Speech of Mr. Jarnagin, of Tennessee, on the treaty for the annexation of Texas

REESE LIBRARY

OF THE

UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA.

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UNIVERSITY*

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SPEECH

OF

MR. JARNAGIN, OF TENNESSEE,

ON THE

TREATY FOR THE ANNEXATION OF TEXAS,

Delivered in the Senate of the United States, in Executive Session, June 6, 1944.

The Treaty annexing Texas (o the United States, and also the resolutions offer-
ed by the Senator from Missouri, (Mr. BENTON,) on that subject, being undec
consideration —

Mr. J^\RNAGIX said : I will ask the indulgence of the Senate while I submit
the reasons which have determined me to vote against the Treaty now under
discussion. Upon this subject., the first question to us, beyond all doubt, in mag-
nitude as in sacrednees, is the constitutionality of the act proposed to be done
under the authority of the treaty - making power. For, after all, the rules of mere
national law are ofien violated with impunity for the sake of policy, personal in-
terest, and national aggrandizement. We did not establish that code : it is, in
many points, unsettled ; in others, we have refused to conform to it: but we are
inextricably hound, by direct faiih, to the principles we have deliberately set up
*for our guides at home and abroad- By common avowal, no temporary good,
poweyer desirable in itself, can compensate a direct violation of the Constitution j
for the latter extends over the whole future, and breaks down every security to
us as a people.

The Constitution has given, and could give, no such authority as that now
assumed by the treaty-making power. It is a strictly extra and ultra-constitu-
tional one; for a Constitution is an agreement between the parties to it. If it is
that of a single society, then the parties are the body of its citizens. If it. is a
compact, between several societies, forming by it a federative league, it is these
separately who make the parlies to it. Ifi either case, to introduce or exclude a
member cannot be within the scope of the compact; because it would vary the
"parties, and so terminate the agreement. The terms of the instrument itself
could in no manner bestow a power contrary to this condition, inherent in the
'contract itself, and incapable of being excluded from it. Legally to alter thesea
the special assent, of each parly must precede the act. If done arbitrarily, with*-
out that assent, the act, though void in itself, may be rendered subsequently va-
lid by the direct consent or ihe acquiescence of the original parties, who wouldi
thus, with the new member, form a new league, upon the terms of the old ; but,,
this done, it would be precisely as before. The fact just accomplished would
only reinstate the same indefeasible conditions between new parties. It would
bestow, no matter how often repeated, no power among the parties to act
otherwise, as to a new change of those parties, than by the special assent of
each to that change, to be given by the people themselves, according to the form
they may prescribe. No act of this sort could, therefore, confer a power, or con-*
stitute a precedent. This is the true answer to the alleged precedent of our ac»

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quisition of Louisiana and Florida, which are now properly a part of the United
States, upon the principles just declared.

But even upon less comprehensive grounds, these two facts confer no authority.
Mr. Jefferson, the author, (it may be said,) because the originator of both, avow-
ed the one which he himself accomplished, to be unequivocally beyond the pow-
ers of this Government by treaty, and urged that, to make it valid, the nation
should ratify it by a constituiional act, thereby getting the consent of the people,
and not alone that of the President and Senate. He obviously proposed, how-
ever, only a special confirmation, not the embodiment of any general provision^
or future rule or precedent, for the treaty-making power. Those acts, then, were
done in contemplation of a constitutional ratification, held by the author himself
necessary to legalize them ; and that ratification has been neglected. If, then?
resorted to as precedents, it is directly in the face of his authority, as they never
were rendered constitutional, as he thought they would have to be rendered, but
became valid by acquiescence. Besides, he wished to make of them special ca-
ses, legitimatized by a subsequent consent, to cure a past wrong, not to give a future
Or further authority. The act thus avowed, by its very authors, unconstitutional,
and held ever since by the world to be so, is surely the very last that can be erect-
ed into a constitutional precedent, and cannot be urged, with propriety, by those
who now attempt to avail themselves of it ; for we have in our history many cases-
of acts done as constitutional, to which, as precedents, all authority is denied by
them, and yet they here attempt to make a decisive precedent of that which no
man ever took to be constitutional af all !

The force of these reasons, even as stated in a far less conclusive form, is con-
fessed by the many evasive methods taken to avoid them — this juggling of call-
ing it " re-annexation," or that, of pleading a political necessity, purely fictitious,,
or some pretended engagement contracted, or right obtained by our having recog-
nised the independence of Texas, or the slight-of-hand trick of bringing her in
as a territory, not a State, by one branch of the Government alone. These
grounds convey not only no slight avowal of the absence of any solid form of
doing the thing but by a resort O the people or their representatives, but are
subversive of all constitutional restraint, call in for their instruments all sorts of
violations of domestic and foreign obligations, remit for the purpose unbounded
powers to the Executive, and are in many particulars directly in conflict with
each other, or with the motives or excuses alleged in behalf of other points in
this scheme. We will examine them in their order.

