The American movement to acquire the region known as Texas has "been the subject of countless monographs and journal articles. Although the literature on the Texas movement is voluminous, no historian has produced an interpretive synthesis based on that literature and the extant documentary sources. This work is intended "to fill that void "by offering speculative analysis as well as a chronological narrative on the total movement. The scope of this work is comprehensive. It traces the American government's handling of the Texas issue from 1819—-the year President James Monroe agreed to drop the American claim to Texas in the Adams-Onis treaty—through 1845—the year President James K. Polk signed a congressional resolution granting Texas statehood. Throughout these years the countervailing political forces of antebellum America had more influence on the government's Texas position than did diplomatic considerations. Consequently, the theme of this dissertation is that the American movement to acquire Texas was primarily a political movement. Indeed, the Texas Republic became an American state only when the annexation issue became inextricably linked with the party trammels and political philosophies of Jacksonian America.

The Farmers' Alliance in Wise County, from its introduction in 1880 to its demise in 1897, endeavored to improve the mental, moral, social, and financial conditions of small agrarians in the north central Texas county. This paper details the Alliance's efforts, in cooperative ventures and political activism and third-party politics, to place farmers in a better economic position. Additionally, the paper focuses on the Alliance's attempts to provide educational and social opportunities and moral guidance to the membership. Source materials include government documents and publications, contemporary accounts, the county Alliance's official newspaper, area newspapers, and the original minutes of the county Alliance from 1893 to 1897.

Presidential reconstruction in Texas proceeded under the direction of provisional governor Andrew Jackson Hamilton, a Texas Unionist. Texas Unionists had deep political roots in pre-war politics and sought to reconstruct along moderate lines. Following the constitutional convention of 1866, conservative James Webb Throckmorton won the gubernatorial race against Unionist Elisha Marshall Pease. Throckmorton's administration did very little to curb the intense violence directed at Unionists in Texas, and the conservative legislature passed legislation repressive to blacks. Texas Unionists grew increasingly radical, and Throckmorton clashed with the federal military over the question of authority. After the Radicals in Congress passed the Reconstruction Acts, Throckmorton was removed as governor, and E.M. Pease was appointed in his place, ending presidential reconstruction in Texas.

The purpose of this paper is to examine, from a local perspective, the reaction of the southern conservative wing of the Democratic party to the liberal changes which occurred in that organization as a result of the transitional decades of the 1930s and 1940s. In particular, the study focuses on the growing sense of alienation and the eventual withdrawal of a handful of Texas Democrats from affiliation with the national body and their subsequent realignment with other dissident Dixie Democrats in the short-lived States' Rights party of 1948. This work is based essentially on the personal recollections of Texans who participated in the States' Rights movement and on those papers of the party's leaders which have survived until today.