REESE LIBRARY 
 
 OF THE 
 
 UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA. 
 
TEXAS 
 
 TZ-j 
 
 AND THE 
 
 1^ 
 
 MASSACHUSETTS EESOLUTIONS. 
 
 BY CHARLES FRANCIS ADAMS. 
 
 BOSTON: 
 1844. 
 
 EASTBURN'S PRESS. 
 
TEXAS 
 
 lA 
 
 MASSACHUSETTS RESOLUTIONS. 
 
 or 
 
 BY CHARLES FRANCIS ADAMS. 
 
 BOSTON: 
 1844. 
 
 EASTBURN'S PRESS. 
 
^ 
 
 
 
 The substance of this Essay has already been published in the col- 
 umns of the Boston Courier, in nine separate newspapers. It is now 
 eligJitly enlarged and put in a continuous form, in order that the views 
 therein taken of two much disputed questions of great national interest 
 at this time, as well as of the policy to be adopted by the Free States in 
 respect to them, may be submitted entire to the impartial judgment of 
 a free people. 
 
^ Of TH€ 
 
 UNJVERSITY 
 
 Of 
 
 REMARKS. 
 
 The 'People of the United States have been lately taken 
 somewhat by surprise upon the announcement that a Treaty 
 was actually on foot between the American Government and 
 Texas by which the annexation of the latter to the Union, 
 the favorite measure of a great party in the country is at last 
 to be effected. They had scarcely supposed that this ques- 
 tion so lately thought to be put at rest was about to rise be- 
 fore them again so soon and in so novel a manner. The 
 newspapers, the usual organs by which events are an- 
 nounced, for reasons which may readily be understood, long 
 abstained very carefully from sounding any alarm, and it was 
 not until the measure was almost upon us that they apprised 
 us even of its existence. Even since the fact has become 
 notorious beyond the possibility of contradiction, it cannot be 
 said that they treat the subject in the full and open and un- 
 disguised manner which its paramount importance to the 
 country demands. The great mass of thinking people are 
 not led fully to comprehend what it Is that makes this point 
 one of such deep interest to carry in some quarters of the 
 Union, and in others to resist, nor are they prepared by the 
 momentary and evanescent censure which they find now and 
 then passed upon it to devise a plan of action which shall 
 stop the whole movement, while there is time. 
 
 And when we say movement, we do not mean by this 
 simply the effort of John Tyler to finish the scheme by what 
 the French would call a "coup de main." That is merely 
 the end of what has been in the process of accomplishment 
 for years back. Mr. Holmes of South-Carolina said in his 
 place in Congress, that the annexation of Texas was "the 
 settled policy of the government." His remark was full of 
 meaning ; but how ^ew are there in the Free States, who have 
 been led to give it a moment's consideration ? His remark 
 may go somewhat to illustrate the motives of the appointment 
 of Mr. John C. Calhoun to the Department of State, and 
 yet the newspapers of the Free States of all parties seem to 
 hail that appointment, as if it was the announcement of a sa- 
 viour to the nation. If Mr. Calhoun is likely to save the 
 
 211881 
 
■ 4 
 
 State by any policy which he introduces into the administra- 
 tion, then did George Washington greatly misconceive what 
 that policy ought to be, in ihe legacy which he left to his 
 countrymen. 
 
 The annexation of Texas has been the settled policy of 
 the government for many years past. But it has been only 
 one of a series of measures which have constituted that pol- 
 icy. Perhaps it was the one most difficult to accomplish, 
 and therefore the longer delayed, that all the initiatory 
 steps might be more firmly taken. There have been those 
 in the Free States, who have watched the progress made 
 with unsleeping vigilance, and who have more than once suc- 
 ceeded in defeating the scheme for the moment, but it never 
 has been laid aside. It never will be laid aside until it is ac- 
 complished. Time will be given to remove from the scene 
 the most powerful opponents, or to soften the roughest obsta- 
 cles. But the thing will be done, peaceably if possible, 
 forcibly if necessary. Let no man in the Free States hug 
 the delusion that it is stopped, because two thirds of the Sen- 
 ators cannot now be found to ratify Mr. Tyler's treaty. 
 There are many ways in America to arrive at the same re- 
 sult. If one fails, another will be tried. Money, promises, 
 bribes, threats, will be used, bargains will be made, and the 
 end of it will be, that unless they interfere with a voice of 
 thunder to prevent it the people of the Free States will be 
 sold, and Texas will be bought for the bauble of the Presi- 
 dency. 
 
 Even now there is living on the banks of the Hudson river 
 an individual, the chief merit of w^hose political life is to be 
 found in the fact that he, as President of the United States, 
 refused to negotiate a treaty like that which John Tyler 
 now proposes. The recollection of that act, at this time, 
 weighs heavily against him and his hopes of again reach- 
 ing the station which he lost. He has, through his friends, 
 bargained away much that the Free States deem valuable, 
 the right of petition, the protection of home industry, the 
 freedom of speech, and, indeed, almost every other se- 
 curity to Hberty, for the sake of assuring himself of the sup- 
 port of the Southern States. They are not yet satisfied. 
 They require the surrender of all opposition to Texas, and it 
 is to be feared that this also will be sacrificed to them. For 
 instead of meeting half way the generous feelings of four fifths 
 of the people of the Free States, indignant at this secret 
 manoeuvre of John Tyler's, the Legislatures of at least three 
 States friendly to Mr. Van Buren, have cooly determined in 
 silence to await the issue. We were not disappointed in this 
 
result, for we know the calculating policy of that gentleman. 
 The principles of liberty are never safe in the hands of men 
 who make a trade of public affairs. Mr. Van Buren must 
 be judged by his preceding course, taken as a whole — and 
 from that let no man delude himself with the belief that he is 
 fixed to any thing but his own interest. If the citizens of the 
 Free States are to have any hope of maintaining to them- 
 selves and their children the blessings of liberty, they must 
 rely upon themselves. For their voice alone will form the 
 potential rule by which the conduct of such men as Mr. Van 
 Buren will be guided. And with regret it must be confessed 
 that of such men, do, for the most part, our legislative bodies 
 consist. 
 
 In order to a full comprehension of the merits of this ques- 
 tion, it is necessary to go a great deal deaper than Mr. 
 Tyler's treaty with Texas. That is but an incident — an 
 important one, it may be — but still only one of many, which 
 spring from the same cause. What that cause is, few of the 
 leading politicians of the present day dare to tell if they 
 know. The exposure of it to the light is not a very safe 
 process to any one ambitious of a share of power, to get 
 which it is necessary to gain the assent of Senators from the 
 Southern States. The Massachusetts resolutions ventured to 
 point to that cause in a manner that could not be misunderstood. 
 Hence the extraordinary way in which they have been re- 
 ceived throughout the chain of the slave States, and in both 
 branches of the federal legislature. Massachusetts struck 
 directly at the root of the evil. She showed from whence 
 came the policy which has already put fetters on the Free 
 States, the galling nature of which they will only begin to 
 feel when the annexation of Texas shall have brought its train 
 of evils along with it, and the consequence has been a gen- 
 eral burst of indignation from the parties interested in main- 
 taining the delusion. It must be confessed that Massa- 
 chusetts, in making the exposition which she did of the 
 power wielded by the representation of property in man, 
 conceded by the constitution of the United States, over the 
 interests of the Union, went a step beyond public opinion, 
 even in the Free States, and she has not yet been properly 
 sustained in any quarter, but, on the whole, this is not to be 
 regretted. There is time enough. Events will show whether 
 she is right or wrong. If the duty of sustaining the great 
 principles of human progress against attack, is to devolve 
 upon any one, who so fit to lead as the people of Massa- 
 chusetts ? 
 
 Let no one, however, be so simple as to imagine that the 
 
question thus opened can end here. Mr. Dromgoole of Vir- 
 ginia may flatter himself that his resolution, forced through 
 the House of Representatives at Washington at the expense 
 of every privilege which makes a deliberative assembly valu- 
 able to the people, will set it at rest for the present. But his 
 action, and that of his servile majority, will only tend to sup- 
 ply another illustration of the evil which Massachusetts point- 
 ed out. That cannot be a good cause which stands in need 
 of such aid to support it. That must be a tyrannical system 
 which needs the protection of silent and hurried measures to 
 prevent it from falling. If the eyes of this people are ulti- 
 mately to be opened, no better means can be devised for the 
 purpose than such as are now often and unblushingly resorted 
 to for the purpose of keeping them blind. 
 
 It is a remark made by Mr. Stiles, a representative of 
 Georgia, in a late speech of his, which has been circulated 
 far and wide, that "slavery and the constitution have^owr- 
 ished together ; their existence is the same and inseparable." 
 Now if it were possible to destroy in the minds of respecta- 
 ble citizens all respect for that instrument, no more effectual 
 mode could be devised than to admit the truth of such a pro- 
 position. For what does it imply .'' Nothing more nor less 
 than that the frame of government which all lovers of freedom 
 had fondly hoped would prove the greatest protection to hu- 
 man liberty ever known, had actually proved the hot-bed for 
 the forcing into rank luxuriance a system of tyrannical despo- 
 tism by one class over another and larger class of their fellow 
 beings. Mr. Stiles seems to speak as if it were conceded 
 on all hands that the intention of the instrument was to guar- 
 anty the perpetuation of slavery. Yet to admit this, would be 
 equivalent to charging its framers with deliberate falsehood ; 
 for they, in their preamble, expressly declare the object of 
 the people to be ''to secure the blessings of liberty to them- 
 selves and their posterity," as well as " to establish justice," 
 to ensure domestic tranquillity, to provide for the common 
 defence and promote the general welfare." Is it then true 
 or not true, what Mr. Stiles says of the constitution ; and if 
 true, how comes it to be true in the face of so solemn a pre- 
 amble, which so directly contradicts him ? These are seri- 
 ous questions, and we propose to try to answer them with 
 equal seriousness. 
 
 The framers of the constitution meant what they said in 
 the preamble. They were honest and honorable men. They 
 well knew the character of the task which they had undertaken. 
 They felt that the hopes of the people, ay, and of the friends 
 of liberty all over the civilized world, rested upon the sue- 
 
cess of their efforts. And they labored to erect a system of 
 government which should answer the public expectation. 
 They strove to incorporate into it the safeguards of every 
 known principle of liberty, and what they did not formally 
 recognise, the people, by amendments, insisted upon ex- 
 pressly securing. Thus it was that the writ of habeas cor- 
 pus was reserved, except in cases of extreme public danger, 
 bills of attainder and ex post facto laws were prohibited, trial 
 by jury was secured, convictions for treason should be bad 
 only upon the concurrent testimony of two witnesses to a sin- 
 gle overt act, no corruption of blood should be made a pun- 
 ishment of the offence, and republican forms of government 
 were guaranteed to the several States. These were provisions 
 made to guard against invasions of personal liberty, of which 
 history had furnished examples under arbitrary governments 
 on the other side of the water. But the people of the States, 
 not content with all this, insisted upon articles of amendment 
 which expressly guard against an establishment of religion, 
 against the prohibition of the free exercise of speech by Con- 
 gress, the abridgement of the freedom of speech or of the 
 press, and the infringement of the right of the people to as- 
 semble and to petition for a redress of grievances. So with 
 their right to bear arms, and to be secure in their persons, 
 houses, papers and effects, against unreasonable searches and 
 seizures, and also with their right to an impartial trial. All 
 this, and more that might be enumerated, has but one end, and 
 that is — " the securing the blessings of liberty to the people 
 and their posterity" — the very end mentioned in the pream- 
 ble. The care that was taken to define all these points suffi- 
 ciently proves the sincerity of the persons engaged in making 
 the form of government. They thought they were creating 
 a repubhc, — or, as it is now more common though less proper 
 to style it, a democracy. They recommended it, because it 
 appeared to carry out the principles of the revolutionary 
 struggle. It gave a practical sanction to the doctrines of the 
 Declaration of Independence. The people thought so too. 
 They ratified it and adopted it, and boasted of enjoying the 
 freest government on the face of the earth. 
 
 And yet Mr. Stiles tells us that " slavery and the constitu- 
 tion have flourished together — their existence is the same and 
 inseparable." The first part of the sentence, at least, is true. 
 Slavery has flourished under the constitution. Not because it 
 was the design of the constitution to make it flourish. No ! 
 we abhor the idea as a slander upon our forefathers. It was 
 because the framers of the constitution whished to deal mildly 
 with an existing evil. They trusted to the healing influences 
 
> 
 
 8 
 
 of the system which they were about to estabhsh, gradually to 
 remove the sore. They made a mistake. That sore has 
 spread, and proves a corroding ulcer. For the sake of gain- 
 ing the security to freedom in all the other provisions which 
 have been specified, they unwillingly assented to one aristo- 
 cratic condition, which gave to a small number of whites, in 
 the slave States, a disproportionate share of political power, 
 on account of their property in their fellow-men. That sin- 
 gle aristocratic condition has, from its commencement, work- 
 ed unmixed evil to the Union. It now bids fair to overturn 
 and destroy all the safeguards of the constitution. It bids fair 
 to make that instrument a mere nose of wax, with which to 
 accomplish the selfish purposes of the class whom it protects. 
 The policy of the United States has been and is to make 
 slavery flourish under the constitution. Mr. Stiles says it 
 has succeeded — thus far. Perhaps so. But it is as yet bare- 
 ly established. The victory has not been gained without a 
 struggle. And the last act yet remains to be done — the an- 
 nexation of Texas — before it can be said to be beyond the 
 reach of danger. This once accomplished, it will not be diffi- 
 cult to foresee the consequences, as it respects any hope of 
 effective counteraction on the part of the Free States. 
 
 " One of the least of these consequences is war. War with 
 Mexico, certainly — with Great Britain, probably. Let the 
 people reflect upon these matters well. For to them the re- 
 sult is of no trifling importance. *B. war to protect slavery 
 against the civilized worlds is the ultimate point of degrada- 
 
 , tion to which a nation, boasting to be free, is Hkely to be 
 
 \jiriven. yj\ • ^ ^ ^^ v 
 
 Let us however now consider still more closely the asser- 
 tion of Mr. 'Stiles, and let us ask ourselves whether the con- 
 stitution of the United States is what he leads us to infer it is, 
 only a stupendous fraud upon mankind. He affirms that its 
 object was to guarantee the existence of a state of domestic 
 slavery in the Union, and that whenever that object should 
 be made to cease, the constitution finnst cease also. We 
 should not rest upon the argument of this individual, if we 
 did not know that in it he represents the sentiments of the 
 great mass of the people in the Southern States, who really 
 believe that slavery is an inseparable attendant of our free; 
 institutions. We may wonder at the strange nature of the 
 inconsistency committed by men who profess themselves tol 
 go to the extreme of democracy in doctrine, but such is yetl 
 the fact. Our business is rather with what is, than with what' 
 ought to he. The Legislatures of Virginia, of Alabama, and 
 of Louisiana, as well as the House of Representatives at 
 
9 
 
 Washington, have all, by their action upon the Massachu- 
 setts Resolutions, more or less committed themselves to the 
 maintenance of the same proposition. They cannot now get 
 away from it if they would. 
 
