May 18, 2006
Secession II Posted by John Steele Gordon at 03:30 PM EST Fred Schwarz is quite correct that states can give permission for other states to be carved from their territory, although at this point it is highly unlikely to ever happen again. And certainly New York State is about as likely to surrender sovereignty over New York City as the sun is to rise in the west.
The only time when a state actually cleaved in two with the permission of the original state government, as far as I know, was when Massachusetts voluntarily allowed Maine to vote on leaving the commonwealth, which it overwhelmingly voted to do in 1819 and was admitted to the Union the following year as part of the Missouri Compromise.
The western claims of the original 13 states were just that?s. The territories surrendered were not organized and were largely uninhabited by settlers. Many of these claims, based on vaguely worded colonial charters, overlapped, and it would have been an unholy mess to adjudicate them.
West Virginia was clearly created in violation of Article IV, Section 3. But of course Virginia was in a state of rebellion at the time, making it a tad difficult to go to the Supreme Court and demand enforcement.
As for Texas, what territory, exactly, was admitted to the Union in 1845 by joint resolution was unspecified. Texas claimed everything east of the Rio Grande; Mexico claimed all of Texas. The Joint Resolution just admitted “Texas” to the Union, whatever that turned out to be. The Mexican War ended Mexico’s claims, of course, and the Compromise of 1850 established the modern borders of Texas.
It is frequently heard that Texas has the right to divide into as many as five states. But I believe that that was an option only at the time of admission and is now moot. Anyway, which of the five states would get the Alamo?
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