Cruz­ing to vic­tory. Photo: AP/​Houston Chron­i­cle, Johnny Hanson

Texas has always been different.

As Tex­ans are fond of telling out­siders (even them­selves), it’s the only part of the United States that was once a sov­er­eign nation. That’s the basis for the Governor’s Office of Eco­nomic Devel­op­ment and Tourism’s slo­gan, “It’s Like a Whole Other Coun­try”. Texas insur­gent forces won inde­pen­dence for Texas on the bat­tle­field in 1835 and 1836. Texas was a Repub­lic from 1836 until it joined the United States in 1845. Texas then seceded from the Union along with the other Con­fed­er­ate States of Amer­ica in 1861, and rejoined the United States with the South’s defeat in 1865.

There is a gen­eral belief amongst most Tex­ans that some sort of spe­cial “get out of the Union free” Easter Egg was implanted in the doc­u­ments that joined Texas to the United States. How­ever, not even the Texas Secede! web­site believes such a thing: “No such pro­vi­sion is found in the cur­rent Texas Con­sti­tu­tion (adopted in 1876) or the terms of annexation.”

Texas estab­lished one more dif­fer­ence between itself and the rest of the Union on Tues­day: in an elec­tion cycle when the Tea Party has been declared dead and buried, Tex­ans showed that, in Faulkner’s words, “The past is never dead. It’s not even past.” They advanced for­mer state Solic­i­tor Gen­eral Ted Cruz as the Repub­li­can can­di­date in the gen­eral elec­tion, where he should cruise to an easy vic­tory over Demo­c­ra­tic nom­i­nee Paul Sadler.

Samuel Arthur “Moss” Grif­fith poses in his new CSA uniform.

As a native Texan myself, I think I have a vis­ceral under­stand­ing of the state. Tex­ans, except for those of the First Nations, came from else­where, often as outlaws.

In 1805, Samuel Acass “Cass” Grif­fith was born in Col­leton County, South Car­olina. He mar­ried Bar­bara Way David­son in 1830 and three chil­dren were born in South Car­olina: John (b. 1831), Char­ity (b. 1833) and Samuel Arthur “Moss” (b. 1836). By 1840, the fam­ily had moved to a large plan­ta­tion near Merid­ian, Mis­sis­sippi and were major slave­own­ers. There, Ben­jamin, Bar­bara, Mary Har­low and the small­est Grif­fith child, Ellis Ringold, were born between 1840 and 1846.

The fam­ily moved to Sebas­t­ian County, Arkansas in 1858, where they were the largest slave­hold­ers in the county. It’s hard to think of Fort Smith, Arkansas as the Wild West, but indeed it was, in those days. After the Civil War, Judge Isaac Parker plied his trade here; this is the ter­ri­tory of Charles Por­tis’ novel True Grit. A lit­tle trou­ble with the law and you could find your­self hid­ing out in the hills of the nearby Choctaw Nation, just a short gal­lop away.

A lit­tle trou­ble with the law was what hap­pened to the Grif­fiths. At the time of seces­sion, these native South Car­olini­ans, true to their her­itage, took up arms against the North. The eldest brother, John Grif­fith, became a Colonel. As was the cus­tom of the time, his three younger broth­ers, Sam, Ben, and Ellis, fought along­side him. Ellis, only 15, was a mere pri­vate, but the other men called him “Major” as a joke (that being the rank just below Colonel) and the nick­name stayed with him the rest of his life.

The Grif­fith broth­ers fought through­out Arkansas and Mis­sis­sippi. In his most suc­cess­ful engage­ment, Colonel John Grif­fith and his men sank the Union steamship USS Petrel near Yazoo City, Mis­sis­sippi on April 22, 1864. After the April 1865 peace signed in Appo­mat­tox, John and his broth­ers gave them­selves up to the Union Army in early May and were paroled later that month.

What came to be known as The Lost Cause dom­i­nated the Grif­fiths’ lives. Accord­ing to the fam­ily lore my grand­mother taught me, the fam­ily was “besieged by carpetbaggers”.