 Yet in the face of all this, we will undertake at once, and 
 unequivocally to deny, on behalf of the framers of the consti- 
 tution, any such fraudulent intention. The great body of the 
 convention looked confidently to the day when slavery would 
 be abolished in all the States. The celebrated Judge Wil- 
 son announced it in the ratifying Convention of Pennsylvania 
 as one of the most valuable consequences to be expected 
 from the adoption of the constitution. George Washington 
 looked forward to it, if not in the same light, at least as fol- 
 lowing the voluntary act of the Southern States themselves. 
 Thomas Jefferson, though not a member of the convention, 
 yet a fair representative of Southern sentiment, was not a 
 whit behind-hand in his professions upon the subject. The 
 evil was then confined within comparatively small limits ; it 
 was not rapidly growing under the stimulus of the production 
 of an extraordinarily profitable staple, such as cotton has 
 since become and such as sugar may yet become. It was 
 generally believed at the time that the transplantation of the 
 negro to America was an artificial process, which could only 
 be kept up by perpetual importation, and that, without this, 
 the race would dechne and die out of itself. Hence the ori- 
 gin of the effort to prevent the prohibition of the slave trade, 
 resulting in the adoption of the first clause of the ninth section 
 of the first article of the constitution, which put that trade 
 beyond the control of Congress for twenty years, or until 
 180S. This measure, if it meant any thing at all, was a meas- 
 ure of precaution against the supposed tendency of the con- 
 stitution, and by no means implies the opinion that slavery 
 would flourish under its protection — an opinion which Mr. 
 Stiles maintains to have been the prevailing one, and which 
 he, with a greater appearance of justice, assumes to be the 
 correct one. 
 
 But how has it come to be a fact, if it be admitted to be 
 true ? Is it not because the constitution gave to a hundred 
 and fifty thousand men, owners of slaves, — a number which 
 certainly has not doubled since, — a most disproportionate 
 share of political power over the afl^airs of the Union ? Itv >^ 
 granted to them an aristocratic distinction of property which 7 
 forever marked them a favored and separate class, acting to- 
 gether for a common object, the maintenance at every hazard 
 of their special privilege. The consequence has been that 
 the power thus concentrated in few hands has met with no 
 
10 
 
 yj corresponding combination in other quarters of the Union to 
 resist il, and that it has overborne all opposition. The first 
 struggle, which could hardly be denominated one, took place 
 lyipon the acquisition of Louisiana to the United States — an 
 Acquisition obtained at the sacrifice of every constitutional 
 /principle that had ever been maintained in the southern coun- 
 I try. This enlarged the territory over which the exclusive 
 /privilege could be extended, and multiplied the number of its 
 I representatives in the Senate of the Union. The next strug- 
 gle took place in 1819, at the time of the admission of Mis- 
 fsouri, when a serious attempt was made to put a stop to the 
 Vjfuture increase of that number, by attaching a condition that 
 jjthe right of property in man should not be recognized in the 
 new State. The champions of the exclusive privilege were 
 here again victorious, and they have enjoyed the fruits of that 
 victory down to this time. But the natural progress of 
 events, which increases the citizens of the free States and 
 territories much faster than the slave owners can multiply 
 slaves, has again brought their power into danger — and now 
 the third struggle is about to take place, which will open a 
 new territory, of indefinite extent, already occupied by a 
 [sympathizing population active in cherishing the source of 
 their political power, and originally transplanted from the 
 United States to this spot it occupies, for the purpose of 
 bringing about this very result. 
 
 One of the most visible modes by which this small but 
 powerful combination has exercised a great degree of influ- 
 ence, has been through the election to the Presidency. Out 
 of the now considerable period since the adoption of the con- 
 stitution, there may be said to have been but one single term 
 of four years in which this combination has not preponderated 
 in the government — and the history of that term is the one 
 which it has most zealously endeavored to decry. We mean 
 the presidency of the elder Adams. Out of fifty-six years, 
 the combination has obtained a Chief Magistrate from a slave- 
 holding section of the country forty-four years, and it held 
 almost unlimited sway during four of the remaining twelve. 
 The consequence may very easily be guessed. The gen- 
 eral policy of the country has been that of protection to 
 the interests of slavery. It is this which makes the words of 
 Mr. Stiles true, and not any supposed intent of the framers 
 of the constitution. Slavery has flourished because those 
 possessing the aristocratic distinction of property conceded in 
 it have always held the balance of power, and they have al- 
 ways used it with a single eye to the maintenance of their ex- 
 clusive privileges. It is, then, not without reason that Mr. 
 
11 
 
 Holmes has pronounced the annexation of Texas to have been 
 the settled policy of the government. It has been so during 
 the last twenty years, but there has been a difference in the 
 nature of that policy at different periods, which those who 
 now advocate it very sedulously conceal from the public view. 
 In order that we may arrive at a true judgement of the 
 facts, let us look at them a little more closely. 
 
 The treaty with France, hy which Louisiana was ceded to 
 the United States, left the Western boundary of that territo- 
 ry very uncertain. When the question came up for settle- 
 ment with Spain, which had the control at that time over the 
 neighboring country of Mexico, it became the duty of the 
 representatives of the two governments to argue it in that 
 manner which should be most for the interest of their respec- 
 tive nations. The Americans claimed the Rio del Norte as 
 the boundary, which would embrace all the country now call- 
 ed Texas, and more ; whilst the Spaniards, on the other 
 hand, insisted upon a line running North from the Gulf of Mex- 
 ico to the River Missouri, at about the ninety-third degree of 
 longitude West from London, w^iich would have taken off a 
 part of what are now the States of Arkansas and Missouri, and 
 much of the Western Territory. As is usual in such cases, 
 an intermediate line was ultimately agreed upon by the treaty 
 of 1819, the third article of which, fixed the boundary at the 
 River Sabine, up to the thirty-second degree of latitude, 
 thence North to the degree of latitude where such a line 
 would strike the Red River, thence westward along this river 
 to the one-hundredth parallel of longitude west from London, 
 thence north to the Arkansas River, thence along this river 
 to its source in latitude forty-two degrees nordi, and thence 
 westward along that parallel to the Pacific Ocean. In the 
 annual message of President Monroe to Congress, of the 7th 
 December, 1819, this was distinctly announced as a com- 
 promise, in the following words: 
 
 "On the part of the United States, this treaty was evidently acceded 
 
 to in a spirit of conciliation and concession For territory 
 
 ceded by Spain, other territory of great value to which our claim was be- 
 lieved to be well founded, was ceded by the United States, and in a 
 quarter more interesting to her." 
 
 Now if we consider that the Floridas were the territory 
 ceded by Spain, a territory for the sake of gaining which it 
 may be remarked Mr. Jefferson himself whose authority has 
 been much relied upon in this connexion, always stood ready 
 to surrender the claim on Texas, we think.it will scarcely be 
 maintained by any one who will cast a glance upon the map, 
 that this treaty was not, so far at least as territory is con- 
 
12 
 
 cerned, and Southern territory too, an abundantly advanta- 
 geous one to the United States. Yet Mr. J. Q. Adams, 
 who was then in the Department of State, and conducted 
 the negotiation on the part of the Union, has been most sin- 
 gularly treated in connexion with it, by those who now un- 
 dertake the management of the Texas cause. In the first 
 place, they quote huTi as a strong authority, when he claimed 
 on the part of this country, the farthest western boundary, 
 which would have included Texas in our territory, and then 
 forgetting the compromise in the treaty, by which that claim 
 was surrendered, in consideration of the corresponding sur- 
 render by Spain of the Floridas, as well as of its claim to a 
 part of Arkansas and Missouri and the Western territory, — 
 they insist that he betrayed the interests of the Union, by 
 giving up this claim on the territory of Texas. They seem 
 to forget or to neglect ail notice of this contract by which ter- 
 ritory was acquired in the place of what was quit-claimed, 
 (for the right of the United States to Texas was never con- 
 ceded by the Spanish Government, and therefore it never 
 became more than a claim on our part,) and with a singular 
 exhibition of justice and impartiality, they not only insist 
 upon holding all that we got by the bargain, but also upon 
 taking back a part of the consideration that we gave to get it. 
 And the great argument by which Mr. Walker, who speaks 
 for the Texan party, endeavors to support this extraordinary 
 pretension is that Texas having become by virtue of the 
 Louisiana treaty an integral part of the United States, no 
 part of it could be ceded at all by the general government 
 without the consent of its inhabitants. Mr. Walker appears 
 to overlook the fact that in 1819 when this treaty was made 
 there were very few inhabitants in the territory to consult — 
 that none of them were emigrants from the United States, 
 and that those who were there, as they had never been 
 consulted when the Louisiana treaty was made, so they were 
 as little consulted when the claim was advanced which was 
 to bring them within the limits of the Union. Probably 
 if they had been, they would have adhered to the Spanish 
 side of the question. The question was in substance a ques- 
 tion of boundaries in a wilderness. The United States 
 have no right to insist at all times that their claim is not 
 simply a just one as against neighboring nations, but that it is 
 utterly impossible for them to divest themselves of it. Hence 
 that every negotiation and treaty which surrenders such a 
 claim is unauthorised and therefore wholly void. If this ar- 
 gument is always to prevail, where are we to stop ^ The 
 boundaries of the territory of the Union are not yet per- 
 
13 
 
 fectly defined in many quarters. Are we to assume that our 
 rights shall be acknowledged by other nations, to the furthest 
 limit of what we can show any claim for ? If we do, then 
 will there never be any possibility of settling questions other- 
 wise than by war. It amounts to dictation to other countries, 
 to which they will never submit — it can never be called nego- 
 tiation with them. The great body of the people of the 
 United States are not so unreasonable as all this comes to. 
 When a good treaty is made, which secures the great ob- 
 ject of peace, and a definite boundary, equally satisfactory 
 to both the negotiating countries, it becomes all honest and 
 well-meaning citizens to abstain thenceforth and forever from 
 all complaint and much more from any effort to annul its force. 
 
 Yet we are not among those who can be said to approve 
 of one principle which was contained in that treaty, as af- 
 fecting the domestic concerns of the Union. We mean the 
 acquisition of additional territory. The example had been 
 unfortunately set by the cession of Louisiana, and a concur- 
 rence of circumstances appeared to make the step almost un- 
 avoidable. But we fear it has been, and will be, the parent 
 of mischiefs innumerable. One of these has been, what Mr. 
 Holmes calls the settled policy of the Government to annex 
 Texas. Another is the present dispute with the government 
 of Great Britain, about the terrritory of Oregon. Why 
 should the people of the United States want more lands, 
 when they do not know what to do with those they already 
 have? Why should the twenty-six States seek to open new 
 inducements to the emigration of their own citizens, when 
 those already existing are so great as to make them uncertain 
 of their ability to keep them at home ? Still there would be 
 no impulse of this kind sufficiently strong to excite a reason- 
 able share of alarm for the pacific policy of the Union, if it 
 were not for the restless desire of the privileged class to per- 
 petuate the sources of its power. 
 
 The treaty with Spain of 1819, signed, sealed and duly 
 ratified by the contracting parties, fixed the Sabine and the 
 Red River as the boundary of the United States on the 
 south-west. It surrendered all claim, or shadow of claim, 
 to the territory of Texas. That was conceded to belong to 
 Spain, whilst Spain held the control of Mexico, and it fell to 
 the share of Mexico when that country made itself independ- 
 ent. Shortly after the acknowledgment of her independ- 
 ence, an effort was made to treat with her for the cession of 
 Texas. That effort was made by Mr. Clay, under the ad- 
 ministration of Mr. Adams. It is the beginning of what Mr. 
 Holmes has denominated the settled policy of this Govern- 
 
14 
 
 ment, and inasmuch as the fact has been very much relied 
 upon by Mr. Walker, and other friends of the annexation of 
 Texas, as a justification of the extraordinary series of meas- 
 ures since taken, it may be well to explain precisely to what 
 it amounts. 
 
 In the year 1S24, or three years after Mexico threw off 
 the Spanish domination, she adopted a constitution, wherein 
 it was provided that "no person should thereafter be born or 
 introduced as a slave into the Mexican nation." At this 
 time the territory of Texas was comparatively a desert. 
 There were but a [ew settlements, and none of them had 
 shown any disposition to resist the policy thus declared. In 
 1825, Mr. Clay proposed the cession of the territory, for 
 such a reasonable sum of money as to Mexico would be per- 
 fectly satisfactory. It was the land that was in question, and 
 not the institutions established in it, for none had been then 
 established. It was an open bargain with a neighbor, which 
 that neighbor was perfectly at liberty to agree to or to reject 
 — and which it did reject in such a manner as to put an end 
 to the negotiation. There was no fraud, no false play, no 
 open profession and secret treachery. We may disapprove 
 of the policy which sought for an enlargement of territory in 
 this quarter, if we please, but we have nothing to be ashamed 
 of in it. We may blame Mr. Adams and Mr. Clay for set- 
 ting a precedent in this instance, so likely to be abused, and 
 which in fact has been abused, but we cannot make them 
 justly responsible for not foreseeing the train of evils which 
 only the policy of the last fifteen years has brought to light. 
 
 In short, Texas is not, and never was ours. We had a 
 claim upon it, believed by us to be good, which we sold for 
 more than it was worth. We have not, therefore, had a 
 shadow of right to it since, and this pretence of getting round 
 a solemn treaty for the sake of reviving a disputed title, set- 
 tled, advantageously to us, long ago, is only one of many 
 movements which reflect no credit upon the advocates of the 
 annexation. Six years afterwards, it is true that the admin- 
 istration of Mr. Adams offered to buy the territory from 
 Mexico, before it was seriously encumbered with ''the do- 
 mestic institution," and before citizens of the United States 
 had gone into it for the purpose of exciting disaffection, but it 
 did not pretend that Mexico was not fully possessed of all the 
 rights to it which Spain held under the Treaty of 1819, up to 
 the period of the overthrow of her domination. The offer 
 was made — it was declined, and there was an end of the bu- 
 siness. In making it, the United States conceded the validity 
 of the title by which Mexico held it. It would have been 
 
15 
 
 well for the character of our diplomacy, if they had continu- 
 ed, as at first, contentedly to abide by the refusal. 
 ^ But this was not destined to be the case. We must now 
 go into a very brief examination of that which Mr. Holmes 
 has called the " settled policy of the government," respect- 
 ing Texas. We have no desire to say any thing unnecessa- 
 rily harsh, either of active or retired public men, but a part 
 of the truth, at least, must be told. The whole has never 
 yet been, and probably never will be, revealed to the public. 
 If in any particular we commit errors from want of all the 
 necessary evidence to substantiate our statements, we shall be 
 glad to be corrected. The times demand that the facts 
 should be presented with accuracy and without passion. 
 
 General Jackson was elected President of the United 
 States, and in March, 1829, assumed the office. Mr. Van 
 Buren became his Secretary of State. On the 25th of Au- 
 gust following, the latter gentleman wrote to our minister in 
 Mexico, that the President wished him to open, without de- 
 lay, a negotiation for the purchase of Texas. For that which 
 the preceding administration had not thought of offering more 
 than one million of dollars, the General was willing to offer 
 four millions of dollars, or even as much as five. 
 
 It must be noted that at this very time the government was 
 aware of the fact that an expedition had been fitted out by 
 Spain for the reconquest of Mexico, which appeared for some 
 time likely to be successful. We refer to that under General 
 Barradas. This was thought to be a highly favorable moment 
 to press the offer of so large a sum of money. " It is" said 
 Mr. Van Buren in one of his despatches "regarded by us as 
 an auspicious one to secure the cession, and I will add, that 
 there does not appear to be any reasonable objection on the 
 score of delicacy, to its being embraced." 
 