The term " re-annexation " is meant to convey the idea that we have, some
how or other, a subsisting right to the country of Texas, so that, not being a for-
fcign one, it can be legally incorporate^ in our Government. It is easy to see
that, to the full extent to which this supplies a cure for any constitutional difficul-
ty, it is fatal to other capital pretences set up or acts done. It utterly overthrows
our own allegation that Texas is independent and capable of being a party to a
treaty : it is in direct conflict with all the terms and objects of that instrument :
il renders ridiculous our avowals to Mexico, and especially our final measure of
buying her out : and as to our complaints of England and her intermeddling, it
joints conclusively to what should have been our course — to let the British Go-
•vernment know that one of its public agents was making mischief, under pre-
tence of a Royal commission, in our territory, and that we received diplomatic
personages here, and not in Texas. It is worse still as to Mexico. With her we
acknowledge ourselves, in every way, to be strictly at peace : we keep envoys at
her capital : we allege no subsisting wrongs, for she amicably and honorably
meets and settles all complaints : in fine, whatever may be said against her cruel-
"ties and barbarism, we cannot withhold the admission, that her national conduct
Awards us is most friendly, exemplary, full of faith. And yet, all this while,

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tained uninterrupted possession, at all times, up to the Sabine. What more need
be said? If permanent occupation confers at last a territorial right, and that of
France to Louisiana, as she held it to the Mermento, was good, that of Spain
to Texas, up to the same actual limit, was better, because older. In a word, it
was possession alone that made any real title for either. All the rest was much
like the style but lately abandoned by the English monarchs, which included,
as a part of their dominions, France, where they had not had a foot of land for
centuries; or, like their keeping the title of ''defenders of the faith," bestowed
by the Pope, long after they had turned Protestants.

It is to be remembered that it was not only France that claimed Texas to the
Rio Grande, but Spain that claimed Louisiana as a part of Florida. The one
went back to discovery from 1677 to 1685, the other to discovery from 1512 to
1542. Now, all must grant that mere discovery must yield, as a right, to regu-
lar, continued, uninterrupted possession. Discovery gives only the first imperfect
tilaim. If not speedily followed by regular occupatioa, that claim may be super-
seded by another nation, which takes and keeps regular possession, the only
thing which can perfect a territorial right.

These are grounds which it would be perfectly idle to dispute. But if, from
these, we choose to go back to the only ones which can be set up as of prior va-
lidity, then it is upon the mere fact of discovery, accompanied with certain for-
malities of taking possession, but not a real national settlement, that our claim
through France must be set. up ; and if this is to be the test, and not possession,
we must not only fail to make good our title to Texas, but must lose that to Lou-
isiana ; for the Spanish discovery of -both is full one hundred and thirty-five
years older than the French.

It is perfectly incontestible that Ponce de Leon discovered and took possession
Of Florida in 15 L2 ; that Hernando de Soto penetrated from it to the Mississippi^
about the mouth of the Arkansas, with near five hundred men, in 1538 ; that
Alonzo de Soto made his way from that point to the mouth of the Mississippi in
1541 ; that his force coasted back to Mexico, discovering the intermediate region
in 1542.

On the French part, what can be opposed to this? That in 1677 La Salle
Came down the Mississippi to the Arkansas; that in a second expedition, in 1683,,
he descended the Mississippi to its mouth ; and that in a third expedition, (sail-
ing now from France, as the others came from Canada,) he landed in the bay
of Espiritu Santo or San Bernardo, and there built and held a small fort, from
February, 1686, to January, 1687; but abandoned it then, and was driven off;
since which time, the French right, if ever such at all, became but a claim found-
ed on these fads, and maintained or urged only in the idle form of diplomatic skir-
mishes of words, against the clear, definite, undisturbed possession by Spainy
from La Salle's time up to the actual border of Louisiana, as at last settled une-
quivocally in practice, in fact, in the jurisdiction exercised by the nations respec-
tively, up to the Mermento. Then, whatever the old self-love of either might
say, in the gasconade of claim or counter-claim, the two nations, the two tongues?
inet ; and this last fact alone, were every thing else silent, would be enough to
overthrow the entire allegations of the French. For if, as I have shown, this
was a question of priority, of regular occupation, of planting and colonizing,
what proof is so strong, or what monument so lasting as that which the geogra-
phy of both countries affords, in the names of all the rivers and towns ? On one
«ide «f the Sabine, they are nearly all French ; on the other, all are Spanish
escept a few, founded within the last twenty years. In a word, you have only
to glance at a gazeteer or a map of either country, and to consider in what
tongue are the names all over its surface, in order perfectly, and beyond all argu-

men Mo learn, what was a Spanish territory, and what a French, where Louis-
iana ended and where Texas began.

