Six Constitutions Over Texas: Texas Political Identity, 1830–1900 by William J. Chriss (review)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:

Reviewed by:

• Six Constitutions Over Texas: Texas Political Identity, 1830–1900 by William J. Chriss
• Matthew K. Hamilton

Six Constitutions Over Texas: Texas Political Identity, 1830–1900. By William J. Chriss. ( College Station: Texas A&M University Press, 2024. Pp. 330. Illustrations, notes, index.)

In Six Constitutions Over Texas, legal historian William J. Chriss explores how Texans forged their political identity, and how that identity exhibited itself in Texas's six governing charters. Arranged chronologically into six chapters, this book guides the reader through the constitutional history of Texas, from the rebellious Constitution of 1836 through the reactionary Constitution of 1876. Along the way, Chriss offers insights into the legal history of Texas with a thoroughly researched, well-written narrative that should appeal to academics and non-academics alike.

The book's premise is simple: "Texas should be understood as an imagined community, an identity produced by ideological consensus among economic, cultural, and legal elites" (p. 218). To Chriss, Texas's six constitutions are not simply laws that limited government action or documents that organized communities; rather, they were "important artifacts shedding light on the ideologies" of the Texans that created them (p. xiii).

The author's methodology combines theories of "otherness" and comparative constitutionalism that allow the reader to see how Texas's constitutions created a dominant cultural and political identity by "defining those who are outsiders" (p. 219). For example, an important part of why Texans revolted against the newly centralized Mexican government was the protection of the slave economy. Texian political identity was created, in part, out of fear of an alliance of emancipated slaves, Tejanos, blacks, and Indians that would oust them from the province. As a result, the 1836 Constitution of the Republic of Texas sought to create a bulwark against Tejano and Mexican agitation of racial violence.

After Texas's annexation to the United States and the subsequent Mexican-American War, Tejano and Mexican threats ceased. But Chriss contends [End Page 101] that Anglo elites in Texas soon identified northerners' agitation of the slavery question as a new threat to white supremacy in Texas, and this attitude continued through the end of Reconstruction in the mid-1870s. Later, as the United States experienced rapid urbanization and industrialization in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, Anglo elites' racial fears were replaced by their concerns about class consciousness. To prevent possible "cooperation between African Americans and poor whites," segregation was imposed and ingrained in Texas in the early twentieth century. By mid-century, Chriss argues that a "conservative modern Texas" had been created, characterized by American exceptionalism, Texan uniqueness and embodiment of true Americanism, Anglo-American racial superiority, and government regulation to stimulate economic growth but slow the redistribution of wealth and power from Anglo elites (p. xv).

Six Constitutions Over Texas aligns with emerging Texas historiography developed by scholars such as Walter H. Buenger and Sam W. Haynes, who have promoted new interpretations of what has conventionally been "a tradition-laden subject" (p. 219). The book is revisionist in the sense that it rejects "myths as facts," but Chriss clarifies that it is "not a polemic, it is a history" (p. 219). In this effort, Chriss succeeds. This book is a welcome addition to Texas historiography that furthers appreciation of Texas's governing documents and expands academic understanding of the motives, identities (real and imagined), and experiences of the Texans that crafted them.

Matthew K. Hamilton Collin College Copyright © 2024 The Texas State Historical Association ...