 The Mexican character is somewhat peculiar. It is indo- 
 lent, but very stubborn. However delicate they might have 
 considered the offer at such a moment, the money was no 
 temptation, and the Spanish expedition came to nothing. 
 Mr. Poinsett was obliged to write home his conviction " that 
 we never can expect to extend our boundary south of the 
 Sabine, without quarreling with these people.^^ 
 
 Here was a hint. How it was taken, may best be under- 
 stood by reading an extract from a newspaper, the Arkansas 
 Gazette of 1830, which announced, ''from information deriv- 
 ed from a source entitled to the highest credit, that no hopes 
 need be entertained of our acquiring Texas, until some other 
 party more friendly to the United States shall predominate in 
 Mexico, and perhaps not until Texas shall throw of the yoke 
 
16 
 
 of allegiance to that government, which they will do, no 
 doubt, as soon as they shall have a reasonable pretext for so 
 doing." 
 
 What was the "source entitled to the highest credit'' from 
 which issued so remarkable an oracle ? Who was it that 
 thus succeeded in casting forward the shadow of coming 
 events ? Was it the President's correspondent in Arkansas, 
 the Secretary of State, Mr. Fulton ? Was it Mr Anthony 
 Butler, who had been in the confidence of the President in 
 1 829, and who succeeded Mr. Poinsett in Mexico } or the 
 still more remarkable person who became the instrument 
 through which conjecture was made reality. General Houston.'* 
 We shall not pretend to any abihty to answer these questions, 
 but we shall endeavor to show as briefly as possible the rela- 
 tions which these persons bore to the history we have in hand. 
 It is a fact, that this Samuel Houston, a man who had 
 made himself conspicuous as a friend of General Jackson 
 prior to the election of 1828, who had been a representative 
 from Tennessee in Congress, as well as Governor of that 
 State, and who boasted much of his possessing the confidence 
 of the President, suddenly left Washington, but not without 
 leaving behind him some who knew of his intended course, 
 and that he made his appearance in Texas as an expatriated 
 citizen, anxious to leave his own country in order that he 
 might take the benefit of the advantages held out by the su- 
 perior moral and social condition of Mexico, by becoming a 
 settler under its jurisdiction^ His example was soon followed 
 by many of those who boast of belonging to the freest nation 
 under the sun. Mexico was indiscreet enough to suppose 
 that they came in earnest. No effort was made, by those 
 who knew better, to undeceive her, and she therefore was 
 lavish in her offers of land and all other privileges. But she 
 would not grant every conceivable demand. The Mexican 
 constitution by which the territories of Coahuila and Texas 
 were united abolished slavery. The new settlers insisted upon 
 separating Texas from Coahuila, and making a new constitu- 
 tion for the former, which omitted the clause abolishing slave- 
 ry. Mexico preferred the old form of government, and the 
 settlers deemed the moment auspicious for declaring their in- 
 dependence. And General Houston, not long afterwards, 
 wrote to his friend Dunlap of Tennessee, for aid in the strug- 
 gle that would ensue, because, to use his own words — 
 
 There is but one feeling in Texas, in my opinion, and that is, to estab- 
 lish the independence of Texas, and to be attached to the United States. 
 
 We make no comment on these facts, because we are con- 
 fident that with all reasonable and fair-judging citizens they 
 
17 
 
 need none. The independence of Texas was established 
 principally by means of aid from the United States. And 
 now that the proposal to be attached is once more made, Mr. 
 Senator Walker, in his elaborate pamphlet, professes to see 
 no difference between the nature of this proposal, as it affects 
 the disposition towards us of Mexico, which has never yet 
 acknowledged the independence of Texas, and that made 
 during Mr. Adams's administration, to obtain by purchase the 
 territory from Mexico herself, before her independence had 
 been acknowledged by Spain. He maintains that Spain, with 
 whom we were then on friendly terms, had as much right to be 
 offended with us in the one case, as Mexico has in the other. 
 This is specious and plausible, but it is as unsound as every 
 other part of the argument in favor of annexation ; — for sure- 
 ly there is a moral feeUng in the breast of every man, which 
 leads him to distinguish between actions done under wholly 
 different circumstances. Mexico declared herself indepen- 
 dent of Spain. The struggle was between Mexicans and 
 Spaniards, and the United States did not interfere to decide 
 it. On the other hand, the citizens of the United States went 
 into Texas ostensibly as settlers, and they declared Texas 
 independent of Mexico. Can it be said that the United 
 States did not create as well as decide the struggle ? Can it be 
 said that the government was not during the whole time anx- 
 iously betraying its interest in the result, by perpetual solicita- 
 tion of Mexico to cede the country as it was, whether in a state 
 of insurrection or not ? Does not the law forbid individuals to 
 take advantage of their own wrong ? And is it not the wrong 
 of our citizens, transplanted for a short time to another soil, 
 which has enabled us to treat with them for that soil, against 
 the consent and to the injury of Mexico ? So long as Spairf^ 
 was unable to recover any territory from the Mexicans, it 
 could be matter of no offence who purchased the soil of the 
 
 new owners. But the Mexicans certainly have a right to beJL.J 
 offended, if the government with whom it is at peace, first ' ^i 
 succeeds in tearing off a part of their country, by instigating (Ve>^^^ 
 
 resistance to their authority on the part of its citizens import- Vi'SJ^c/ 
 ed for the purpose, and then, after a few years have passed .fj(J(\}Jt 
 just sufficient to save appearances, it takes through the agency e^^^/j 
 of those citizens that country very quietly within its own ju- y\> 6< 
 risdiction, as the legitimate offspring of this treachery. * ^r 
 
 The Mexicans may be a feeble people, wanting in the en-| 
 ergy which is characteristic of the United States, but they are 
 not wanting in discernment. They long since penetrated the 
 ambitious designs of their powerful neighbor, and they have 
 not been without industry in watching and exposing its action 
 
18 
 
 to the eyes of the civilized world. From the day of the ac- 
 cession of General Jackson to the Presidency, to the last of 
 his second term, no effort was left untried by him, by which he 
 could hope to acquire Texas. In the summer of 1829, Mr. 
 Anthony Butler, the person who was to be employed by him 
 as his negotiator, came to Washington, and had long confer- 
 ences with him, and with Mr. Van Buren, that he might 
 be the more fully master of all the designs of the administra- 
 tion. In 1830, General Jackson's own affidavit on record in 
 the Court at Washington proves that he became fully aware 
 of General Houston's schemes, but that instead of communi- 
 cating his information to the government with which we were 
 at peace, and which was most deeply affected by them, he 
 confined himself to a letter of inquiry, addressed, not to the 
 Governor, but to the Secretary of the Territory of Arkansas, 
 and calculated rather to invite a contradiction of the designs 
 charged, than to elicit any facts. It should be recollected, 
 that this was at just about the same time that the singular 
 article already quoted, intimating, as from a source entitled 
 to " the highest credit," that Texas might "throw off the 
 yoke of allegiance to Mexico" — appeared in the columns of 
 the State Gazette of this very Arkansas Territory^ And not 
 satisfied with the ordinary forms of official intercourse, Gen- 
 eral Jackson himself, notwithstanding the positi.on he occupied 
 which seems to require no little delicacy in the management 
 of the foreign relations, kept up a constant interchange of 
 private and confidential letters with Mr. Butler, the perpet- 
 ually recurring burden of which, if we are to judge by the re- 
 plies of that gentleman, was Texas, Texas. 
 
 Mr. Tyler has been much blamed for carrying on a secret 
 negotiation with Texas. We have no disposition to volun- 
 teer any palHation of his measures ; but, we ask, what censure 
 should his conduct bear in this instance, in comparison with 
 that of his more distinguished predecessor ? He has, to be sure 
 tried to betray the Union, by a sudden stroke of policy, into a 
 measure which he knew a large part of it held in great detest- 
 ation, and deemed subversive of the Constitution. But Gen- 
 eral Jackson continued secretly at work during eight long 
 years, coaxing, threatening, proposing treaties never to be 
 executed, harping upon private claims, bad as well as good, 
 for the sake of obtaining a denial of them that would make 
 cause of quarrel, endeavoring to raise the most frivolous 
 doubts, in Order to unsettle the clear boundary of the Sabine, 
 and only stopping short at the deliberate proposal by Mr. 
 Butler, of carrying every thing by downright bribery and cor- 
 ruption. 
 
19 
 
 These facts are all substantiated even by the partial evi- 
 dence (made so it should be observed, through the suppress- 
 ions of the administration of Mr. Van Buren) which has been 
 furnished in answer to a call of the House of Representatives 
 at Washington. Yet they have never excited the pubhc at- 
 tention in a degree at all to correspond to the importance of 
 the disclosures which they make. Most of the people believe 
 very sincerely that this alarm about Texas is a most vision- 
 ary fear — that no one has ever been in earnest in pressing the 
 point, and that it is rather to be regarded as a device of vio- 
 lent abolitionists to injure the character of our public men than 
 as having any foundation in truth and their own conduct. Lit- 
 tle are they aware that the whole force of the administration 
 under a most energetic President is proved by papers which 
 defy contradiction to have been secretly exerted to bring about 
 a cession of this territory voluntarily by Mexico, at the same 
 time that it was instigating revolutionary movements on the 
 part of persons leagued in the conspiracy within the limits of 
 that territory itself, persons who left the United States for the 
 purpose, in order to bring about by the use of force, the 
 same result. 
 
 The negotiation with Mexico finally failed. Mr. Butler 
 could not succeed in effecting as much as he had promised to 
 do and as a consequence he was obliged to retire from the 
 scene. But it was not until after he had spent months in the 
 territory of Texas itself and months more in Washington which 
 were employed in arranging the details of the last act of trea- 
 chery to a friendly nation. A final proposition was made to 
 the government of Mexico to take all of the territory east of 
 the Rio del Norte, up to the thirty-seventh parallel of latitude, 
 and from thence west to the Pacific Ocean. This would have 
 included a great part of upper Cahfornia, New Mexico and 
 Santa Fe — and for this immense territory the sum of six mil- 
 lions of dollars was offered. And upon the rejection of this 
 proposal Mr. Butler retired from his mission only for the pur- 
 pose of ultimately taking up the thread of operations in Tex- 
 as itself, and organizing more effectively by means of secret 
 societies the other part of the plan which had been agreed 
 upon. 
 
 We have already remarked, that there are many ways in 
 America to arrive at the same result. If one fails, another 
 will be tried. The truth of this is visible enough throughout 
 all the proceedings about Texas. General Samuel Houston 
 the gentleman who had devised this scheme at Washington, 
 about which President Jackson thought it proper to send 
 all the way to the Secretary of State of the Territory of 
 
20 
 
 Arkansas to inquire, had not been idle during the time that 
 these negotiations were going on. He became a settler in 
 Texas, very soon worked himself up into a discontented 
 citizen, and finally became the head of an insurrectionary 
 force. The quarrel came to an issue not long after Mr. But- 
 ler had surrendered all hope from negotiation. And when 
 it seemed by no means unhkely, that General Santa Anna, 
 who was advancing with a mihtary force from Mexico, 
 would be able to stifle the revolt at once, the government 
 at Washington, and General Jackson, by a subsequent let- 
 ter, under his own signature, authorised and directed Gen- 
 eral Gaines to advance into the territory of Texas, and re- 
 main there, under the pretence that the boundary was still 
 unsettled and that the presence of a United States force was 
 necessary to secure it against Indian hostility. 
 
 It appears that from the period of the recall of Mr. Butler 
 from Mexico, and the breaking out of the struggle in Texas, 
 which events were nearly cotemporaneous, the policy of the 
 administration took a new turn. It was no longer necessary 
 for the government of the United States to coax Mexico to 
 a voluntary cession of a territory which was now in a state of 
 hopeful rebellion. The more advisable course seemed to be 
 to give as much aid and countenance to the insurrection as 
 was consistent with our professedly neutral position, not 
 merely by securing the presence of the United States troops 
 in the theatre of the war, but also by trying to pick a quarrel 
 with Mexico on a new and separate account of our own. 
 Whilst on the one hand General Jackson announced by a 
 message to Congress, on the 22d December, that under all 
 the circumstances attending the contest in Texas, it was un- 
 advisable at that time to acknowledge the independence of 
 that country ; on the other hand he equally announced, six 
 weeks afterwards, that no peaceful adjustment of certain mat- 
 ters in controversy between the United States and Mexico 
 could be expected, that was not sustained by war measures, 
 and the granting of authority to make reprisals upon her com- 
 merce. The decisive battle of San Jacinto had been fought, 
 and General Santa Anna who had been made prisoner to the 
 Texans, was sent to Washington to experience the double 
 satisfaction of a war threat from the United States on one 
 side, and of a sense of his personal danger from his victors on 
 the other, if he did not use all his influence to bring about the 
 grand desideratum, the annexation of Texas to the United 
 States. He appears to have been w^illing to concede all that 
 was required of him under this ^tate of duresse. The conse- 
 quence was immediately perceptible. Notwithstanding and 
 
OF 
 
 21 
 
 jn spite of the message of the 22d of December, dissuading 
 the acknowledgment of Texan Independence for many- 
 strong reasons therein given, an amendment was suddenly en- 
 grafted upon the annual appropriation bill, in one of its last 
 stages in the House of Representatives, three or four days 
 prior to the third of March, 1837, which amendment provid- 
 ed for the pay of a diplomatic agent to the republic of Texas, 
 as soon as the President should receive satisfactory evidence 
 that Texas was an independent power. The Senate con- 
 sented. Almost, perhaps quite in the selfsame hour that the 
 President signed the appropriation bill, he also obtained such 
 evidence of the independence of Texas as to induce him 
 forthwith, and before the expiration of the remaining minutes 
 of his power as President, to nominate the diplomatic agent 
 provided for in the bill. This was one of his very last offi- 
 cial acts. If his policy had not been successful in acquiring 
 to the United States this territory, he at any rate had the 
 consolation to reflect that he had wrested it from Mexico, in 
 payment for her obstinacy, in refusing to sell it when she was 
 required so to do. 
 
 After such an act as this, who is there that ought to won- 
 der at the attempt of Mr. Tyler, to steal a march upon the 
 country with a treaty ? Yet the lapse of less than seven 
 years has had the effect of so far sinking the old proceeding 
 into obhvion throughout the Northern States, that people ac- 
 tually seem to regard this new one as something entirely un- 
 precedented. Nothing wakes them up but the clap of thun- 
 der which comes after the hghtning has done all the damage 
 possible. The two great parties are so afraid of doing or 
 saying any thing which shall appear in the least to justify the 
 organization of the third or abolition party, that they have 
 united in striving to forget as far as possible that there are any 
 questions at all which must grow out of the existence of slavery. 
 Had they met those questions as they ought in the outset, it 
 is not too much to say that there would not now have been 
 any third party worth considering. It is not the mere mo- 
 mentary outbreak against a measure upon the eve of accom- 
 plishment, preceded by a cold and studied incredulity of its 
 existence until it becomes evident beyond the possibility of 
 contradiction, that will ever go far to counteract a systematic 
 pohcy managed by persons occupying stations of power un- 
 der the general government, or that will satisfy the just clamor 
 of an irritated community after the time shall have passed 
 when action might have been properly directed. 
 