They weren’t car­pet­bag­gers. They were Fed­eral marshals.

Ben joined with “The Swamp Fox of the Sul­phur”, Cullen Baker, one of the most noto­ri­ous out­laws of the time. Ben him­self killed a freed slave for hav­ing the temer­ity to own, and pub­licly ride, a mule. A highly roman­ti­cized Cullen Baker appears in the Louis L’Amour novel The First Fast Draw but he wasn’t so much a fast draw as a psy­chopath with a hair-​​trigger temper.

Ben Grif­fith was hunted down and killed by Fed­eral mar­shals on July 20, 1868, aged 28.

Baker him­self returned home after his gang dis­banded in Decem­ber of that year, and within a few weeks was poi­soned by a neigh­bor who he had pre­vi­ously tried to hang, which makes the cur­rent pol­i­tics of Home­own­ers’ Asso­ci­a­tions look pretty lame by comparison.

The Grif­fith fam­ily, who pre­sum­ably sup­ported The Lost Cause and the Baker Gang’s ram­page, went into hid­ing. Accord­ing to Richard Griffith,

John Grif­fith and sev­eral other for­mer Con­fed­er­ate offi­cers, who found the sit­u­a­tion intol­er­a­ble, orga­nized a resis­tance group and attempted to retal­i­ate against the mili­tia offi­cers who were respon­si­ble for the actions of the mili­ti­a­men. As a result, John and his brother Ellis and oth­ers were forced to flee the state [of Arkansas] to avoid arrest. It has been said by some of the fam­ily that there was ‘a price on their heads’. John and Ellis went first to Mis­souri, under assumed names; then to New Orleans, where it is said they became involved in polit­i­cal strug­gles; and finally to Texas, still under assumed names and avoid­ing Union soldiers.

Of course, no Cen­sus or other records exist to doc­u­ment what the fam­ily was doing dur­ing that period. The Grif­fiths were typ­i­cal of the sec­ond gen­er­a­tions of Tex­ans, those who came to the state after the Civil War. Texas Excep­tion­al­ism is in large part the story of my forebears.

Twelve years after the end of the War of North­ern Aggres­sion, eldest brother John Griffith’s nat­ural lead­er­ship abil­i­ties could not be denied. He orga­nized the town of Buf­falo Gap, Texas, just south of Abilene.

John worked to orga­nize Tay­lor County, sign­ing bonds for the first offi­cers. He wanted Buf­falo Gap to be the county seat, and it was at first, but the rail­road came through north of Buf­falo Gap at a site which later became Abi­lene and the county seat was moved there. John was very dis­ap­pointed that Buf­falo Gap did not become the county seat, and because of this, he soon moved his fam­ily to Kim­ble County, where he is listed at Junc­tion in the 1880 census.

West Texas, then as now, is a des­o­late place. Until the dis­cov­ery of oil at the turn of the cen­tury, it was a hard place to make a liv­ing. The Grif­fith fam­ily must have felt very much like the Israelites of Exo­dus. “Major” Ellis Ringold Grif­fith became a Texas Ranger, now charged with enforc­ing the laws he and his broth­ers had scorned just a few years before. “Major” Grif­fith is my great-​​great-​​grandfather. His DNA, and his Fron­tier Bat­tal­ion spirit, is in me.

I think most Tex­ans of Cau­casian descent would tell a sim­i­lar story. Texas Excep­tion­al­ism is a sub­set of Amer­i­can Exceptionalism.

Until the 1960s, Texas was Demo­c­ra­tic. The Repub­li­cans rep­re­sented the hated car­pet­bag­gers and Fed­eral mar­shals. The Democ­rats rep­re­sented insur­gency and anti-​​establishmentarianism. My first polit­i­cal con­tri­bu­tion was a nickel sent to help Pres­i­dent Lyn­don John­son with his 1964 re-​​election cam­paign. (The 1964 elec­tion split my house­hold. My dad was a Gold­wa­ter Repub­li­can and my mom, a John­son Demo­c­rat.) Then John­son advanced the civil rights and Great Soci­ety pro­grams started by his assas­si­nated pre­de­ces­sor. Leg­end has it that as Pres­i­dent John­son signed the 1964 Civil Rights Act, he said to aide Bill Moy­ers, “We’ve just lost the South for a generation.”

