Politics in the Republic of Texas - what happens without annexation?

Bytor

Monthly Donor
In the Republic of Texas for it's short life they didn't have political parties, mostly just personalities. Even after annexation with most migration coming from the Southern states, the Democratic Party dominated Texas until the Great Flip-FLop in the 1970s and 1980s between them and the Republicans.

Texas staying independent is a common Ah trope, and I even included it in my Balance of Power ATL, so how do you think the political parties might have evolved in it?

I'm a Canadian, not a Texan, so I don't really know more than the broad strokes about Texas history, and what little I do know is about the pre-annexation time period, so I I'm looking for some brainstorming on this to help me concoct something plausible.

In my ATL, Texas gets the loan from France that they missed by a hair OTL, so they survive, get out of debt, and rebuff John Tyler's attempt at negotiating annexation. Río Grande's revolution in 1840 also succeeds because the state governments decide to support Antonio Canales' and other's call for secession, hoping for French support, and Alta California also secedes in 1848 over the gold rush.

In 1862, the Spanish, British and French debt collection fleet that evolved into Napoleon III's OTL attempt to secure a Mexican Empire under his control is replaced in this ATL by a Castilian, British and French fleet and the French Empire merely leaves troops in Mexico propping up Benito Juarez's government against the conservatives after forcing a system of treaties on Mexico that makes it recognize Alta California, Río Grande, Texas and Yucatán which all have strong economic ties to the French Empire. (N3 is dead, BTW, the assassination attempt in his life in 1858 succeeded.)

Oh, and Henry Clay won the 1846 US election instead of Polk because there was no "annexation fever" to give Polk the slim margin of victory he had OTL. As a result the USA has a central bank again which strongly mitigates the recessions that OTL USA had in the 1850s and 1850s that were the main drivers of immigration to California.

So Texas still has significant but less immigration from the slave states, high immigration from France due to economic ties, slightly higher Hispanic immigration of Mexicans fleeing instability at home and trade with their post-Mexican siblings, as well as higher European immigration over all (go read my ATL to see why).

Do those changes make alt-Texian history too different to base it on real history? What do you think? I'm also strongly interested in hearing about Republic of Texas ATLs other than mine and if the mentioned how politics developed in them.

Thanks in advance!
 
In the Republic of Texas for it's short life they didn't have political parties, mostly just personalities.
That's not entirely accurate, there were some division. The main issue was whether Texas should remain independent, expand to the Pacific, and expel the natives, or not do those things. Naturally, the factions were dominated by their main personalities - Lamar and Houston, respectively - but there were genuine differences. The government structure exacerbated that - the prohibition on consecutive terms meant that Houston and Lamar just kept alternating for most of independent Texan history.
Most likely there would be a de facto importation of American politics, at least at first. A militaristic but otherwise small-government "Democratic/Nationalist" faction versus a pro-internal improvement, pro-peace, pro-diplomacy, pro-slavery (because Houston's base was the cotton country) "Whig" faction.
 
though having personalities rather than parties could lead to an interesting concept for eventual parties. i think those are probably inevitable for the same reasons that they developed in the US, but maybe instead of rallying around a common ideology they're based on the leading political personalities themselves? i had a similar idea for a Pirate Republic concept where, eventually, the Brethren of the Coast develops two rival parties centered on two leading pirates within it--Ben Hornigold and Henry Jennings, with their respective allies/affiliates forming the groundwork of the party (Blackbeard, Sam Bellamy, and Stede Bonnet to Hornigold and Charles Vane, Calico Jack, Anne Bonny, and Mary Read to Jennings). something similar to that concept could develop in this persisting Republic of Texas, like the "Houstonian Party" or something (it would hearken to Jacksonian Democrats just for name similarity, at the very least)
 
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