I enier not, therefore, and consider it totally useless to enter into the long chi-
canery of diplomatists on either part. To what tales of travellers, to what geo-
graphers, to what maps, to what former pretensions on either side they may have
referred, is certainly not of the slightest consequence. What are these things
worth against original settlement and long established possession and jurisdiction?
Could the Spanish claim that Louisiana was included in their great region of
Florida, (by their old assumption, stretching baok to Texas,) shake the certainty,
the legal authorities of the French rights on the Mississippi, when they had once
been suffered to establish themselves there without being dispossessed? It must
be granted, beyond question, that the first imperfect right there was in favor of
the Spanish ; but that this was afterwards entirely lost by their failure to perfect
it by settlement. In like manner, of course, of the Spanish claim to Texas.
This had been perfected, and was, besides, upon historical testimony, originally
much the older as to discovery.

What the quibbles of negotiators may be, about matters the most airy, we leara
abundantly from cases of our own, either yet pending or but lately adjusted. —
From the beginning of our national existence down to 1842, we had a boundary
question of this sort with Great Britain, of almost indefinite extension. Yet here
there was a definition by treaty ; while there never had been any of these rival
claims of Spain and France, which, however, gradually settled themselves by
opposite occupation. We have now pending another question with Great Bri-
tain, almost equally old; for we found our claim and right to Oregon partly on
discovery in 1786 or '7. In all these cases, the adverse Plenipotentiaries never
fail to assert, as perfectly unanswerable, every pretension which their nation ever
has or can set up. On each other, they may, or may not, make an impression.
From 1805 to 1819, Messrs. Madison, Monroe, and Adams, made none on their
their Spanish adversaries. Nothing was won of, Great Britain, as to the North-
west boundary, by a long series of able Ministers. From the year 1815, all our
Secretaries of State and Envoys have done little to advance an adjustment of our
claim on the Pacific. Yet both nations are alike pertinacious in the persuasion
of their rights ; for though, as I have said, they are little like to satisfy each other,
the negotiators must be very bad ones, indeed, if they do not perfectly convince
their respective nations. I have knowrn attorne}7s not to silence their adversaries
or persuade a judge, but I have never yet met the lawyer who did not convince
his client of the perfect justness of hi's claims.

What, then, need be said of it, if a popular confidence in our original claim to
Texas yet survives its long and its deliberate abandonment, in 1819, by statesmen
thoroughly versed in the question, and entitled to the public reliance? As En-
voys, or Secretaries, Monroe and Adams maintained our title ; but, after.negofia-
tion, Monroe, Adams, Calhoun, and Crawford, as responsible agents of the nation,
gave it up. Are their pleadings, as advocates, to be opposed to their own final
judgment as public men? I maintain that, as to mere authority, the decision of
our negotiators themselves, (men of high ability, unquestionable patriotism, ami
much better acquainted with the question than any of us,) is entitled to the high-
est weight ; and that to oppose to it a floating popular opinion of the day, though
ill-informed, guided by an ex parte argument only, and now sunk into a mere
tradition of what was at first but vague, would be utterly unworthy of the good
sense of our people, and still more unworthy of those setting up, as statesmen
and civruans, wisely to guide the people's judgment.

The public, wise as it is when it chooses to be so, highly competent as all
confess it, to decide, when it has once canvassed things without passion, is
somewhat given to be impulsive in its judgments, and not a little prone to loofe

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>«i the purpose, or fancy of tho day as having always subsisted. Florida, now
long since obtained, has ceastd, of course, (o serve an important object. Yet
•ffiftft was once the darling aim of our great national organ of acquisitiveness ',
Jiafxui which the idea once sat rnthrurnd, as the chief scope of all policy.
$£ven before the sudden and fortunate acquisition of Louisiana, we had began
'to covet the land of flowers quite as warmly and with nearly as many visionary
actions, as we now long for the land of fruits. When we had once grown
musters of Louisiana, we proceeded, in 1810, to help ourselves to a«very pretty
slice of Florida, which we had expressly, in 1805, recognized to be Spain's, by
•«n oiler to purchase it, unaccompanied with the smallest assertion of any title
<on our part. In 1818, by a still bolder stroke of that sort of diplomacy, which
«eluldies what it wants, when it can take it, we may be said to have struck at
mU jhc rest of the Peninsula. It was, in a word, from 1803 to 1819, the lead-
ing object of our territorial cupidity. To bar out, by its possession, all foreign
access within our shores: to close the door against foreign emissaries all edged
•Bestir up to war the formidable Indian tribes that lay in easy communication
w&h it; to round out our realm, and abolish its interruption at so dangerous a

