The Southwestern Historical Quarterly, Volume 87, July 1983 - April, 1984 Page: 28
468 p. : ill. (some col.), maps (some col.), ports. ; 23 cm.View a full description of this periodical.
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Southwestern Historical Quarterly
ficially a part of Texas insofar as the federal government was con-
cerned. Some twenty miles to their north, along the thirty-second
parallel, ran the boundary line between Texas and New Mexico.51
It is not surprising that the final settlement of the Texas-New
Mexico boundary question has been the object of some sharp criticism,
particularly from New Mexico. For example, Percy M. Baldwin writes
as follows:
Of all the various boundary proposals put forward in 1850, this one
which was finally adopted drew the most inconvenient and illogical line.
It gave Texas a shape as peculiar as a gerrymandered country. Northward,
the 'panhandle' projected nearly, but not quite, to the southern boundary
of Kansas, leaving room for the 'no man's land' that later became the
grotesque elongation of Oklahoma. The triangular extension westward,
with El Paso at its furthest limit, belongs to the region of the high plains
and is geographically, economically, and historically connected with south-
ern New Mexico, yet the parallel of 32, for no particular reason, throws
this natural area into two political jurisdictions.52
To be sure, Baldwin makes some valid points; and it is significant
that William Wallace Mills in i868 submitted a plan to the Texas
Constitutional Convention calling for the creation of a Montezuma
Territory, comprising El Paso and Dofia Ana counties. Although the
plan apparently had some support in El Paso, it was rejected by the
convention. Another effort to detach El Paso County from Texas came
in 1899 with a short-lived movement to create a separate state of "West
Texas," or "Sacramento." It was voted down, however, and there was
at all times strong opposition toward involving New Mexico in the
project."3
With the settlement of the Texas-New Mexico problem in 185o,
there yet remained another boundary to be surveyed and deter-
mined-the one between the United States and Mexico. Article V of
the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo had delineated the new boundary
between the United States and Mexico and provided that a joint sur-
vey commission of officials from both nations should draw the inter-
national line. Heading the American party was the scholarly John
51Binkley, Expansionzst Movement in Texas, 215; State Gazette (Austin), Nov. 16, Dec.
14, 1850o.
52P. M. Baldwin, "A Historical Note on the Boundaries of New Mexico," NMHR, V
(Apr., 1930), 124.
53Ernest Wallace, The Howling of the Coyotes- Reconstruction Efforts to Divide
Texas (College Station, Tex., 1979), 5o-53, 66; John Middagh, Frontier Newspaper: The
El Paso Times (El Paso, Tex., 1958), 88 (quotations), 89-94.
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Texas State Historical Association. The Southwestern Historical Quarterly, Volume 87, July 1983 - April, 1984, periodical, 1983/1984; Austin, Texas. (https://texashistory.unt.edu/ark:/67531/metapth117150/m1/48/: accessed April 26, 2024), University of North Texas Libraries, The Portal to Texas History, https://texashistory.unt.edu; crediting Texas State Historical Association.