 And now that we can look back upon the history of this 
 business, we think that one thing will be most particularly 
 
22 
 
 striking to our observation. And that is, the change of re- 
 lation which the United States bears to the territory of Texas 
 at the present time from that which they bore in 1825, when 
 the negotiations commenced. For then it was a simple pio- 
 ceeding unclouded by any suspicion of sinister design. Even 
 the blight of domestic slavery had not in any great degree 
 fallen upon the land. But now we know the fact that slavery 
 was introduced by the immigrants from these States in oppo- 
 sition to the law of Mexico. That it constituted the turn- 
 ing point in the revolution of the Texans, and that it is the 
 cause in behalf of which the whole power of our government 
 has been exerted directly or indirectly as well in the negotia- 
 tion that has taken place as in the subsequent operations of 
 the settlers themselves. What is it then that the United 
 States are called upon to sanction by now acquiring Texas ? 
 Is it not the entire process by which we have converted a 
 free into a Slave State, and extended the influence of the 
 domestic institution at the cost of every principle of fair 
 dealing and of right. And is this not a wholly new feature 
 since the year 1825 which completely alters the nature of 
 the transaction, and converts an honest and open offer to 
 purchase into a sharper's contrivance to acquire property in 
 an underhand way, for an unjustifiable purpose ? 
 
 There was very much such a burst of popular feeling in 1837 
 as has lately taken place against the measure. The Legisla- 
 tures of Ohio, Massachusetts and Rhode Island passed resolu- 
 tions which had then some effect in checking its prosecution. 
 Yet had General Jackson remained at the head of the govern- 
 ment, we have very little doubt that it would have been exe- 
 cuted. But the policy of his wary successor was too cautious 
 to make him willing to risk beginning his administration with a 
 war and a completely disordered state of the finances at the 
 same time. On the 4th of August, 1837, Mr. Memucan Hunt, 
 specially appointed by Texas for the purpose, opened a nego- 
 tiation with the Secretary of State, Mr. Forsyth, by proposing 
 *'to unite the two people under one and the same government." 
 The first condition prescribed by his government was '' the 
 free and unmolested authority over their slave population." 
 This, it will be recollected, was about one month before 
 the time at which the Congress of the United States had 
 been called to meet by proclamation of Mr. Van Buren, on 
 account of the suspension of specie payments by the banks 
 throughout the Union. It was quite enough for the adminis- 
 tration to be obliged to face an active and powerful opposition 
 on the subject of the currency, without adding the plentiful 
 materials to be gathered from the prospect of a war with a 
 
23 
 
 neighboring power. Mexico had protested against the recog- 
 nition of Texan Independence, carried through, as it had 
 been, in the manner already described ; but she had also of- 
 fered to remove all reasonable grounds of complaint on the 
 score upon which General Jackson had endeavored to press 
 the two countries into war — the claims for indemnity to pri- 
 vate citizens. No other pretext, therefore, remained to save 
 the United States from the odium of incurring the war to jus- 
 tify its own wrong done in Texas. Mr. Van Buren did not 
 feel himself seated firmly enough to encounter the fury of 
 such a tempest as this would excite. He directed Mr. 
 Forsyth to decline the offer of the Texan government, made 
 through Mr. Hunt. And in his refusal he distinctly assigned 
 as the reason, that the Mexican government might consider 
 such an act as tantamount to a declaration of war. Even 
 Mr. Senator Walker, in his pamphlet, is obliged to confess, 
 which he does with singular disinterestedness, considering 
 that he is and has been the " Magnus Apollo" of the Tex- 
 ans, that "in 1837, within a few weeks or months succeed- 
 mg our recognition of the independence of Texas, and be- 
 fore her recognition by any foreign powers, it (that is the an- 
 nexation by treaty) might have subjected us to unjust impu- 
 tations, and therefore it might have been deemed hiexpedient 
 under such a time and under such circumstances.''^ The 
 itahc letters belong to Mr. Walker, and not to us, and we 
 agree with him in every thing affirmed or implied in the sen- 
 tence, excepting in the statement that the "imputations" to 
 which we should have subjected ourselves would have been 
 " unjust." 
 
 What Mr. Van Buren would have done under other cir- 
 cumstances, or what he will do if he should again get into 
 power, we shall not undertake to pronounce. We judge no 
 man excepting by his acts, and under the same rule, we are 
 willing to give him all the credit which his conduct in this in- 
 stance deserves. At the same time, judging him by all of his 
 acts taken together, we must confess that we have no confi- 
 dence in his discovering any obstacles to this treaty of annex- 
 ation which the people do not themselves most distinctly fur- 
 nish to his vision. 
 
 Let us now return to Mr. Senator Walker, who appears to 
 think that the difficulties in the way of reannexation, as he is al- 
 ways pleased to call it, which existed in 1837, are now re- 
 moved. "But now," he says in his pamphlet, " when seven 
 years have elapsed since our recognition of the independence 
 of Texas ; and she has been recognised for many years as an 
 independent power by the great nations of Europe, and her 
 
m 
 
 sovereignty fully established, and fully acknowledged, there can 
 be no objection to such a treaty at this period." From all 
 which we can only gather that this gentleman thinks Mexico 
 is now barred of her claim by a sort of statute of limitations 
 interpolated into the law of nations like that which runs against 
 the recovery of small debts with us. But with all due defer- 
 ence to the gentleman, it is not exactly what we think in this 
 case, that should be our guide, but what the world will think 
 and justly think, too. Does the delay of seven years alter in 
 any respect the nature of one of those peculiar " circum- 
 stances^^ to which Mr. Walker so significantly alludes as mak- 
 ing the act inexpedient in 1837 ? Does it in the least mod- 
 ify the objections of Mexico to the measure ? We have the 
 best reason to know that it does not. For the Mexican gov- 
 ernment and the Mexican Minister, General Almonte, more 
 keen-sighted than most of our news-mongers in Washington, 
 appear to have got a scent of the negotiation proposed by 
 Mr. Tyler as early as in August last. 
 
 On the 23d of that month, Mr. de Boccanegra, the For- 
 eign Secretary of Mexico, addressed a note to Mr. Waddy 
 Thompson, the Minister of the United States, in which he 
 in quite a spirit of foresight, alluded to the fact that a " propo- 
 sition would be submitted to the deliberation of the Congress 
 of the United States" at the present session, " to incorporate 
 with them, the so-called republic of Texas," and he went on 
 further to request Mr. Thompson to announce to his govern- 
 ment that Mexico would consider the adoption of such an act 
 equivalent to a declaration of war, "leaving" as he says, "to 
 the civilized world to determine with regard to the justice of 
 the cause of the Mexican nation in a struggle which it has 
 been so far from provoking." Not content with this notice, 
 General Almonte, the Mexican Minister at Washington, 
 wrote on the third of November a letter to the Secretary of 
 State, Mr. Upshur, in which he says that this annexation, 
 " if carried into effect, cannot be considered by Mexico in 
 any other aspect than as a direct aggression." " He more- 
 over declares, by express order of his government, that on 
 sanction being given by the Executive of the Union to the 
 incorporation of Texas into the United States, he will con- 
 sider his mission ended ; seeing that, as the Secretary of 
 State will have learned, the Mexican government is resolved 
 to declare war so soon as it receives information of such an 
 act." This is surely plain spoken enough. Mr. Upshur, to 
 be sure, took the matter up in a very high strain, and affect- 
 ing to consider his country insulted by an imputation which if 
 not merited would scarcely have required notice, he evaded 
 
25 
 
 answering the material question entirely. But there is reason 
 to believe that this letter was not without its effect in bring- 
 ing about a modification of the course of the President, so far 
 as to make that a secret and clandestine transaction, which 
 was designed to have been announced in his message to Con- 
 gress, at the commencement of the session. 
 
 Another of Mr. Walker's reasons why the case is not now 
 the same that it was in 1837, is, that the independence of 
 Texas "is now recognized by the great nations of Europe, 
 and her sovereignty fully estabhshed and fully acknowledg- 
 ed," which it was not at that time. The argument, then, 
 is something of this sort : — Texas was not quite assured of 
 her independence in 1837, and therefore, considering her pe- 
 culiar circumstances, it was not advisable for us to take her 
 under our protection at that time, when she most needed it. 
 But now that she is well estabhshed, independent, and has the 
 support of foreign nations, is just the moment for her to 
 cease to be so, for the sake of joining us. Surely, if Texas 
 be now able to go on alone, countenanced as she is by the 
 great powers of Europe, there are many reasons why the 
 United States should join to sustain her in that policy instead 
 of tempting her to adopting an opposite one. One of the 
 strongest is, that it would be the means of completely avoid- 
 ing the imputation of any such motives or unworthy designs 
 as Mr. Upshur immediately perceived in General Almonte's 
 letter ; probably because his own conscience was the moni- 
 tor that made him watch for them there. There will not 
 be any question hereafter made of the disinterestedness of 
 the United States, if time shall show that they have in no 
 way gained what seems a benefit to themselves by the seces- 
 sion of Texas from Mexico. Surely, if we consider many 
 portions of the policy of the government as it has been at- 
 tempted very faintly to delineate it in these papers, the good 
 faith of the country stands in great need of some such ultimate 
 justification as this in the eyes of the world. Surely, nothing 
 would at this moment go farther to save our history from one 
 of its most unfortunate pages than a determination now made 
 to be friendly to Texas, exactly as we are friendly to every 
 other nation of the globe. 
 
 Unfortunately, however, for him the end of Mr. Walker's 
 pamphlet contradicts the beginning. This country of Texas, 
 whose independence " is now so fully recognized by the 
 great nations of Europe, and her sovereignty so fully estab- 
 lished" on the seventh page turns out on the nineteenth and 
 twentieth pages to be "a power too feeble to guard her rights 
 as a neutral power." " The flag of England will soon float 
 
26 
 
 overt" it as a British province, carved out of the dismembered 
 valley of the West." " But even if not a dependency or a 
 colony, England, as she always heretofore has done in the 
 case of neutrals, would seize upon her soil, her coast, her 
 harbors, her rivers, and our and her Indians, in her invasion 
 of the valley of the West ; and the only certain measure of 
 defence and protection is the re-annexation of Texas." Such 
 is the statement of the condition of Texas, when it suits Mr. 
 Walker to consider her as not so well established, nor her in- 
 dependence so fully recognized. Her condition is, then, not 
 yet much changed from what it was in J 837. If this be 
 granted, then have the Mexicans reasonable ground for hope 
 that they may yet get back their territory, provided that we 
 do not commit a hostile act by taking possession of it our- 
 selves, in the name and on the application of the insurgents. 
 In which case, we clearly break our treaty with a power with 
 v^^hich we are at peace, for the sake of an acquisition of ter- 
 ritory ; or in other words, the '' circumstances" which Mr. 
 Walker speaks of as forbidding the act in 1837, remain in 
 statu quo in 1844. In our humble opinion, there is no get- 
 ting away from this dilemma. Either Texas can maintain 
 her independence or she cannot. If she can, then would it 
 be perfectly safe, and very creditable to the Union, to sus- 
 tain her independent attitude. If she cannot, then Mexico 
 has a right to complain of our hostility if we take from her the 
 chance of recovering her territory. 
 
 We have now gone through with the most material part of 
 the history of our relations with Texas and Mexico, and we 
 confidently challenge any impartial person to review it, and 
 then deny that there is a broad difference observable between 
 the early and late policy of the government on this subject. 
 The administration of Mr. Adams sought to acquire the land^ 
 free from any and every incumbrance with which it is now 
 loaded, in a fair, open, and honorable manner. That of his 
 successor stimulated the people of the United States to go 
 and take possession of it under the cloak of amity, and then, 
 by every artifice, endeavored to wrest from the hands of a 
 nation, with which we professed to be at peace, the territory 
 which they obstinately refused to cede of their own accord. 
 One of the most striking features of this new policy, was the 
 establishment of the institution of domestic slavery, directly in 
 the face of the Mexican authority. This was the common 
 bond designed to keep the insurgents steady to the interests 
 of the United States. It is the bond which now holds them 
 to the policy of annexation. The rumor about their seeking 
 the protection of Great Britain, is only designed to catch such 
 
27 
 
 simpletons in the Free States as are predisposed to believe 
 any thing that may be told them. They seek the protection of 
 a power, which knocks the manacles off from every slave with- 
 in the scope of its influence ! They voluntarily seek to sacri- 
 fice a property in man, to defend and sustain which, they un- 
 dertook the insurrection against the Mexican power ! The 
 idea is amusing, to those who have watched with attention the 
 desperation with which the same men, when citizens of the 
 United States, and their friends, have always contended for 
 that property. Sooner than that this should take place, the 
 whole of the company immigrating into Texas, would vacate 
 the lands of that territory, and return to these favored regions, 
 where slavery and the constitution are said to flourish togeth- 
 er and where it is treason to doubt the propriety of continuing 
 special privileges, which have the effect of encouraging the 
 increase of the slave population. When will the free citizens, 
 who love our institutions, cease to be led blindfold into the 
 snares which are so unblushingly prepared for them ? 
 
 When Mr. Walker, acting in concurrence with General 
 Jackson, succeeded in obtaining the recognition, by the Unit- 
 ed States, of the independence of Texas, in the manner 
 which has been already explained, he probably congratulated 
 himself upon the measure, considering it as one step nearer to 
 the great object of his wishes. He did not then foresee 
 the rise of a new objection to it, growing out of the very 
 change thus effected in the relation of that country to ours. 
 He did not perceive that the admission of Texas as an inde- 
 pendent foreign State was an unprecedented act of power in 
 the general government not sanctioned by the examples either 
 of Louisiana or the Florida treaties. 
 
 This objection is now very gravely urged in many quarters, 
 and, we must confess, we see no way to remove it, consist- 
 ently with the slightest respect to the Constitution, which the 
 members of Congress are all sworn to support. Although 
 the acquisition of territory under the treaties referred to was 
 a very questionable proceeding, when judged by the naked 
 provisions of the constitution, still, as the people sanctioned 
 the act by their silence, we shall not now undertake, so far as 
 that goes, to review the decision. What Mr. Jefferson, the 
 person under whose administration the cession of Louisiana 
 took place, thought of the matter, is very well known. In 
 his letter to Wilson Carey Nicholas, he says — " But when I 
 consider that the limits of the United States are precisely fix- 
 ed by the treaty of 1783, that the constitution expressly de- 
 clares itself to be made for the United States, I cannot help 
 believing the intention was not to permit Congress to admit 
 
28 
 
 into the Union new States, which should be formed out" (that 
 is, beyond the hmits) "of the territory for which, and under 
 whose authority alone, they were then acting. I do not be- 
 lieve it was meant that they might receive England, Ireland, 
 Holland, &c., into it, which would be the case on your con- 
 struction. When an instrument admits two constructions — 
 the one safe, the other dangerous — the one precise, the other 
 indefinite — I prefer that which is safe and precise. I had 
 rather ask an enlargement of power from the nation, where it 
 is found necessary, than to assume it by a construction which 
 would make our powers boundless. Our peculiar security is 
 is in the possession of a written constitution. Let us not 
 make it a blank paper by construction.''^ 
 
 This is strong reasoning, but we have long been aware of 
 the fact, that much as the citizens of the Southern States 
 profess to revere the memory of Mr. Jefferson, and to follow 
 his doctrines, they seldom respect them in practice, further 
 than as they happen to coincide \with the immediate policy 
 which they have in view. Doubtful as Mr. Jefferson was of 
 his power, the cession of Louisiana, nevertheless, took place. 
 It was, however, but the cession of a territory by a govern- 
 ment of the old, to one in the new world ; it did not involve 
 the question whether one government itself could cede itself, 
 or another accept of such a cession. The United States as- 
 sumed the territorial rights, subject to no existing political 
 conditions, on the part of the small number of people who 
 occupied the lands. They agreed to incorporate them into 
 the Union whenever they should become numerous enough to 
 organize a State ; but in the interval they assumed to them- 
 selves the unlimited right of regulating the government, and 
 parcelling out for sale the unoccupied lands. The population 
 that has been since admitted into the Union, was thus, in a 
 great degree, drawn from the original States, by the induce- 
 ments presented in the new lands, and the prospect of a con- 
 tinuance in the enjoyment of all the privileges of citizenship. 
 It had never voluntarily expatriated itself. It had never un- 
 dertaken, by virtue of such expatriation, to exercise indepen- 
 dent powers of government unknown to our laws, nor had it 
 ever ceased to be amenable to our authority. 
 