r'nt ; to exclude smuggling, that transmitted and customary pretence set up
every acquisition or encroachment, and now renewed even by the very
;fsariy who can least be accused of any violent zeal for the preservation of our
vemenue laws — these, and the grasping a strong maritime position, the fortress
*$® «s of the entire West India trade, and the sea-pass of all our great and rich
jowng empire, about to spring up on the Mississippi, were, in that day, both to
«BW statesmen and to the popular mind, the imperative motives for making it
, at almost any cost. To Texas, on the other hand, no eye of desire had
been turned. JNone of the transcendent advantages which it now offers,
of the frightful dangers which now glare upon us from every part of its
fiad then visioned themselves to ihe prophetic glance of the Secretary of
e,even during a four years continuous negotiation, (our second on the sub-
.jact,) and even though, during three fouiths of that contest, he had been a
^aamberof the cabinet which conducted it. Now, whatever may be said of any
*aj2jei- inducements of an airy sort, such as the imagination of a poetic and fanciful
^cliticJan can always easily call up, nay, and turn, with the assistance of anony-
mrnks letters, (of which the present occasion has furnished an abundant crop,)
Mk speculations into certainties the most positive and alarming — it is easy to
sea, that all the physical and all the permanent political benefits that would
•accrue to us from reducing Texas to possession, were the same as now, and
jmt as visible to the discerning eyes of great and skillful public men. The
*f*i«stion of right they surely much more thoroughly understood, than we un-
derstand it now ; for 1 need scarcely say, that it has long ago passed out of the
.pibiic mind. Mr. Monroevthe successful negotiator of the purchase of Loui-
siaana, subsequently our special minister at Madrid in this very matter — the
''Secretary of State, who, in 1815, re-opened the conferences with Don Onis, con-
ducted them above a year, arid when he rose to the Presidency, must be sup-
posed to have guided with particular care a great question like this, with which
!*e was every way so identified — must surely have understood our rights, arid
w«s little likely to betray them. Had he been false, however, two other South-
em politicians of the first magnitude were there to watch him, and one of these,
-at least, was surely a man not to be hoodwinked as to what was passing imme-
diately beneath his nose, when his vast perspicacity stretches across the ocean
itself, and pierces the secrets of cabinets 3,000 miles away.

j*By u. singular fatality, amongst the leading politicians in Mr. Monroe's cabi- \
«et, "it was a Northern member, (as sums now admitted,) who came last into the
^mender of our claim on Texas. By a second fatality, not less singular, and

adding to its singularity a shocking injustice, it is upon this very opponent ol
the surrender that, with a strange transfer of parts and a strange anachiowbsB
of feelings not yet awakened in him towards the South by its treatment of bkav
the blame of that measure has been thrown, with the addition of the most igno-
minious, and most manifestly unfounded charges besides; and it has beeo
attempted so to be thrown, for the benefit of this project, and of a leader, wb.o
himself, it Southern interests had any foul play in this matter, must be held fee*
have been much less their guardian — much more their betrayer, than B&K.
Adams.

It will have been seen, that I consider it perfectly clear that there was no be*-
trayal in the case, and that in the past, there was any thing but guilt in what
was done. It is plain that, besides doing all he could to secure the great imdfc
real object of the cabinet, (the acquisition of Florida,) the Secretary of Stale
fought to the last, as became the most pertinacious man of his day, to obtain
what the other members of the Administration had consented to yield all claim
upon, namely, Texas. Let me here say more explicitly, that the survey of all
these negotiations — that of Paris for Louisiana in 1803 — that of Madrid fot
Florida and Texas in 1805 — and that of Washington for the same objects is
1815, and 18L9, has left on my mind only the thorough persuasion, that they who
conducted the business on our part, knew, could not help knowing, how utterly
untenable was our claim beyond Louisiana, as we had received and now held
it from the French ; and that they employed it thus perseveringly, with feat
the expectation of accomplishing the real aim, the acquisition of Florida, at a,
cheaper rate, by thus harrassing about another territory, a power long in a prcs^
carious state at home, already widely threatened as to her possessions on this
continent, and to whom we ourselves had just given a humiliating* lessoe of the
little safely with which she could hold lands bordering upon our own. I know
that it maybe said, and especially by the advocates now of proceedings -the.-
most utterly faithless, that I am here attributing to our negotiations a very cfe
graceful, that is, a very immoral conduct. I have only to say, that such things
lie entirely within the permitted practices of diplomacy ; which is everywhere,
except as to deliberate fraud upon our adversary, or breach of faith whem
pledged, but little more than a game of skilful pretences. Every thing heie
warrants the belief that these were the resort in this instance. They have ra«fc
a fate which often attends all insincerity, individual or national. The efforts
made to impress upon Spain our earnestness and the solidity of our claim,, had^..
in the manner I have already pointed out, the hap to convince our own peoptey
and thus to leave, even down to the present day, a strong persuasion that Texa%
of which France had never been in possession, against which she had always
allowed her claim to slumber, and which she had, when applied to in 1805, di-
rectly refused to say was included in her cession to us, had been yielded upbgr
the treaty of 1819.

