
then realized, “well, now that we’re independent, we gotta do a government and stuff,” and
so, they did do a government and stuff.
They named themselves the Republic of Texas and made a Congress and found a President
and designed a flag, which was a ripoff of the US’s flag, and expelled a bunch of Native
Americans, which was a rip-off of the US’s policy, and, also, started to establish diplomatic
ties with other nations in a bid to both have their independence recognized by the international
community and also to gain a bit of protection in case Mexico ever finished the really important
stuff they were doing and decided to come back and fight some more.
Texas got their first big win on March 3, 1836, when the President of the United States,
Andrew Jackson, decided to take a break from his usual schedule of hating national banks
and murdering people in duels, and nominated a guy named Alcée Louis la Branche to be
the US Minister to Texas, thus recognizing Texas an as independent nation.
Soon other nations, most notably France, the Netherlands, and Belgium did too, and faster
than you could say “yee-haw,” Texas had become its very own rootin-tootin, internationally-recognized
nation.
As part of that process of being recognized, Texas established international embassies—there
was one in London, one in Paris, one in Brussels, in Amsterdam, and one in Washington DC, that
was located here, and here, and also here, and also a bunch of other places.
You see, there wasn’t actually one specific building that served as DC’s Texas embassy—the
various ministers that Texas sent to Washington generally worked out of whatever boardinghouse
they were staying at, and because each minister usually only stayed in DC for about a year,
that location kept changing.
Most historians credit the Texas ministers’ high turnover rate to the fact that in the
1830s, Washington DC was basically a hot swamp filled with bugs, sewage, and powdered wigs,
so nobody really wanted to put down roots there.
Now, at this point in the video, I do have to come clean about something: Texas’s embassy
in Washington DC wasn’t technically an embassy—it was actually what’s called a legation, which
meant that it was headed up not by an ambassador, but by a minister—but the thing is, the
difference between an embassy and a legation is basically meaningless—so meaningless,
in fact, that the world got rid of the distinction in the mid-20th century.
Plus, if I had titled the video “Texas’ Legation in Washington, DC” you wouldn’t
have clicked on it; you would have been like “I don’t know what a legation is, I’m
gonna watch Binging with Babish” and then instead of knowing this cool story all you
would know is how to make Spongebob’s favorite falafel recipe or whatever.
Or maybe you do know what a legation is and you’re halfway through writing a comment
about how smart you are right now, but my point is, I may have lied, but I had a good
reason, which as we all know, makes lying okay.
Anyway, in total, there were eight different diplomats who represented Texas in Washington
over the nine years of Texas’ independence: William H Wharton, Memucan Hunt, Peter W Grayson,
Anson Jones, Richard G Dunlap, Barnard E Bee Sr, James Reily, and Isaac Van Zandt.
Now, a few of those portraits weren’t accurate and were just the first few results that came
up when I googled “man in an old-timey suit,” but look, we’re a YouTube Channel not Netflix;
we don’t have the budget to get the rights to the only existing portrait of Richard G
Dunlap just for you to not recognize him.
During their just-under-a-decade of foreign policy, the US and Texas had a pretty close
relationship, which makes sense considering that Texas bordered the United States and
would ultimately become one of the United States, at least for now.
In fact, the main issue that the Texas Legation dealt with in US-Texas foreign policy was
statehood—Texas had asked to be made a US state in 1836, when they seceded from Mexico,
but the US initially said no, mainly because they didn’t want to provoke Mexico, and
also because Texas wanted to join as a slave state, which people feared would ignite further
tension between the North and South on the issue of slavery—but, I mean, that’s ridiculous;
why would anyone ever think the North and South would fight over slavery?
What’s next, conflict between Ireland and Northern Ireland?
That would never happen.
Apart from the issue of statehood, two main pieces of law were worked out between the
US and Texas—the first was a 1838 Claims Convention, where Texas agreed to pay the
US $11,750 to settle a dispute over two confiscated US sea vessels and various “injuries suffered
by US Citizens at the hands of Texan authorities,” and the second was the agreement that marked
the official boundary between Texas and the US.
In the end, though, relations between Texas and the US were shut down when the US annexed
Texas in 1845, making it the 28th state.
If you were to create your own independent nation, there would be a lot of things you
need to do—for example, design a flag, which you could learn how to do by taking this Skillshare
class, Graphic Design Basics: Core Principles for Visual Design.
Or, if you needed to write a national anthem, you could take a class on music composition,
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or if you wanted to do none of those things, you could explore the thousands of other classes
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