 The case of Texas is of a very different kind. Texas 
 claims to be an independent sovereignty ; the United States 
 admit that she is one. She applies to be admitted to the 
 Union ; she does not propose to cede territory merely. She 
 proposes to come in at once, and to exercise such rights of 
 citizenship as she shall beforehand insist upon securing to her- 
 self, by conditions to be agreed upon. The United States, 
 
29 
 
 on the other hand, must assume new liabilities, and acknowl- 
 edge a new set of authorities. They must acknowledge the 
 validity of an act done by officers of another party, to a treaty 
 which either makes them of equal authority with their own, or 
 which, at one blow, destroys all the authority which they 
 possess to do the act. There can be no medium. In this 
 connexion it has been rather humorously asked by some, who 
 would be the President of the country, after a treaty had been 
 made joining Texas and the United States, supposing that 
 such an act were constitutional. Would it be John Tyler, 
 or Samuel Houston, either, or both together ? The question, 
 odd as it may appear, contains the gist of the whole matter. 
 Can a government by a treaty consent to annihilate itself ? 
 Then where is the binding force of the treaty, after it is 
 made ? But, if it does not annihilate itself, it enters into the 
 treaty on equal terms with the government with which it 
 treats ? In this instance, Texas would treat as a State, not 
 with the separate States, as such, but with the United States. 
 She is able then to assume a position, and to dictate terms 
 towards us, such as no other of the States since the Decla- 
 ration of Independence could have done. It is not necessary 
 that such a treaty should compel her to recognise the consti- 
 tution. Her position in the Union would then be secured by 
 that treaty, whilst that of the other States would rest upon 
 the constitution. If, then, the people of Texas were to take 
 it into their heads to violate the conditions of the constitution, 
 whilst they adhere to their treaty, what would be the mode 
 of redress ? Or, on the other hand, if they broke the treaty, 
 who would conduct the negotiations that must follow, and when 
 would a resort to war be justifiable ? 
 
 But the authorities of Texas may consent for the purpose 
 of gaining an admission to resort to a new expedient to avoid 
 the force of this objection. They may consent to disfran- 
 chise themselves, and to become simply a territory of the 
 United States. Indeed it has been intimated that such has 
 been the shape in which the treaty has placed the subject. 
 Yet one moment's consideration will serve to show that this 
 is only an evasion, and does not remove the difficulty. We 
 have acknowledged Texas as an independent State. Is it 
 competent for us at any moment, by virtue of a treaty to de- 
 ny our words and to declare in the very act to which she is a 
 party that she is no State at all ? If a territory, she either 
 has a government or she has not. If she has, then our objec- 
 tion is not removed. If she has not, and is without a govern- 
 ment, why has not Mexico all the rights to rule over her which 
 she once had, and which she never has renounced. A confes- 
 
30 
 
 sion that she must receive a form of government from a 
 neighboring State surely makes our wrong the greater in sub- 
 stituting ourselves as the sovereign in lieu of the rightful one. 
 How can a government cede a territory by a treaty without 
 possessing the powers to carry that treaty into execution ? 
 But this very treaty denies to the government such powers be- 
 cause it annihilates it at the very moment that it should begin 
 to exercise them. Such an anomaly was never before heard 
 of in political history. We can recollect examples of States 
 acquired by conquest, and by negotiation, but we do not re- 
 member one which resolved itself by its own act into its orig- 
 inal element, the territory upon which it is founded. 
 
 Let us put the case in still another light. If the govern- 
 ment of the United States can treat with Texas' respecting a 
 union of the two countries, in any shape whatever it may 
 please to put it, it is equally able to treat with any other na- 
 tion under the sun. Supposing, then, that in the heat of a 
 revolution like that of France, before the period of its wild 
 excesses, the national assembly of that or any other Euro- 
 pean people sbould send over ambassadors to the United 
 States, to treat respecting a union of the two countries. Sup- 
 posing that a President should be found ready to negotiate with 
 them, and a Legislature, one or both branches, prepared to 
 sanction a treaty thus made. Supposing that one of the 
 conditions should be the transfer of the seat of government of 
 the two countries to some common centre, somewhere on an 
 island, if such could be found, situated half-way between 
 them. Supposing that John Tyler, like Samuel Houston, 
 should consent to have his power annihilated, and a French 
 President over the two countries set over his head. Would 
 it then be pretended by any human being that either the Pre- 
 sident or Congress would have been exercising powers grant- 
 ed under the constitution ? Yet it would be difficult to deny 
 that each of these powers is in the constitution, if it be once 
 granted that Texas can be admitted by treaty. It may be 
 objected to us, that we are putting an extreme case. But in 
 this instance an extreme case is only necessary to show, in a 
 still more glaring light, the character of a constitutional doc- 
 trine. If the President and Congress can treat with a for- 
 eign power in such a manner as to disturb all the existing re- 
 lations between the States, by the introduction of that for- 
 eign power into the government without the consent of the 
 people of those States, then, as Mr. Jefferson most truly 
 observes, in another passage of the letter already quoted, 
 " We have no constitution." Any thing and every thing 
 may be done, which the caprice, or the ambition, or tha 
 
31 
 
 spirit of intrigue of a few men in Washington may prompt 
 them to do, under the form of a solemn treaty. 
 
 It is, then, obvious that there is a broad line of distinction 
 marked out, between the cession by a government of an in- 
 dependent State of a part of its territory not having a govern- 
 ment, to the United States, by a treaty, and the formation of 
 a new social compact between the people living under two 
 distinct forms of government, by the force of such an in- 
 strument. In the former class may be ranked the Louisiana 
 and Florida treaties, and the late treaty of Washington, 
 of which Mr. Walker tries to make use as a precedent. 
 Under the latter class must be ranked every project of a 
 treaty Hke the one proposed to be made with Texas. Whilst 
 it may be a fair question whether treaties of the former kind 
 may not be made, so long as they only have the effect of en- 
 larging the territory of the Union, it seems to us that not the 
 shadow of a doubt can be thrown upon our position respecting 
 the latter. A treaty of this kind seems to us at war with 
 every theory of republicanism which has been ever acknowl- 
 edged in America. It is imposing upon the people of the 
 States new conditions, without their consent or privity. It 
 is, in point of fact, a revolution. After such an event, the 
 constitution of the United States no longer can be regarded 
 as the rule of action, but the President, by virtue of his pat- 
 ronage and the treaty-making power, becomes a more abso- 
 lute sovereign than half of the monarchs of Europe. 
 
 So obvious and palpable is the stretch of power which this 
 doctrine of annexing a foreign country, by the mere force of a 
 treaty, assumes for the general government, that it is wonder- 
 ful it should ever have found a single advocate among those 
 who have always professed a wish to restrain its tendencies 
 to consolidation by all possible means. They who object to 
 duties for the protection of home manufactures, or to a na- 
 tional bank, from constitutional scruples, and yet concede 
 this great power, do indeed strain at a gnat and swallow a 
 camel. Yet, if we inquire into the reason which prompts to 
 such very opposite views of the powers of the general gov- 
 ernment in the same men, we must come back to the ground 
 of the Massachusetts resolutions. Whatever road we may 
 take in public affairs, whatever question we may propose, they 
 all terminate in the same point. The maintenance of the 
 property representation is the pole star by which the course 
 of the ship of state is steered. Is it necessary to deny the 
 existence of a power in the constitution ? It is, because it is 
 feared that an unequal benefit may be derived from its use by 
 the Free States. Is it necessary, on the contrary, to strain 
 
32 
 
 that instrument beyond all reasonable limits ? It is, because 
 the benefit is all to accrue to the small number who wish to 
 hold a perpetuity of property in man, and through that the 
 control which they have acquired over the affairs of the 
 Union. 
 
 These are solemn truths. They are not told for the sake 
 of exciting discontent at our existing institutions, but for the 
 sake of rousing the people, as far as possible, to maintain 
 them inviolate. Is it possible, that this great republic should 
 suffer itself long to be led by such blind guides, as the advo- 
 cates of slavery, or their allies among the political managers 
 of the Free States ? We cannot yet believe that it is. Let 
 slavery remain a local matter within the limits of those States 
 in which it is established, and we know of nothing to create 
 cause of uneasiness. But when it threatens to raise its fear- 
 ful head over the whole land, when it bends the policy of the 
 government to subserve its own selfish purposes, when it un- 
 dertakes completely to alter the relations between the States, 
 established by their frame of government, and to overawe the 
 spirit of liberty, then is the time to cry aloud, and spare not. 
 There must be some favorable change in a few years, or else 
 the great objects for which the constitution was adopted, will 
 disappear from sight, and it will cease to be the pride and the 
 boast of all intelligent Americans. 
 
 Mr. Walker, whose pamphlet is understood to be the text- 
 book of the friends of the annexation of Texas, maintains that 
 there are three ways of arriving at his object in a constitu- 
 tional manner. The first is by virtue of the treaty-making 
 power. This has already been considered. The second is, 
 by force of the first clause of the third section of the fourth 
 article, which is in these words : — 
 
 New States may be admitted by the Congress into this Union ; but no 
 new Slate shall be formed or erected within the jurisdiction of any other 
 State, nor any State be formed by the junction of two or more States, or 
 parts of States, without the consent of the Legislatures of the States, as 
 well as of the Congress. 
 
 Mr. Walker maintains that this is an unlimited grant of pow- 
 er to the Congress. Hence that a simple act of the Legisla- 
 ture, passed by a bare majority in each branch, is all that is ne- 
 cessary to admit a foreign State, no matter what, — Mexico, 
 Russia, or even the Celestial Empire, on the other side of the 
 globe, into the Union. 
 
 This construction, coming, as it does, from a gentleman 
 who could not see in the same instrument from which he de- 
 rives this power, a sufficient authority to incorporate a nation- 
 
S3 
 
 al bank, is certainly calculated to amaze reasonable observers 
 of political affairs. There are persons, even in tlie free 
 States, who cannot perceive the inconsistency involved in 
 supporting these two propositions, under any single theory 
 that has ever yet been maintained of our federal system. 
 Neither are they immediately aware of the singular use now 
 for the first time made of a provision of the constitution, ori- 
 ginally incorporated into it for a very different purpose. 
 One of the modes by which the gentlemen who represent 
 property in man succeed in pushing their system into opera- 
 tion is, through the bold manner in which they advance their 
 propositions. We have heard persons doubt whether a 
 good answer could be made to this, at the same time that 
 they had no belief whatever in its soundness. Such things 
 make us fear sometimes that the spirit of our institutions has 
 already evaporated under the scorching influences of slavery, 
 and nothing is left to us but the residuum of forms. Let us 
 look at the subject calmly for a moment, and see whether 
 there is one atom of foundation for any of these judgements. 
 The provision of the constitution is, that '•'• new States may 
 be admitted by Congress into this Union." Does Mr. 
 Walker mean, under this clause, to insist that old States shall 
 also be included .'' A State, according to the best authori- 
 ties, is defined to be a Republic or Commonwealth. In or- 
 der to the full comprehension of the phrase "New States," 
 we must therefore infer that some other communities were in- 
 tended than those in which the forms of government had been 
 long established. This inference is proved to be perfectly 
 just, by the very next sentence, which makes certain restric- 
 tions to the power already granted in that preceding, all of 
 which have reference to the fact that the States proposed to 
 be admitted are new, that is, just constituted. " But no new 
 State," it says, ''shall he formed or erected within the juris- 
 diction of any other State, nor any State be formed by the 
 junction of two or more States or parts of States without 
 the consent of the Legislatures of the States concerned, as 
 well as of the Congress." It is, then, to the formation or erec- 
 tion of new States that the whole paragraph applies — to the 
 creation of new social communities, and not to the recogni- 
 tion of old ones. It was designed to provide for the incor- 
 poration of those societies which were to rise up in the for- 
 ests of the West, on the territories originally comprised with- 
 in the charters of certain colonies, but ceded by them to the 
 United States before the adoption of the constitution, and not 
 for the indefinite recognition of every foreign government at 
 the mere will of the Congress, whenever it should please 
 
 5 
 
3$ 
 
 such a government to be called one of the United States. 
 The words of the article can bear no other construction with- 
 out positive violence to their meaning. The spirit of the 
 whole instrument is still more adverse to Mr. Walker's idea, 
 for it breathes throughout a government of limited powers for 
 the perpetuation of the blessings of liberty to the people who 
 adopted it and to their posterity. But what limit can be set 
 to the powers granted to the Congress, if it once be granted 
 that the act of a bare majority can at any time introduce new 
 elements into the social system, the character of which the 
 people of the States can as little regulate as they can foresee ? 
 Luckily, on this point, we are not left without the means 
 of knowing what was the intent of the framers of the consti- 
 tution in adopting the article in question. We find from Mr. 
 Madison's report of the debates had in the convention, that 
 the view we have taken of it is the correct one. The arti- 
 cle was originally designed to meet the contingency that was 
 foreseen as likely to happen of the formation of new States 
 within the limits of the territory of the Union. Among the 
 propositions brought forward by Mr. Edmund Randolph at 
 the outset, which propositions are well known to have em- 
 braced the principles ultimately incorporated into the consti- 
 tution, the tenth runs in the following words : — 
 
 Resolved, That provision ought to be made for the admission of States 
 lawfully arising within the limits of the United States, whether from a vol- 
 untary junction of government and territory, or otherwise, with the con- 
 sent of a number of voices in the JNational Legislature less than the 
 whole. 
 
 It will be seen at once what the intention was in introduc- 
 ing this proposition at all. It was not to enlarge the system 
 by the incorporation into it of foreign States, but to open a 
 way for the preservation of the existing territorial rights of 
 the Union, without the necessity of including them within the 
 limits of the existing States. This would have been incon- 
 venient, by reviving the difficult questions that had once 
 been settled by the voluntary act of the States, claiming the 
 territories at the westward, which had been induced to sur- 
 render their claims for the common good. '^J'he States to 
 be admitted were only those which might lawfully arise within 
 the limits of the United States. There is no ambiguity in 
 this language, whatever. Accordingly, we find that in this 
 very language the tenth proposition of Mr. Randolph was on 
 the 5ih of June, 1787, adopted by the convention, and made 
 the basis of the article upon the subject. In this form, it, 
 together with the rest of the propositions that had been 
 agreed to, was referred to the committee of detail, appointed 
 
35 
 
 on the 24th of July, with powers to report a constitution in 
 form. At the same time, however, the independent proposi- 
 tions that had then been offered by Mr. Charles Pinckney 
 and Mr. Patterson, were referred to the same committee, 
 probably with a view to give that committee full powers to 
 make such modifications in the language of the new instru- 
 ment as might appear advisable and best, after a full compar- 
 ison of all the plans with each other. It must be noted, that 
 Mr. Pinckney 's article 14th, runs in the following words : — 
 
 The Legislature shall have power to admit ntw States into the Union, 
 on the same terms with the original States; provided two-thirds of the 
 members present in both Houses agree. 
 
