Sectional Interests and American Foreign Policy: The Annexation of Texas and the Problem of Sovereignty

Authors

Joseph Karol Natali, Baylor UniversityFollow

Volume Number

51

Issue Number

1

Abstract

This paper argues that the controversy surrounding the annexation of Texas demonstrates serious problems with the Constitution’s initial ambiguity about the locus of sovereign power within the Union. Southern politicians, arguing that the loci of national sovereignty were to be found in each respective state. Consequently, they were able to exploit the Constitution’s ambiguity to craft a peculiar conception of the national interest which included only the preservation of states’ sovereign power, and thus presented this as the primary goal of national foreign policy. Though the annexation controversy did not itself resolve this conflict, it made clearer than any previous conflict the need to clearly establish the locus of sovereign power in the United States, setting the stage for the post-Civil War identification of the national government as the primary locus of American sovereign power. This in turn allowed for a concept of the national interest to be formed by the interaction of various sectional interests in national political debate.

Recommended Citation

Natali, Joseph Karol (2023) "Sectional Interests and American Foreign Policy: The Annexation of Texas and the Problem of Sovereignty," Journal of Political Science: Vol. 51: No. 1, Article 3.
Available at: https://digitalcommons.coastal.edu/jops/vol51/iss1/3