Let me appeal to one final and decisive fact, brought to view, on the Spaitts&:-
part, in the contest. Don Onis establishes that, in the year 1803, our Govern-
ment, then pressing Spain for the purchase of Florida, made to that country,
through our Minister at Madrid, the offer of a regular guaranty of all her pos-
sessions west of the Mississippi, if she would agree to sell us what lay on th«K
-side. This important instrument may be found in vol. 4, page 512, of Anoeni-
can State papers, by Lowrie and Franklin. Mr. Charles Pinckney, in his m>t^
of the 7th February, 1803, to Don Pedro Cevalles, says :

"To obtain this, they have authorized me to say, that, should His Majesty be now in-
clined to sell to the United States his possessions east of the Mississippi, or betweea t&ar
and the river Mobile, agreeably to the propositions enclosed, the United States'"

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lo His Majesty, and I do now make, in their name, the important offer of guarantying to
Jjiffl and his successors, his dominions beyond the Mississippi."

PROPOSITIONS ENCLOSED.

"1st. The United States will purchase the possessions of His Catholic Majesty on the
cast side of the river Mississippi, for which they will pay dollars.

"2d. They will purchase these possessions, for which they will pay dollars; and,

moreover, guaranty to His Majesty, and his successors, his possessions beyond the Mississippi.

"3d. They will purchase the country between the rivers Mississippi and Mobile, belong-
ing to His Catholic Majesty, and also places of deposite near the mouths of the other navi-
gable rivers passing from their territory through either of the Floridas, for which they will
pay dollars, or enter into other obligations which may be thought equivalent to the ac-
quisition.

"4th. If neither of these proposiiionscan be acceeded to, they will then purchase certain
tracts of country on the banks of the Mississippi, and the other rivers passing from their ter-

riiofy into that of His Catholic Majesty, for which they will pay dollars, or enter into

other obligations, which may be thought equivalent lo the acquisition."

I need hardly point to the weightiness, in the present question, of this " irnpor-
laut offer." It was made, be it remarked, after the French had acquired Louis-
iana, but before yet our design to purchase of France had been started. Our
Government had been aware of this cession since March, 1801, but never knew
lire precise terms, nor extent of the transfer, until a few months before the pre-
sentation of this important offer. James Madison, in his letter of the 26th July,
1802, to Charles Pinckney, Minister to Spain, says :

^; The last information from Paris-Tenders it certain that the cession of Louisiana to France
jha» actually been concluded, and that the cession comprehends the two Floridas. In this
state of the business, it seems unnecessary to decide on the price which Spain might be led
to «x'pect for a cession of the Floridas, including New Orleans, to the United States, and the
snore so, as it would be of use for us previously to know the value she places on the guaranty
proposed in my letter to you of 25th of September last. For the present, the cession wished
by ihe United States must be an object of negotiation with the French Government. It will,
notwithstanding, continue to be proper for you to cultivate the good dispositions of Spain, in
relation to it, both as they may not be entirely disregarded by France, and as, in the turn of
events, Spain may possibly be extricated from her engagements with France, and again have
ili« disposal of the territories in question."

Now, here is a solemn and a voluntary pledge to Spain, by the Jefferson ad-
ministration, and through James Madison, in behalf of all the Spanish u domi-
nions" and " possessions " beyond the Mississippi. It is made after the estab-
lishment of those French rights to which we presently succeeded, and clearly,
therefore, as an engagement to unite with Spain in withstanding any attempt of
France in contravention of the subsisting possession of Texas, or oiher regions
beyond the Mississippi, by Spain. It is, in a word, a direct, and, at that time,
ao impartial recognition of the rights of Spain to those territories, and a proffered
covenant, on our part, not only that we will not disturb her there, but that we
will suffer no other nation to do it. I need hardly add, that, whether or not it
was accepted by the power to which it was made, is of no consequence, except
lo the active duties which by it we might have assumed. Passively, it pronounc-
ed the Spanish title unquestionable. It settled, or should have settled, forever,
33 to us, the question of right, unless, indeed, there should now be found, under
ihe new system of national ethics, as adapted to the annexation project, learned
doctors who are ready to argue that the offer thus soberly made implied no per-
suasion of what we 'undertook to affirm ; that our Government, the Jefferson ad- 1
minist ration, in no manner believed what it was willing to say, but only engaged ]
lo believe it, if Spain would do an entirely independent thing to oblige us !

I have thought necessary, Mr. President, to enter thus distinctly into the re- *
•fotation of these lingering notions of our former rights, though now abandoned \
not only by the irrevocable acts of honorable treaties, but our quiet possession 1

