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Clearly, Texas was not ripe in the '30s (and is not now) for talk of the "mature economy," the "vanished frontier" and "stabilization." Such words, part of the early New Deal gospel, went underground with Truman's Fair Deal, but the Texas rebels think that the idea behind them persists in Washington today. Texans, like other Americans, cotton to the word "security." But Texans, even more than other Americans, cotton to the word "opportunity." When the Federal Government promises security by seeming to mortgage opportunity, many Texans don't cotton to that at all. Texas, one of the fastest changing regions of the world's fastest changing nation, is nevertheless deeply conservative in political outlook. It has the American willingness to shift the furniture around, but it suspected the New Deal of trying to change the family habits. Texans, says Allan Shivers, "feel strongly about many things—civil rights, FEPC, that mess in Washington, taxes and spending." The thing that has roused Texas' strongest feeling is a matter of principle: tidelands oil.
Three Leagues Seaward. The tidelands will never replace the Alamo in the hearts of Texans, but there are times when certain Texan political leaders sound as if the two symbols stand for the same thing—and in a way, perhaps they do.
When in 1845 the Republic of Texas consented to become part of the U.S., the treaty of annexation defined the domain of Texas as extending three leagues (10.3 land miles) into the Gulf of Mexico. Later, the Texas legislature extended its claim to the edge of the continental shelf, an average of 70 miles into the Gulf. When the federal-state battle over the tidelands got hot, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that the Federal Government had "paramount rights in, and full dominion and power" over this underwater land. But the court left the way open for Congress to assign title to the states. Twice Congress passed bills giving the states title. Twice Harry Truman vetoed these bills. There the matter stands.
California and Louisiana tidelands contain rich, proven oil deposits. In the case of Texas, there is little evidence that the lands are "oil rich." Exploratory drilling has produced little oil. Now, oil firms have stopped exploration because of the dim prospects and the disputed title.
Yet Texas feels far more strongly about the tidelands issue than does California or Louisiana. It's not the money involved: it's the principle. Says Governor Shivers: "The attempt of the Federal Government to take over the tidelands of Texas represents just another move of a centralized governmental authority which has for years gradually taken over the rights of individual citizens of the states . . . establishing degree by degree a definite approach to state socialism . . . and then, as in this action, taking over the property of the state itself."
Following Roosevelt and Truman, Adlai Stevenson favors federal ownership of tidelands. The Republican platform and Eisenhower are against federal ownership of tidelands. That difference has brought thousands of Texans to the point of a reluctant break with the Democratic Party. Leader of the break—though he is one of the most reluctant—is Allan Shivers.