It has taken the Democ­rats much longer than that, now three gen­er­a­tions and count­ing, to regain Texas — if they regain it at all.

Tom DeLay and his Texas pro­tegés invented the mod­ern ger­ry­man­der, call­ing for a redis­trict­ing (legal but highly a-​​traditional) between cen­sus years when the Repub­li­cans took con­trol of the Texas Leg­is­la­ture in 2003. The case fight­ing this mid-​​decade redis­trict­ing went all the way to the Supreme Court, where Solic­i­tor Gen­eral Ted Cruz argued for the redis­trict­ing plan:

The Texas Leg­is­la­ture acted because in their judg­ment Texas deserved a map where the major­ity of the vot­ers could elect a major­ity of the con­gres­sional del­e­ga­tion. And that’s exactly what hap­pened under the plan passed in 2003.

The case, League of United Latin Amer­i­can Cit­i­zens (LULAC) v. Perry, was decided in 2006 by what one ana­lyst called at the time “a 2–3-4 deci­sion”. A deeply divided Court refused to strike down the Texas redis­trict­ing plan on the basis of par­ti­san ger­ry­man­der­ing (which it clearly was), hold­ing par­ti­san ger­ry­man­der­ing A-​​OK Con­sti­tu­tion­ally, while inval­i­dat­ing one dis­trict based on the grounds that it was a vio­la­tion of the Vot­ing Rights Act.

Sick of the back-​​biting, or sick of the back benches?

Now it’s six years later, and Sen­a­tor Kay Bai­ley Hutchi­son is retir­ing. (One might chalk her retire­ment up to another Repub­li­can Sen­a­tor tired of par­ti­san bick­er­ing in Wash­ing­ton, as Michael wrote ear­lier this week.) Her cho­sen suc­ces­sor, also sup­ported by the Repub­li­can estab­lish­ment and Gov­er­nor Rick Perry, is Lieu­tenant Gov­er­nor David Dewhurst.

Cruz defeated Dewhurst soundly, by a whop­ping 14 per­cent­age points, 57–43. He now faces Demo­c­ra­tic sac­ri­fi­cial lamb Paul Sadler in the gen­eral elec­tion Novem­ber 6. Cruz leads Sadler by 10 points, 44–34, in what few polls we cur­rently have. With that huge unde­cided per­cent­age, and the pri­maries of both par­ties just con­cluded, no doubt more polling will focus on the Cruz/​Sadler race.

Will Cruz crash and burn, as did the Tea Party can­di­dates Shar­ron Angle, Chris­tine O’Donnell, and Joe Buck did in the Tea Party-​​friendly 2010 elec­tion? Cruz, like Angle, O’Donnell, and Buck, was endorsed by Sarah Palin. Cruz can bring plenty of crazy to the table: he believes in the Agenda 21 con­spir­acy the­ory which I wrote about pre­vi­ously and which has now, post-​​Aurora the­atre shoot­ing, mor­phed into an U.N. plot to take away Amer­i­can guns. He’s already amassed a record of three “mostly true” state­ments, two “false” and two “Pants on Fire” state­ments on Poli­ti­Fact, while his oppo­nent Sadler has a two “true” and two “mostly true” record.

Is he crazy enough to lose this elec­tion in a Cook Par­ti­san Vot­ing Index R+10 state? (Inter­est­ingly, Texas is tied with North Dakota as the ninth-​​most-​​Republican state in the PVI rank­ings, and Demo­c­rat Heidi Heitkamp is close to Repub­li­can Rick Berg in non-​​Rasmussen polls.)

Can Texas elect its first Demo­c­ra­tic Sen­a­tor since Lloyd Bentsen was elected to his last term in 1988?

When, if ever, will Texas turn from red to pur­ple or blue?

 

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