of Florida,

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of Florida, then the great object of Southern wishes, as Texas is now : Florida
yielded to us, as then declared, in part as an equivalent for the renunciation of
all future claims in the other quarter. To mo-t'men's minds, there is no argu-
ment so strong, in favor of a meditated act of injustice, as the convincing the
people that they themselves have been originally wronged out of the object they
seek. Upon this natural infirmity, this bad casuistry of the passions, the advo-
cates of this wicked, this faithless Treaty under discussion — the advocates of
which call it "re-annexation" — have endeavored to operate. They have
availed themselves of the old and groundless public notion spread by the causes
I have explained. In aid of these, they have appealed to a personal animosity
existing, in many quarters, against a single negotiator of the treaty of 1819.
though but a subordinate instrument in the master — though evidently guided
all the while by not only a superior power, but by an older and more familiar
agent in the question — though joined all the while with a strong Southern Ca-
binet— though then unaffected with any resentment towards the South — though
now well understood to have yielded reluctantly what a Southern President, a
Southern Attorney General, and two Southern Secretaries had conceded. Not
content with all this, they have trumped up, to finish by imposture the work of
awakened prejudice and detraction, a charge as infamous as it is unsupported,
of the suppression by the Secretary of State of capital parts of the negotiation,
and his treasonous arrangement to avoid obtaining all that we had ever pretend-
ed to claim. I need scarcely say to any one who has felt it his duty, as I have
done, to scrutinize these accusations, that the printed history of the negotiation,,
to which I have more than once referred, affords a chain of testimony that an-
nihilates every trace of these charges, even every possibility of their truth ; and
that not only do the new documents produced utterly fail to substantiate what
Mr. Ewing is said to have informed General Jackson of, but even, \vhen a little
sifted, themselves afford decisive proof against nearly, all that they claimed to
establish. Of these last things, I need speak no more than thus to characterize
them, especially when I have so clearly shown the legitimate grounds upoa
which the treaty was concluded, and the true state of our orio-inaF rights under
the cession of Louisiana from France. It is clear that we obtained at least as
much as we had any tolerable pretence to, and, in addition, at the inadequate
price of five millions, to be paid to our own citizens, our favorite object of that
day, the possession of Florida. And it was the more necessary that I should
endeavor to correct the erroneous opinion prevailing without on these matters,
because, even in this body, and among Senators averse to this wild Treaty, we
have heard the same opinions in regard to our original title to Texas as a part
of Louisiana.

I pass from this examination of the proper and organic power of our Govern-
ment over this matter by treat}^ as one involving every domestic and constitu
al question, and from the consideration of the main subterfuge by which is to be
avoided any impediment arising out of the national compact, iiself, to other ob-
jections as fatal to the form as those already glanced at, are to the substance of this
act. The instrument before us is styled a Treaty ; yet I cannot but look on it as des-
titute of all the essential characteristics of a great act of that sort, between nation
and nation. Is that Irish act, of union, which annihilated Erin's independent
legislation and her entire natipriality, a treaty? Or was it. only an act. of JQ.~
corporation, of political extinction? Was it a treaty when Russia, by ukase,
bade Poland cease to be? I freely admit, the writers upon national law re-
cognise as treaties exceedingly unequal engagements between Slates, arid even
such as reduce one of them to the veige of non-existence. There are, also, tem-
porary, conventions, miscalled treaties, which may be made with tie facto tyw
• merits, for the mere'' purpose of peaceful intercourse, to which a neutral nation

10

•<*may resort, Binder certain circumstances; but as these involve no absolute exer-
•eise of perfected sovereignty, they must take an inferior rank and name. A treaty,
in a word, supposes at least two parties ; and parties to such a thing they are not,
sinless both^are sovereign. Here there is but one such party. The other has
yet. to make good, against a power on which it but lately depended, still claiming
it as dependent, and with which we are bound not to interfere, its separate su-
premacy, the eminent domain over its soil and people. Between them we can-
not interfere without a faithless violation of treaty engagements. For this I have
foigh authority — no less than that of the Senator from South Carolina, (Mr. Mc-
DUFFIE.) In his message of 1836 to the South Carolina Legislature, he says:

44 If w« admit Texas into our Union while Mexico is still waging war against that province,
with a view to restablish her supremacy over it, we shall, by the very act itself, make our-
selves a party to the war. Nor can we take this step without incurring this heavy responsi-
feiEty, until Mexico herself shall recognise the independence of her revolted province."

Were both the parties, however, really sovereign, so as to be capable of the
'highest acts of nationality, (such as give no rights against them, to others,) there
Tire acis which, as between them, would not be treaties, because they put an end
£o the seperate existance of the one or the other. For a treaty must leave, as
well as find, two parties, in order that the obligation itself may continue. Under
the ideas of monarchical systems, which suppose that a people may be held in
fee simple, the sovereign may, by renunciation, or alienation, extinguish the
•sovereignty ; not so, however, under Republican principles. By these, a State,
•once free, cannot divest itself of its freedom, cannot extinguish its individuality
•as a people, and the act would be void, precisely for the same reason for which
w« hold that a freeman cannot, by contract, part with his liberty. Were Texas,
therefore, a State, sovereign and free, she could not by treaty reduce herself into
<®ar dependancy and territory, though I admit that she might unite with us by
another process.

•I have already shown, at the outset, in examining the powers of this Govern-
•fpent over a matter like this, that it has no power and could have no faculty to
incorporate with ours, of its own action, another people, or an external territory,
ft is equally clear that, could the sovereignty of Texas be extinguished, this
crculd only be done by the immediate act of her people itself, not of her public
foticUonaries constituted for another purpose. Nor would some former assent
*<*f her colleciive citizens, some vote of six or eight years since, such as is now
•.put in to stand for her will, be valid for the purpose, still less can it be yalid,
when the assent, then obtained, was to a thing totally different. The vote then
fca'ken was for her union to this confederacy as an equal member, not a depend-
ent territory ; for, as all know, this last evasion of the Constitution, this indi-
fection, had not then been thought of as within the reach of the treaty making
power. Thai blessed and bright invention of the strict const ructionists had not
yet sprung, Pall us like, from the brain of any Southern Jove.

