The Aggies Gigged their Founders and the Hook of Horns is a 180 degree Shift from It's Founders Intent
What University in Texas founded to further reconstruction and to tie Texas back to the Union?
a)University of Texas
b)Texas A&M
What University on Texas was founded After Reconstruction to Thwart the Spread of Northern Ideals?
a)University of Texas
b)Texas A&M
Texas A&M and University of Texas have essentially turned on their founders. UT was founded as answer to the reconstruction and was the anti-reconstruction school. Texas A&M was the school founded to reconstruct Texas. What happened?
Geography effects history and history effects Geography. Interstate 35 and 35W wind up making a very nifty line of demarcation between the two natures of Texas. Texas is on the western fringe of the old south and the eastern fringe of the great American west. I know Interstate 35 was created much later but it lies on existing cultural boundaries. New Braunfels only narrowly voted to secede and that was on the concept of states rights.
Austin born in 1844 was perched on the wild frontier for a long time its geographic area ill suited to Plantation agriculture. UT wound up being the college closest to the hot bed of Union Sentiment Comfort, Boerne, Fredericksburg, Stonewall, Kerrville and yes New Braunfels. UT's turn to the left was inevitable as a Cold front. UT existed in the West. UT took on Western Characteristics. UT was not so much infiltrated by those who sought to undo its intent to tweak the deconstructionist university it was simply put one of the closest colleges to those who where most of those in favor of reconstruction could attend school.
Texas A&M on the other hand exists in the heart Texas the Southern State. You think East Texas you think the old South slaves were owned here then this was the land of the sharecropper. The pro-union military ethos quickly faded as the south reasserted itself in the United States Military as reconstruction faded. Now you had military now an agent of the southern heritage. Then you have simple geography. Texas A&M was well in the heart of the old south its students had the Southern ethos.
The great irony shows the role geography plays in shaping history. Texas A&M is a sign of how reconstruction failed. Texas A&M wound up being a bastion of the clannish south. UT shows how Southern Impearls failed to penetrate the hostile west and how the west in the end created its own values distinctive from the south.