More than 60,000 people, mostly Texans, have signed an online petition to ask the Obama administration to grant Texas secession from the U.S. The petition reached 25,000 signatures — the minimum needed for the administration to respond  — within three days of being placed on the “We the People” website Nov. 9, along with secession petitions from more than a dozen other states that lack the minimum number of signatures.

Texas Gov. Rick Perry says he doesn’t support the petition, and there is no guarantee that President Obama will comment on it.  

Randolph B. “Mike” Campbell, Regents Professor of history at the University of North Texas and the chief historian for the Texas State Historical Association, which is housed at UNT, is available to comment on the secession movement and Texas’ history as an independent nation from 1836 to 1845. The author of “Gone to Texas: A History of the Lone Star State,” Campbell notes that Texas, which lacked trade and manufacturing, was deeply in debt and faced invasion from Mexico during the mid-1800s, was desperate to join the U.S. and stop being its own country.

Campbell is the author or editor of eight other books and was an advisory editor for The New Handbook of Texas. He may be reached at 940-565-3402 or at mike@unt.edu.