 Mr. Patterson's was still more concise. 
 
 Resolved^ That provision be made for the admission of new States into 
 the Union. 
 
 Now, by a comparison of these two propositions with that 
 of Mr. Randolph, it will immediately be perceived that the 
 former intends to provide for ihe same contingency with the 
 latter, and that the difference is only in the shorter form of 
 expressing the same idea. Mr. Randolph proposed, that 
 "provision ought to be made for the admission of States law- 
 fully arising within the limits of the United States.'^^ The 
 other two gentlemen describe the same communities as "newj 
 States," and cut off the circumlocution. Had not this been 
 their motive, how much easier would it have been to have 
 said other States, or foreign States, as Mr. Sherman actually 
 did in a proposition we shall presently notice. This would 
 indeed have expressed the idea now advanced by Mr. Walk- 
 er, but it was not the one which they intended to express. 
 They were looking to the Western Territory with as single 
 an eye as Mr. Randolph. 
 
 We have stated these facts, to show how the word *'new" 
 came to be incorporated into the present article of the consti- 
 tution. This and the provision requiring a two-thirds vote 
 were borrowed by the committee of detail, from the propo- 
 sitions of Messrs. Pinckney and Patterson, in order fully to 
 carry out the idea presented by Mr. Randolph. The seven- 
 teenth article, as reported by them on the sixth of August, is 
 in the following words : — 
 
 New States lawfully constituted or established within the limits of the 
 United States may be admitted, by the Legislature, into this govern- 
 ment; but to such admission the consent of two thirds of the members 
 present in each house shall be necessary. If a new State shall arise 
 within the limits of any of the present Stateo, the consent of the Legisla- 
 tures of such States shall be also necessary to its admission. If the ad- 
 mission be consented to, the new State shall be admitted on the same 
 terms with the original States. But the Legislature may make condi- 
 tions with the new States, concerning the public debt which shall then 
 be subsisting. 
 
36 
 
 It will be perceived that this form of the article only made 
 still more striking the intention of the framers of the constitu- 
 tion to limit its application to communities which might there- 
 after be formed within the limits of the Union. In this view 
 il is, that the incorporation into it of the word ''new," which 
 was not in Mr. Randolph's original proposition, is of great 
 consequence. We now come to consider the reasons why 
 this proposition, as reported by the committee of detail, was 
 subsequently modified into the shape in which it now stands. 
 We think it. can be made evident that the change was not de- 
 signed to favor any projects of enlargement of the Union, to 
 say the least of it. It appears that on the 29th of August, 
 when the article came before the convention for consid- 
 eration, Mr. Gouverneur Morris objected to it in its new 
 shape, because it made the admission of the Western States 
 upon equal terms with the original States, imperative, with 
 a single exception, relative to the public debt then subsisting. 
 "He did not wish to throw power into the hands of the 
 Western country." These are his words, as reported by 
 Mr. Madison. Hence it is to be inferred, that he wished to 
 retain, in the hands of the Congress, the ability to make con- 
 ditions of admission even to those new communities about to 
 be formed within the limits of the Union ; the very principle 
 contended for, by the Northern States, it should be observed, 
 at the time of the admission of Missouri. Not being satis- 
 fied with the article as it stood, he proposed the following as 
 a substitute : — 
 
 JYew States may be admitted by the Legislature into the Union ; but 
 no new States shall be erected within the limits of any of the present 
 States, without the consent of the Legislature of such State, as well as 
 of the general Legislature. 
 
 And this substitute being nearly the same thing with the 
 article, as it actually stands, was adopted, six States voting 
 in favor, and five against it. 
 
 The position of Vermont, a territory at that time neither 
 in nor out of the Union, and seeking to be admitted without 
 the necessity of securing the consent of New York, appears 
 to have had a great effect upon the form in which this arti- 
 cle was ultimately adopted. Luckily, her situation has given 
 us a strong proof of a cumulative character how much im- 
 portance the framers of the constitution attached to the word 
 "newj," as joined to "States," in the connexion of this ar- 
 ticle. Mr. Sherman moved the following substitute, which 
 distinctly covers the ground assumed by Mr. Walker, in his 
 pamphlet : — 
 
 The Legislature shall have power to admit other States into the Union ; 
 and new States to be formed by the division or junction of States now 
 in the Union, with the consent of the Legislature of such States. 
 
37 
 
 This substitute adopts the word " other'^^ instead of the 
 word "new," and, still more significantly, it opposes it to the 
 word " new" that follows, as applied to the creation of States 
 to be formed by dividing or uniting existing States. It can, 
 therefore, hardly be doubted, that this was considered as test- 
 ing the sense of the convention upon the article as it stands. 
 The substitute was designed to include a power of admitting 
 other States, whether old or new. The article, as it stands, 
 confined itself to future communities about to be formed in 
 the forests of the West. How much force is then due to the 
 decision of the convention which rejected the substitute, six 
 States voting in the negative, to five in the affirmative, and 
 then adopted the article as proposed by Mr. Morris, eight 
 States voting in favor, and three against it ! 
 
 We are conscious how very dry all merely constitutional 
 questions are to the great mass of readers. We have, there- 
 fore, endeavored to condense this history much more than is 
 altogether to the advantage of the argument. So conclusive, 
 however, does the view of it which we have taken seem to us 
 that we are willing to let it go even in its present shape, with- 
 out any further amplification. We trust, that after this the 
 public will no longer listen to any pretence of power to be 
 derived under this article, at least, for the annexation of a 
 foreign State to the Union. If the act is to be done at all, it 
 is surely not to be done by men sworn to support the consti- 
 tution, in the face of a distinct declaration of its sense, by 
 those who were engaged in Its construction. 
 
 The last of the three modes by which Mr. Walker thinks 
 that the annexation may be effected, is through the act of any 
 one of the States of the Union, with the sanction of Con- 
 gress. He derives this remarkable power not from any 
 direct authority given in the constitution, but by implication 
 from that clause of the tenth section of the first article, which 
 forbids any State from entering into any agreement or com- 
 pact with another State, or with a foreign power, without 
 having the consent of Congress thereto. But if this consent 
 can be obtained, he thinks the power to make such a com- 
 pact remains in the States unaffected by the prohibition, and 
 that under cover of these words '^ compact or agreement," 
 any one of them may, at its pleasure, merge into itself, or be 
 merged into any foreign State. 
 
 This is, to say the least of it, a new view of the constitution 
 of the United States. So far as the annexation of Texas is 
 concerned, we regard it as presenting the least dangerous 
 mode of effecting it which has yet been suggested ; and could 
 
38 
 
 we for a moment be brought to assent to the validity of the 
 reasoning by which it is pressed, we are not sure that we 
 should be afraid of running the risk of its happening by this 
 means. But, were the scheme practicable, — were the State 
 of Louisiana or of Arkansas willing to sink its present organ- 
 ization, for the purpose of embracing Texas within its limits, 
 no one knows better than Mr. Walker, that the main object 
 of the whole undertaking would thereby be defeated. The 
 purpose of annexing Texas, is to create out of it several new 
 States, each of which shall have the benefit of the rule of 
 federal representation, as well in the Senate as in the House 
 of Representatives. And through this division into States, 
 the object is to gain just so many more electoral votes for 
 President and Vice-President, with which to defend the rep- 
 resentation of property in man, as there would be new mem- 
 bers of the Senate thus obtained. Now, were Texas incor- 
 porated into Louisiana or Arkansas, no more Senators could 
 be made than now exist ; and the struggle against Wisconsin 
 and Iowa, and all the rest of the Western Territory would 
 remain to be made as now. The Senate is, after all, the 
 stronghold of property representation in this government, be- 
 cause there, the inequality between the increase of the free 
 and the slave Slates does not operate to restore the balance 
 in favor of the former, as it does in the popular branch, and 
 in the electoral colleges. Nothing can shake that power in 
 the Senate, if it be once fortified by the addition of Texas as 
 a territory. But its union with one of the existing States 
 would not strengthen it in that body materially. We cannot, 
 therefore, avoid the conviction, that this third mode of annex- 
 ing Texas to the Union is not intended to be seriously re- 
 commended, and that it has rather been thrown out as a pos- 
 sibility, in case of the failure of the other two, than with any 
 serious belief that it could be made acceptable, either to the 
 State which would be swallowed up in the operation, or to 
 the interest ostensibly to be promoted by it. 
 
 But, even were it otherwise — were the whole of the party 
 in favor of annexation to press it as a proper measure, we 
 must maintain that the scheme is directly and palpably at war 
 with existing provisions of the constitution, which absolutely 
 forbid every attempt of the kind. Mr. Walker, in his zeal 
 for annexation, appears ta have looked only at the last clause 
 of the tenth section, under which he derives his power, and 
 to have neglected the first. Yet, what are the words of the 
 first .'' Are they not these ? 
 
 " No State shall enter into any treaty, alliance, or con- 
 federation." 
 
89 
 
 The prohibition is absolute. No State can even set on 
 foot a negotiation with Texas, without at once violating her 
 obligations to the Union. Indeed, how could it be other- 
 wise ? What power of control would there be in the gov- 
 ernment of the United States over the foreign relations of the 
 country, if this clause were not in the constitution ? The 
 provision which follows forbidding the States to enter into any- 
 compact or agreement with anotlier State or with a foreign 
 power, without the consent of Congress, manifestly has refer- 
 ence to certain cases of extreme necessity ; it by no means 
 conflicts with the clause which we have quoted. This may 
 easily be seen by noting the context, much of which has ref- 
 erence only to a state of war. " No State," It says, " shall 
 without the consent of Congress, lay any duty of tonnage, 
 keep troops or ships of war in time of peace, enter into any 
 agreement or compact with another State or a foreign pow- 
 er, or engage in war unless actually invaded or in such immi- 
 nent danger as will not admit of delay." Some of these 
 powers may not be exercised at all excepting by consent of 
 Congress, and others may be exercised upon certain contin- 
 gencies of war, without that consent, but they are all of a 
 character which cannot and ought not to be resorted to ex- 
 cepting in cases in which it is clear that the States must 
 do so for some very strong and peculiar reason. This 
 seems to be the cause of the difierence of the language used 
 in this and in the first clause of the same section already 
 quoted. " No State shall enter into any treaty, alliance, or 
 confederation" whatever, upon any terms, with or without 
 the consent of Congress — but it may, with such consent, enter 
 into " a compact or agreement" with another State or a for- 
 eign power, that is, some arrangement justified by extreme 
 necessity, either for mutual defence or for protection, mak- 
 ing it an exception to the general rule of action, temporary 
 in its nature, and having no sort of reference to plans of 
 enlargement or of dominion in time of peace, like that which 
 Mr. Walker has attempted to introduce under the words. 
 
 But apparently aware that rjone of the three modes thus 
 suggested are free from the difficulties which we have endea- 
 vored to point out, this gentleman is ready, with a new and 
 more general position, to meet the contingency of his fail- 
 ure to prove them constitutional. He maintains, though it 
 must be confessed, in language somewhat ambiguous, the ex- 
 istence of a reserved right in any State, to extend her terri- 
 tory as far as she pleases, without regard to the constitution. 
 As we desire not to misrepresent him on so delicate a point, 
 we will copy his own words. 
 
40 
 
 " But," he says, " if it be otherwise, and the constitution only applies 
 to territories then attached to the Union, and delegates no power for 
 the acquisition of any other territory, nor prohibits the exercise of the 
 pre-existing power of each State, to extend her boundaries, then there 
 would remain in each State the reserved right of extension, beyond the 
 control of Congress. I have not asserted the existence of such a right in 
 a State; but if the clauses quoted, do net confer the authority on Con- 
 gress, and the re-annexation is refused on that ground, then the annex- 
 ing power, as a right to enlarge their boundaries, would result to any 
 one of the States, and with the consent of Texas, could be exercised. 
 Perceiving, then, what power results to the States, from the denial of the 
 power of annexation by Congress, let us agitate no such question in ad- 
 vance of a denial of its own authority by Congress, but discuss the ques- 
 tion on its merits alone." 
 
 It is quite well for Mr. Walker, that he does not assert 
 the existence of the right here spoken of — and that, for the 
 very good reason, that no such right can, by any possibility, 
 be made to consist with the maintenance of the relative po- 
 sition of the States, under the constitution. If a right to 
 enlarge her boundaries, can result to one of the States, 
 by the annexing power, it does equally to all. Rhode Island 
 and Delaware have far more reasonable ground for the exer- 
 cise of it, than either Louisiana or Arkansas. The only 
 question for consideration then would be, where the land 
 should be found, to which to apply this annexing power. It 
 cannot be found within the territory of the Union, because 
 that is regarded as common property of all the States. 
 Neither can it be found without that territory, because the 
 consent of the owners must then be obtained, these owners 
 being foreign States. This can only be done by negotiation 
 and treaty. And the constitution expressly declares, as we 
 have already shown, that "No State shall enter into any 
 treaty." The original object of this provision is well under- 
 stood. If it had not existed, the poor Indians would have 
 been stripped of all their lands, by the States, long before 
 the United States did it for them. The tenth section of the 
 first article contains an enumeration of the powers denied to 
 the States, and the treaty-making power is one of them. 
 Can any thing in language be plainer } And yet there is an 
 indistinct intimation in this passage, by Mr. Walker, of a 
 reserved right, which looks so much to us like a threat, that 
 "if we cannot do this thing one way, we will another — if we 
 cannot do it constitutionally, we will do it whether or no," 
 that it needs explanation. Now we have never for a moment 
 doubted, that there was a disposition in some quarters, to vi- 
 olate the constitution, rather than to fail of securing Texas 
 — but we scarcely expected to find a Senator of the Unit- 
 ed States even hint at such a thing. We hope we have 
 misconceived his meaning in this instance. But if we have 
 
41 
 
 not, and this doctrine is to be acted on, what is the con- 
 stitution worth ? Is every barrier to be broken down which 
 prevents the unhmited exercise of power by those who will 
 perpetuate their own privileges, at the expense of those of 
 the nation ? Are there to be no rights secured, excepting 
 those of unequal representation ? 
 