A Ij-eaty then supposes not only two parties, but parties competent to what is
1 to he accomplished by it. If the object is a cession of any kind, the one party
miisl be qualified to grant, and the other to receive that object ; but since both
these conditions are wanting here, this is no treaty. Had we ourselves been
competent to such a transaction, beyond doubt a party, namely, Mexico, might
tzave'beei) found, with whom we could enter into it. To search so far was
•manifestly unnecessary, however ; since when no right can be taken, it is of
exceedingly little consequence whether any can be given or not. But since
in trea ins is greatly to be desiied, it was clearly best, that a party inca-
e of receiving should have to deal with one equally incapable of giving.
iiig the consummate prudrnne as well as. wisdom, of" tho Administration, I
no doubt that it gave, in its long and profound deliberations over this

matter, ffrei

11

ter, great weight to this last consideration. Not equality only is to be
in treaties, but simplicity ; ami certainly the course taken greatly simplifie(
business. For between our own incompetency to the thing and that of ®t?£
well chosen counter party, there is a wonderful conformity. If Texas be sove-
reign, the doctrine of some politicians is, that this Government is not — has- bill
a quasi sovereignty. Here, then are very pretty facilities to ihis State Ilia tits-
operation of clinching a State's sovereign rights to that which has none. What
becomes of the vanished supremacy? Does it flit to the moon, where the fast
wits of heroes, the over volatile virtue of dames, and whatever else is missmg
from earth, (poets say) is treasured np? Or does it lie dormant, like u bear m
his winter sleep, sucking his paws? Or is it bottled u p for an other general 10%
like South-side London Particular Madeira, to grow only the finer the longer it-
is kept under cork? But according to the same creed of State sovereignty,,
what are we buying, under this so called treaty? Are we purchasing of ao,
independent State, what onr Declaration of Indeperidancc declares to be in.de*
feasibly in aarery people, the rights of their self-government ? We surely are-
not deriving a bargain for the public do Main of Texas, well understood to b®
entirely alienated, perhaps twice over. Here I will take occasion to stale an irai^
portant fact, without stopping to characterize it ;;s evincing a purpose to produce
a false impression. I am utterly opposed, however, to the people of the Unite*!.
States being deceived by it. The tact to which I allude is this ; the negotintocs
of the Texas treaty on the part of Texas, Messrs. Van Zandt and Henderson^
in their note to John C. Calhoun, Secretary of State, of the 15th of Aprit, 1844,,
in reply to certain inquiries of Mr. Calhoun, say :

"Upon the subject of the public lands, the undersigned submit a summary statement,,
made from a lale report of the Commissioner of the General Land Office, to the President o£
Texas.

acres.

He estimates the aggregate at - - . - - 203,520,000

Lands appropriated 67,408,67$

Remainder unappropriated - - - - - 136 1 1 1 ,327.""

To this "late report" no date is given, although it was communicated toita-e
Senate with the treaty, as evidence of the quantity of laud we were to get, o»t
of which to pay the debts of Texas assumed by us. Now, sir, what will you
think of this statement, when informed of the fact, that this '•'•late report" was
made in 1841, since which time we have no account of lands sold or graftfetl
by Texas? The date uf the report appeais by the memoir accompanying tf*®
map of Texas, sent here by the President of the United Siates.

What, then, are we to get for the assumption in blank of all the public defeta
of Texas? For, as to the attempted specificaiion in the treaty, delusively putt
there as if they who drew it meant to limit or could limit our I abili.ies, nothing
can be more falacious. With or without thai specification, it is precisely the-
same thing : we are none the less liable for her previous coirracts. acknow-
ledged or repudiated. She becomes our femme covcrte and though we may
make with her before the bridal, or even at the alter, an understanding that \ve
are to discharge only a certain part of her debts, (pay her milliner only, for io- \
stance, and let her grocer, or heir butcher go whistle for his money,) these
honest tradesmen may be upon us with a capias next morning, before yet its
blush has met the. has! ifu I bride's, or we have given her timid charms the first
salutation of the day. What then, can we be pretended to be buying, or other-
wise getting, but her sovereignty? And now, according to the very principle
in chief of those who are urging1 us to the acquisition, what is this worth, a* a
vendible commodity ? Many of these very people say, that we can l»k<
is;n right over her, except just so long as sho pleases. A part of t