 But if Mr. Walker and his friends turn round upon us and 
 ask us whether, under no circumstances whatever, we would 
 consent to the junction of Texas with the United States, 
 and whether some attention is not due to the argument drawn 
 from the too great proximity of the Sabine to the city of New 
 Orleans, we are perfectly ready to answer these questions. 
 The only legitimate method of deciding the matter is, by an 
 appeal to the people of the United States, who agreed to the 
 constitution as it is. Let Mr. Walker, propose an amend- 
 ment to that constitution which shall cover this question ; 
 let that amendment be approved by the requisite number, 
 two-thirds of both Houses of Congress, and ratified by the 
 Legislatures of three-fourths of the several States, and then 
 Texas may become a part of the United States. We will 
 venture to go even a step further to meet him — we will our- 
 selves advocate the annexation of Texas in the manner 
 here described, provided only that the same amendment 
 which shall authorize it be made to include the substance 
 of the Massachusetts resolutions. Not that we desire to 
 be understood as favoring the further acquisition of terri- 
 tory to the Union, in any shape, or that we wave any of the 
 objections we have made to the admission of Texas. But 
 we should be willing to put up with something in the way 
 of evil for the sake of securing a greater good. And holding 
 as we do the most sincere and deliberate conviction, that the 
 compromise of the constitution which concedes the right of 
 representation of property in man has been, is, and will be, if 
 continued, fatal to all the good objects for which that consti- 
 tution was originally formed and that it is degrading the United 
 States from the high place in the scale of nations and in the 
 eyes of mankind which it ought to fill, we would not for our 
 own part hesitate to make a small sacrifice which should re- 
 move from that instrument the greatest spot upon its beauty. 
 Let Texas and the Massachusetts resolutions then go out to- 
 gether, and let them take their fate together, for weal or woe, 
 in the ratifying bodies, as provided by the constitution. This 
 is the only lawful mode of arriving at a good result. Every 
 other that has been proposed, in connexion with Texas is 
 equivalent to a dissolution of the existing social compact, — 
 because it entirely subverts the original relations subsisting 
 
42 
 
 between the people of the several States ; it subjects them 
 to the influence of new parties to the compact, introduced 
 without their consent, and against their will ; it arrogates for 
 the executive and legislative departments of the government 
 a dangerous power, never intended to be granted to them ; 
 and finally, it perpetuates the privileges conceded to a few, 
 at the expense of those advantages which the preamble to 
 the constitution declares it was its purpose to secure to ail. 
 
 But there are persons to be found in the free States, inde- 
 pendently of the office-holders, who now, chameleon-like, 
 always take the color of their master, and of the speculators 
 who hold Texas scrip or Texas lots, who affect to regret the 
 alternative which they present to our rejection of Texas, 
 namely, that Texas will then fall to England. There are 
 others who consider this rejection as equivalent to the loss of 
 a great market for our manufactures. Mr. Walker has struck 
 both of these chords with some effect, in his pamphlet. He 
 has not been sparing of appeals to the national pride, as well 
 as to the individual purse. And in every community of free 
 persons, some will be found to respond to the one call, and 
 many to the other. All we beg of them in this case is, not 
 to suffer themselves to become dupes. Surely, this new- 
 born zeal in favor of domestic manufactures is somewhat sur- 
 prising, coming as it does from men who have uniformly, 
 heretofore, shown the most steadfast hostility to their protec- 
 tion. Surely this enmity to England is rather singular in a 
 party which has shown a determination, for years back, to 
 make this country tributary to her in every deparment of in- 
 dustry, except the raising of cotton. The only practical ef- 
 fect of the annexation of Texas would be, to give additional 
 strength to those who are now seeking to destroy the tariff, 
 and to renew our ancient state of dependence on Great Brit- 
 ain for our manufactures. For if we look back to the his- 
 tory of the past, do we not see that the interest which has 
 most steadily and pertinaciously resisted the principle of pro- 
 tection to home manufactures, has been the cotton planting 
 interest ? And what is there in Texas but cotton planting ? 
 Who is it that complains that cotton pays all the revenues of 
 the government ? Is it not South Carohna ? Who is it 
 that even now makes the destruction of the present tariff a 
 condition of adherence to the democratic party .'' Is it not 
 Mr. .John C. Calhoun? And do not South Carolina and 
 Mr. John C. Calhoun now seek for sympathy and coopera- 
 tion in the annexation of Texas ^ Let no one, then, be so 
 simple as to believe that the manufacturers of the country will 
 be aided by strengthening the hands of their bitterest enemies. 
 
43 
 
 With respect to the other pretence, that Texas, if rejected 
 by the United States, will become a dependency of Great 
 Britain, we shall be ready to believe that just as soon as we 
 see the people of Texas emancipate their slaves, and not be- 
 fore. And we think this about as probable, as that the same 
 thing will be done by the people of Alabama or Mississippi. 
 As long as cotton planting is profitable, just so long will there 
 be a demand for slaves ; and as long as there is a demand for 
 slaves, just so long will the people of Texas stick to slavery. 
 Great Britain neither can nor will interfere with her any more 
 than she does with us. She may seek to make favorable 
 treaties with her ; but what is to prevent our doing likewise ? 
 If Texas is to be a market for manufactured goods, why not 
 for ours as well as for the British ? New-Orleans is a great 
 deal nearer to it than Liverpool. And our people may be 
 trusted to make full use of every fair advantage they can ob- 
 tain. Our manufactures now go to Mexico. Why should 
 not they go to a State much less likely to interpose useless 
 and vexatious restraints to trade ? 
 
 In truth, the independence of Texas is, of all things, that 
 which it is most for the interest of the Union to sustain. If 
 our government ever had done such a thing, it might almost 
 be advisable for it to enter into nes:otiation with Mexico 
 
 o 
 
 and Great Britain, mutually to guarantee that independence. 
 In this manner, she might be made a barrier between the tur- 
 bulent part of our boundary population on the Southwest and 
 the Mexicans. Even the slave-owners of the South would 
 find it for their advantage to have a State on their border 
 which would deter, by its legislation, their slaves from flight. 
 For were Texas to be joined to the Union, we are willing to 
 believe that Mr. Walker's conjecture would be just, as to 
 the tendency of the colored population, by escape, to diffuse 
 itself over the neighboring free territory of Mexico ; but I 
 greatly doubt whether he or his friends would then look upon 
 the operation with the same degree of complacency which he 
 now affects. If that idea was thrown out as a bait to the 
 friends of negro emancipation, to favor annexation, we very 
 much doubt whether it has caught a single one, even of the 
 simplest of them. 
 
 But the subject has so grown under our hands that we find 
 ourselves compelled from fear of fatiguing those who may do 
 us the favor to examine our views, to abandon the intention 
 of pursuing Mr. Walker through all his arguments in favor of 
 annexation. We are the more ready to do this, because we 
 find the few that remain unnoticed, are not likely to carry 
 much weight in their minds. The dangers which this gen- 
 
44 
 
 tleman predicts to follow to the free States from the aboli- 
 tion of slavery, in "making their vessels rot at the wharves 
 for want of exchangeable products to carry, and the grass to 
 grow in the streets of their cities," probably for the same 
 reason, make a fine paragraph for declamation, but they only 
 betray the utter ignorance of the wriier, of the resources of 
 freemen. Really, one would be led to imagine, from his 
 tone, that the world would be undone if there were no cotton 
 in Charleston, Mobile, Natchez and New Orleans. All this is 
 a bugbear, much of the same species with the raw head and 
 bloody bones stories which used to be told previous to the 
 emancipation of the slaves in the English West Indies. 
 Whatever may be the danger of emancipation to the slave 
 States, Mr. Walker may rest assured that the free States ap- 
 prehend no serious consequence to them, other than those 
 which might follow the obligations which the constitution im- 
 poses, of protecting their brethen against insurrection at 
 home. Moreover, they would be somewhat at a loss to 
 understand how this argument against emancipation, is to be 
 made to reconcile them to the dangers of an indefinite exten- 
 sion of the evils of slavery over a large additional territory, 
 and a consequent increase of those hazards of insurrection, 
 which would call for the interference of the federal govern- 
 ment, partially at their expense. If Mr. Walker thinks that 
 slavery is much better than freedom to the black, then let 
 him prove it to be a measure of wisdom and philanthropy to 
 reestablish it all over the Union. This may suit that gen- 
 tleman's moral and social theories, but it will meet few sup- 
 porters among the free. 
 
 So, too, with his elaborate argument drawn from the cen- 
 sus of 1840, to prove how badly freedom suits the black. 
 According to Mr. W^alker, it has a pecuhar tendency to make 
 him insane, and he thereupon endeavors to show how great a 
 proportion of free blacks become mad, as contrasted with the 
 whites. If this position be true the corollary necessarily fol- 
 lows, that if these blacks had been slaves, they would have 
 been in their right mind. It is their freedom that hath made 
 them mad. This argument, as coming .from despotic gov- 
 ernments, and applied to the excesses of democracy, as ex- 
 emplified in the French revolution, is not a new one ; but 
 when it comes from the Senator from Mississippi, one of the 
 chief lights of modern democracy, in 1844, in the United 
 States, it is calculated to raise a smile of surprise. The true 
 line between sanity and insanity is among the problems of 
 medical science. We will not ask the Senator how far we may 
 be justified in considering the white people of his State sane, 
 
45 
 
 in their reasoning on the subject of the moral obligation of a 
 Slate to fulfil its contracts, for we seek to revive no unpleasant 
 recollections. Let us rather proceed at once to deny the ac- 
 curacy of his statistics. It is notorious that the census of 
 1840 contains most ridipulous errors, upon which this theory 
 of the insanity of the free black is founded. Mr. Severance 
 of Maine has shown, in a late speech in Congress, how in six 
 towns in his State nineteen insane blacks were returned, 
 whilst at the same time the sum of all the colored people in 
 those same towns was only one, and he was probably sane. 
 This will serve as an example of the whole foundation of Mr. 
 Walker's argument. And such is the sophistry which re- 
 spectable men are not ashamed to use, when they are com- 
 pelled to defend slavery against the doctrines of the Declara- 
 tion of Independence. It may answer for the meridian of 
 Carroll County, Kentucky, to which place Mr. Walker's 
 letter was originally addressed, but it will not stand the test 
 of a moment's scrutiny in the free States particularly when it 
 is pressed as a justification of the annexation of Texas. 
 
 Let us, then, pass over all this stuff, as not worthy of the 
 paper it would cost to refute it, and come at once to the great 
 question that agitates all minds. 
 
 WHAT OUGHT NOW TO BE DONE ? 
 
 It must be admitted that public opinion, in the free States, 
 has not settled down into any definite channel on this subject. 
 We approach the consideration of it with great diffidence ; 
 not that we do not see a way by which the consummation of 
 this project might be prevented, but that we fear the state of 
 feeling in the country is not sufficiently concentrated to secure 
 its adoption. Yet the late election in the city of New York 
 clearly shows what can be done when the people have made 
 up their minds to reform an existing evil. We will only ap- 
 ply the principle there involved on a larger scale, and then 
 leave the decision of this great question to those in whose 
 hands it legitimately belongs. 
 
 But first, it may be as well to state the whole extent of the 
 evil which we have to apprehend, and which we desire to 
 avoid. The annexation of Texas is, in itself, an evil ; but it 
 is by no means the whole of it. Every one in the conmmnity 
 knows, that it is carried on at this time, in the face of hostile 
 declarations made by Mexico, a country with which we are 
 at peace. If Texas be, then, a part of ''the settled policy 
 of the government," as Mr Holmes says, so must also be a 
 war with Mexico, which is to follow it. Neither is this quite 
 all. At the same time that these hostilities are provoked, a 
 spirit is manifesting itself in both Houses of Congress, calcu- 
 
46 
 
 lated to excite America against Great Britain. This has os- 
 tensibly for its basis, the question between the two countries 
 about the boundary of the Oregon Territory, but it is strictly 
 connected with ihe movement to gain Texas, and has for its 
 real purpose the protection of slavery against the effect of 
 pubhc opinion in England, and the other States of Christen- 
 dom. Here, then, is the backward step of liberty in the new 
 hemisphere. Here, then, is the check to further progress, 
 administered by the haughty spirit engendered out of slavery, 
 and determined to maintain its special privileges at every haz- 
 ard. The settled policy of the United States is to be defi- 
 ance of the world. The black flag is to go up to the mast 
 head, whilst we seize Texas with one hand and Oregon with 
 the other, and proclaim our readiness to strike at the city of 
 Mexico, hereafter. And the free States are to be crippled 
 in their commerce and drained of their wealth, to sustain this 
 new crusade in support of the new democratic principle, now 
 proclaimed in America, that ''all men are not born free and 
 equal," whilst the slightest complaint or remonstrance is to be 
 branded as the heresy of men bribed and bought by Mexican 
 or British gold. 
 
 In order to promote mad schemes like these, it was one of -^ 
 the fancies of the person now called the lamented Upshur, 
 but whose loss as a politician, to the country, is by no means 
 to be lamented, whatever may be the share of regret felt for 
 him as a man ; it was one of the fancies of this gentleman, to 
 bring up the navy and army of the United States at once to 
 a war footing, so as to enable the country as soon as possible 
 to cope widi Great Britain. Extravagant appropriations 
 were recommended In all quarters, by an administration pro- 
 fessing 10 follow the JefFersonian model of economy, and we 
 were about to have a magnificent government, to give splen- 
 dor to the accident which was placed at Its head. Luckily 
 for the country, some wisdom and discretion was yet left 
 in the House of Representatives, which put a stopper upon 
 these visions of glory for the time, but the system yet remains, 
 and will probably be still pressed in parts, as opportunity may 
 offer, now that it is not probable it will ever be accepted as 
 a whole. But it behoves the people to be on the watch, or 
 else that armament which was made the forerunner of events, 
 will only have changed its place in the order of time, and will 
 be made necessary as a consequence of them. 
 
 But the question recurs — How shall we act most effec- 
 tively both for the preservation of peace and against the set- 
 tled policy here marked out ? 
 
 There have been suggestions of the expediency of extra- 
 ordinary popular meetings. State conventions, and one gen- 
 
47 
 
 eral convention of delegates from all the Free States. As 
 expressions of opinion, these would perhaps be useful, but as 
 guiding a course of action, they might possibly do more 
 harm than good. The tendency of such assemblages is to 
 extreme violence, which defeats its own end, and there is no 
 need of that now. If the people really feel the necessity of ex- 
 erting themselves, they may do it most effectually by con- 
 centrating in the regular and customary forms. If, on the 
 other hand, they do not, it is useless for a part to attempt 
 declarations of what they feel, which the whole will not by 
 action sustain. The Free States yet have the control of this 
 matter in their hands. If they say no, the thing cannot be 
 done. If, on the other hand, they show themselves willing, 
 or even lukewarm and indifferent, it will be done. In either 
 event, the responsibility of sustaining or defeating the valua- 
 ble purposes of the constitution of the United States rests 
 with them. 
 
 And in considering what dangers are most to be appre- 
 hended, we have very reluctantly been driven to the conclu- 
 sion, that the most imminent of them springs from the cold 
 and temporizing policy of Mr. Van Buren, and his organiza- 
 tion of political management in the Free States. And we 
 draw this inference not merely from the fact that the opposi- 
 tion to the twenty-first rule of the House of Representatives, 
 made so late in the day by his friends, has been basely aban- 
 doned ; nor yet from the fact that three Legislatures of the 
 great States of New York, Pennsylvania, and Maine, friendly 
 to him have distinctly refused to express even an opinion 
 against the policy of annexing Texas ; nor yet from the fact 
 that a New Hampshire Senator, of his party, has expressed 
 himself friendly to that policy ; nor yet from the fact that the 
 influential press of the democratic party in the free States, 
 with a few exceptions, is either silent or friendly to it ; nor 
 yet from the fact that many of those who are the most violent 
 against Great Britain in Congress, about the Oregon Territory, 
 are among the most active of his party, and are also playing 
 into the hands of the Texans. We say that we do not draw 
 our inference from any one of these facts by itself but by put- 
 ting them all together we deem it irresistible. The principles 
 of liberty, the hopes of peace, and of an honest administration 
 are not safely to bo trusted in the hands of men who make a 
 trade of politics — who bargain one thing against another — and 
 who are finally ready to sell every thing, rather than not to 
 gain possession of power. Lukewarmness now^ at this critical 
 moment, in a citizen of the most powerful of the [ree States, 
 is symptomatic of treachery hereafter. Let no such men be 
 
48 
 
 trusted. We are perfectly convinced that the first great step 
 to security, will be the defeat of Mr. Van Buren's election to 
 the Presidency, or of any other democratic candidate for that 
 office that may be named from the Free States, who is not 
 unequivocally pledged to resist this Texan policy. 
 
 But how can this be done ? A struggling scattering vote 
 for third persons will not do it. And Mr. Clay will be the can- 
 didate, in all probability, of the opposing party. We are aware 
 of the fact that Mr. Clay is not publicly pledged on the subject 
 — that he is himself a slave-holder, tied to the favored class 
 by common interests and sympathies, and that he has in for- 
 mer days favored the acquisition of Texas, when it was an un- 
 occupied territory, by lawful means. Is it to be supposed 
 that elevating him will place us in a better situation than if we 
 sustained the democratic candidate ? 
 
 We will frankly admit that there are difficulties all round. 
 We have not ourselves been among those who have mani- 
 fested any desire to support Mr. Clay. Probably he himself 
 would not have thanked us if we had made the offer, and 
 w^ould now deem his prospect of success better without such 
 support. But personal considerations weigh not with us a 
 feather, in estimating the value of the various modes now open 
 of avoiding the evils by which we are surrounded. In the great 
 movements of this world, which no one can hope to control 
 exactly as he would like, the part of wise men is to extract 
 from much that appears unfavorable, whatever portion is like- 
 ly, under the circumstances, to yield the greatest amount of 
 good. We have seen no evidence to convince us that what- 
 ever may have been Mr. Clay's view of a lawful acquisition 
 of this territory formerly, he now approves of it after the 
 conduct of government has so complicated the question. 
 Nor is it alone the fact that the Legislatures of the two 
 slaveholding States, Tennessee and Kentucky, friendly to 
 Mr. Clay, have refused to favor the annexation of Texas at 
 this time ; nor the fact that his friends, and ihe newspapers 
 most warmly enlisted in his cause, are many of them opposed 
 to it, which induces us to overcome our scruples, in support- 
 ing him for the sake of defeating Mr. Van Buren. Very for- 
 tunately for us, there is another test yet remains behind, 
 which must settle our opinions definitively on one side or the 
 other, in this matter. A treaty on our part with Texas, 
 which joins the two countries, without consulting the people 
 of the United States, and hardly with their knowledge of the 
 fact that it has been in the process of negotiation, is at this 
 moment before the Senate for confirmation or rejection. 
 It is well known that a majority of that body is of the party 
 
49 
 
 friendly to the election of Mr. Clay as President. If they 
 choose to say the word, that treaty will be declared to be 
 the law of the land, and the outrage will be consummated — 
 for after the various indications of sentiment to which we 
 have alluded, we have little faith in the resistance of the dem- 
 ocratic part of the body. If, on the other hand, they do not 
 say the word, the treaty falls back upon its authors and con- 
 trivers — a mere piece of waste paper. 
 
 "By those fruits, ye shall knoio him." 
 
 If, as appears to us most probable, that treaty should be 
 rejected, still it may be done on the ground, not of the un- 
 constitutional character of the act itself, but because the peo- 
 ple of the United States have not had any opportunity to ex- 
 press an opinion, in favor of, or against it. Such might, by 
 possibility, be the reasoning of Mr. Clay himself. We know 
 nothing of his opinions, and only assume these to be his, be- 
 cause it is putting the most unfavorable view of them that we 
 may be called upon to meet. Although we should more 
 highly value that opposition to Texas, which should spring 
 from convictions as strong as our own of the utter unconsti- 
 tutionality of the proposed act of union, we ought not to suffer 
 ourselves to underrate the advantages which may be derived, 
 even from the ground which is thus presented to us. So 
 long as the people of the Free States are not bargained away 
 like cattle ; so long as their voice is to be respected by those 
 in power, in guiding the policy of the government, there is 
 yet room for hope. The admission of this principle alone, 
 would be a prognostic of a return to brighter days. There 
 has been none such acted upon, for a great many years, by 
 those who have been placed in the administration. 
 
 But in order to make this concession of any avail, it will 
 be necessary for those citizens of all parties, who value the 
 perpetuity of our pacific and free system of government more 
 than the success of individuals in iheir pursuit of office, to 
 direct their attention to the choice of men perfectly true to sound 
 principles in both branches of the federal Legislature. No 
 President will have it in his power, hereafter, to do the mis- 
 chief which Mr. Tyler has had an opportunity to do, if the 
 proper precautions be only taken. It will be wise to put re- 
 straints on him, in this particular, whoever may be the success- 
 ful aspirant. This can be done. The only question is, shall 
 it be done ? We scarcely expect that the ultras of either of 
 the three parties will be prepared to abandon their standard for 
 any useful purpose whatever, that may conflict with the pro- 
 bability of their own ascendency. But the great mass of the 
 
50 
 
 moderate and substantial people of the community, who hold 
 the balance of power between them, are not so wedded to 
 any interest as to be unwilling to hsten to reason, and of them 
 we do expect all that may yet be done lo redeem the coun- 
 try. To this end, it is not absolutely necessary that they 
 should at once break from the polhical association with which 
 they ordinarily act. Let them wait to see who the candi- 
 dates may be that the opposite parties will put up. If it shall 
 turn out that they are all not only known to be decidedly op- 
 posed to the whole policy of annexation and war, but pos- 
 sess sufficient weight of private character to 'secure them 
 from the suspicion of a liability to improper influence here- 
 after, then it is immaterial for which of them any one may 
 vote, so far as this question is concerned. The election 
 of either would secure the great point now at issue. If, 
 on the other hand, the candidate of only one of the parties is 
 of the character described, whilst that of the other is either 
 lukewarm or wavering, or not to be trusted, then is it the 
 bounden duty of every person interested in the preservation 
 of our institutions in their purity, to vote for the former, no 
 matter what may be the standard he is attached to. And 
 lastly, if the candidate presented by neither party is deserv- 
 ing of public trust at this crisis, then it becomes highly neces- 
 sary to do, as has lately been done, for different reasons, in 
 the city of New York, to rally upon some new individual, 
 whose character shall at once challenge the confidence of the 
 voters, without regard to the old forms of organization. In 
 this manner, and in this only, can the great point be secured, 
 of possessing a body of men from the Free States, who 
 will stand together on this great foundation, no matter what 
 else they may divide about. The moderate men, who will 
 hold the balance of power in almost every congressional dis- 
 trict, we might even say in almost every election in the au- 
 tumn, can secure this great object, if they only will it. But it 
 will be necessary for them to be on the alert. The elections 
 will soon become a topic of public interest. In order to se- 
 cure the right sort of candidates, it will be necessary that the 
 requisites alluded to be early insisted upon. The field is now 
 open for useful exertion. If it be not rightly improved, then 
 will there be an end of all chance of future security. The 
 evil may now have been postponed, but it will not have been 
 removed. If the Free States do not strongly will, then the 
 inference will be drawn that they consent, and many of their 
 own citizens will be among the first to sacrifice every public 
 principle to the hope of personal advantage in promoting the 
 Texas pohcy. 
 
61 
 
 * 
 
 For let it be observed, that this is not a question for the 
 present moment only. Some of the leading presses of the 
 North have lately attempted to keep studiously out of view 
 the subject that is at the bottom of it all. They appear to 
 think that it is inexpedient to agitate matters which may affect 
 the position of many Senators from the slave States, upon 
 whose cooperation, to defeat the treaty now proposed to be 
 made, we must rely. This argument would do very well, if 
 the rejection of that treaty could be regarded as a final settle- 
 ment of the question. But every one knows that it is not. 
 Every one knows that those Senators do not mean to be un- 
 derstood as pledging themselves beyond the occasion. Every 
 one knows that their policy is more affected by their imme- 
 diate interest in the success of Mr. Clay, which would be en- 
 tirely destroyed by a contrary course, than by any permanent 
 dislike to the Texas policy itself. How short-sighted is it, 
 then to put the argument against it in the North on a false 
 bottom, merely to please them, and subject ourselves to hav- 
 ing the objection thrown into our teeth at some future time, 
 that we had acted hypocritically, in suppressing the true rea- 
 sons of our opposition, to serve a momentary purpose. This 
 is the sort of temporising, timeserving policy, which too of- 
 ten has the effect of weakening the influence of New-England 
 in the national councils, much more than any extremes in 
 doctrine which may be advanced. We are accused of trick, 
 and management, and cunning — underhand ways of gaining 
 our objects. Would it not be a clear justification of such a 
 charge, to pretend that the indefinite expansion of slavery is 
 not the great and leading objection in the minds of all good 
 men among us, to the acquisition of Texas — provided that 
 this could be done constitutionally. Would not that reason 
 present the chiqf objection to the adoption of an amendment 
 of the constitution, for the purpose of acquiring it ? How 
 vain then to imagine, that by a httle effort we can hide it from 
 view. Does any one suppose that if Mr. Clay is chosen 
 President, he will not be tried by his enemies at the South on 
 this delicate subject, or that those who now support him will 
 not be called upon to assume their ground, immediately after 
 his election?* The present agitation of the project will itself 
 be construed as furnishing some test of the popular sentiment 
 in its favor, if that sentiment be not most unequivocally ex- 
 pressed against it. Does any one imagine, that by a little delay 
 the country will entirely avoid this issue.'' Would that we 
 could beheve it. But we strain our eyes, and see no such 
 blessed futurity. The great issue between the principles of 
 the constitution and slavery, between the rights of the many 
 
62 
 
 freemen and the privileges of the few, must be met. The 
 great problem of human progress is involved in the result. 
 If there are men among us who feel faint-hearted, or wish to 
 avert their eyes from the prospect, let them stand aside. 
 But let them not deceive themselves with a belief, that with a 
 few hollow phrases and delusive declarations, they can avert 
 the struggle that is impending. Such efforts may put it off 
 for a few hours or days, but they can do no more. 
 
 How much this struggle will be accelerated, if the treaty 
 now offered should be finally ratified by the Senate, we im- 
 agine there is no one so cold as not to comprehend. Indeed, 
 we have seen it gravely urged in some quarters, as a serious 
 objection to it, not that its principle is much in its way, 
 but that it would be giving the abolitionists too great an ad- 
 vantage among our citizens. Such political morals are too 
 common, even in the best of our newspaper press, to excite 
 the least surprise. The abolitionists would long before this 
 have made themselves an impregnable position, if they had 
 been sufficiently prudent not to connect with real and solid 
 principles much that is irrelevant and impracticable. Expe- 
 rience will, in the course of time, make them discreet, and 
 the violent course of the Southern States, is daily con- 
 tributing something to strengthen their arguments. The trim- 
 ming and temporizing system that has marked the career 
 of the race of politicians during the last twenty years, will 
 no longer serve the purpose. The state of the country de- 
 mands decision, and the pubhc questions that are about 
 to open before it and divide opinion, are likely to be of 
 such a kind as to defy the possibility of equivocation. The 
 only difficulty to be guarded against, by those who are driven 
 to contend against the increasing evils of slavery, is that 
 which may arise from their own errors, in choosing unsafe 
 ground upon which to make the contest. The best and 
 strongest cause may be injured, if not destroyed, by mistak- 
 ing the true methods to sustain it. 
 
 This brings us to the last topic, which we proposed at the 
 outset to treat. In the event of the annexation of Texas, 
 what is it advisable for the free States to do ? Are they to 
 submit to it, as an irremediable evil, and patiently await the 
 results which it may bring about, or are they to do as some 
 have advised — at once take measures to produce a dissolution 
 of the Union ? In expressing our views upon this subject, 
 we are conscious that we shall fall in with the notions of no 
 particular party ; for whilst, on the one hand, we should 
 deem the time come for an organization throughout the free 
 States, such as has never yet been made ; on the other, we 
 
53 
 
 should not deem it come for immediate dissolution. Not that 
 we do not consider the bond of the constitution completely 
 broken by the introduction of a foreign State, and its obliga- 
 tion void. We have not a doubt on that point. But so long 
 as we believe that it is within the power of the free States to 
 prevent the annexation of Texas, and the war policy, if they 
 only will it, just so long shall we consider their refusal so to 
 will, as implying the waiver of the majority, to avail them- 
 selves of the breach of contract at this time, and their consent 
 to remain in the Union for the present on unequal terms. Res- 
 olutions and declamation are but waste of time, if the indomita- 
 able spirit be not behind them to give force in action. The al- 
 ternative is, then, to prepare for future events ; to disseminate 
 the principles involved in the Massachusetts resolutions as 
 striking at the root of the evil ; in short to make no cessation in 
 the contest against slavery and the measures which flow from it. 
 Gloomy though the prospect might be, of fulfilling the great 
 ends for whicTi the government was constituted, the perpetua- 
 tion of the blessings of liberty to ourselves and our posterity; 
 desperate as might seem the prospect of a return to those 
 days of honor and of peace, when the name of the republic 
 had not been made a synonyme with rapacity and bad faith ; 
 yet the duty of good citizens would still remain unchanged, to 
 watch and to strive for the best. Rashness and despair are 
 equally unmanly, so long as there is a shadow of faith re- 
 maining in the dispensations of an overruhng Providence 
 above us. 
 
 We have now done with the subject. In treating it, we 
 are conscious that we have occasionally run counter to the 
 prejudices and feelings of each of the three parties which now 
 agitate the land. We have been too warm to suit those 
 whigs, who delight in indifl^erence ; too uncompromising to 
 suit the flexible morality of the democrats ; and too cold to 
 suit those abolitionists who dwell in abstractions. Such a re- 
 sult almost inevitably follows any eflbrt to express free 
 thoughts in a free manner. Yet in all these parties there are, 
 numbers of persons who will not be displeased if such a lib- 
 erty be taken, and who will examine the argument that may 
 be advanced, with impartiality, and without reference to its 
 source. To those persons we have endeavored most re- 
 spectfully to address ourselves. They generally hold the 
 scale in political affairs, and although slow in coming to the 
 formation of opinions, yet when once formed they are tena- 
 cious in maintaining them. Let the favored classes of the 
 South beware how, by their violent career, they persist in driv- 
 ing all these people into the doctrines of pohtical abolitionism. 
 
64 
 
 Thus far they have looked on perhaps with too much indif- 
 ference, at the aggressions committed time after time upon the 
 principles of liberty, and have given little encouragement to 
 the eflbrts of agitators. But a persistence in sacrificing the in- 
 terests of the whole to the maintenance of an institution not 
 to be justified either in the eyes of God or man, a resolute 
 determination to press the country into a position before the 
 world, at war both with its declared principles and with jus- 
 tice and right, may try their patience somewhat beyond bear- 
 ing. And the reaction in public opinion, consequent upon the 
 outbreak of their indignation, may have effects upon the pol- 
 icy of the Union and the condition of the slave States, which 
 would hardly be compensated to the latter by the additional 
 security they might fancy they had purchased to themselves, 
 even by success in forcing the annexation of Texas. 
 
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