12

3iold a Dorrite self-emancipation to be always legitimate ; another part hold that
secession is never to be denied ; and another portion claim peaceful nullification
as " the rightful remedy," to which a State may always resort when she lists.
What should hinder Texas, as soon as we have paid her debts, from "calcula-
ting the value of the Union ?" If. now so accessable to the offers of England,
as the friends of this treaty pretend, may she not be quite as much so then,
when suffering (as the Hon. Senator from South Carolina assures us that every
body in the South suffers) under " a worse than colonial vassalage," " the in-
tolerable oppression of the tariff?" Methinks there are some folks wonderfully
fond of "enormous burdens," and some who are strangely disposed to entice
others into wretchedness, no doubt upon the old principle, " that misery loves
company." But can we be at all sure that this singular Southern application
of that renowned, democratic rule, called the "greatest happiness principle,"
will continue? Afier having drawn the Texans into a share in the inestimable
advantages of being one of us, are they not very likely, as soon as they shall be
of the household, to (ell them some rather awful family secrets, as^for instance,
under what " a grinding tyranny" we live, and how much better off they, the
poor folks of the lone star would be under the English dominion, dependant
on their CJ natural market."

It must be confessed that some Southern gentleman are a good deal given, in
the snug little circle here, and in that of the other House, or in fireside parties
of a few thousands at home, to talking just in this way. We ourselves are
quite used to all this sort of thing. We know the patriotism and loyalty of their
true sentiments, and that all this is but a joke. But when the Texas folks,
already with so many alarming affinities to England, come here, will not they who
know no better, take all this for earnest, and think this a very bad business that
they have got into, and this coveted blessing of annexation rather a sorry boon 9
It strikes me so, Mr. President, and that the probabilities of their long retaining
any very violent attachment to this Union, beyond the lapse of the mere politi-
cal honey-moon, are by no means strong, especially under the indoctrination of
the teachers to whom I have just referred. It cannot be said that it was a love
of freedom that drove them from home; for that they had already, so that, as
to it, they could gain nothing, and might loose everything. A part of them
notoriously left us to become the denizens of a foieign land, strange to their
tongue, alien to their religion, and that of their fathers, utterly uncertain in alt
its public destinies, and offering nothing to bind to it the affections of one bred
in our insiitutions, except the hope of overturning the very government to
which they pledged themselves, when they sought its protection, and received
its bounty. The only serious allegation of the^ Texans was, that Mexico had
exchanged her Federative organization for a centralized one, which was disa-
greeable to Texas, or rather feigned to be so ; for I think it clear that, had the
fact been reversed, Texas would have picked the same quarrel, alledging other
and opposite reasons. Not freedom, then was their aim, not theoretical rights ;
not liberty of conscience, for which they had never siipulated, and in which
they had all they could expect, toleration for the very small degree of religion
about which they had ever troubled themselves. The real object, as all know
who watched the purposes of this movement, was a totally different one.
Mexico had given them liberally large gifts of fertile lands, highly fit for the
richest productions of slave labor ; but c*s the laws of Mexico did not permit
slavery, those lands were comparitively valueless. The insurrection, then,
putting out of view the personal ambition of those who were in hope its lead-
ers had but two real aims, and both these land jobbing one?, to throw off the
Mexican laws, in order that slave property might be introduced; and with a
wide market for sugar and cotton lands thus obtained, to seize upon a great

13

public domain, and parcel it out among ihe small American population, so as
to enrich every man of them, and give their leaders even princely possessions.
It is futile to talk of Texan liberty as having any cause, any impulse but this,,,
whaiever show of patriotism, and devotion to the cause of self-government may
have been made. It is equally futile to pretend that, whatever dishonest en-
couragement to the design, the troubles, or the weakness or wickedness of
Mexico afforded, the attempt itself could ever have been thought of by a body
of population not now 200,000, and then far less, against an empire of fully
eight millions, unless under a thorough persuasion, justified by every part of
the event, that our people, breaking loose as individuals from every just obliga-
tion as a nation, would pour down to the war, afford arms, supplies,"every thing,
and in reality, as it has proved, do most of the paying, and all the fighting.
Such was the fact. In the first glare of that enthusiasm which among us awakes
so easily to any cause that will take the style of "freedom," "Constitution,"
"self government," our hardy, brave, confiding, and generous men of the West
made a wide rush to the war, under the cry, believed by them, of liberty.
Among this number, Mr. President, I had myself many friends, and relatives,
whose devotion to freedom, noble nature, and daring spirit induced them in a
cause supposed honorable, to hazard every thing ; and but too many of them
fertilized the battle-fields of Texas with their life blood. By such. Mexico was
beaten, and borne back, Texas seemed won, and its independence, for the time,
achieved.

So plain and manifest had been, in that contest, our dereliction of national
duty as a neutral, that after the seeming completion of its success, our Govern-
ment, though invited by Texas, did not venture to profit by it, dreading too
much the imputed infamy over the civilized world, of so foul a transaction.
Such was the ground taken by the Senator from Pennsylvania, (Mr. Bu-
CHANjVAN,) when he voted against recognizing even the independence of Texas
in 1837. So the new Republic of the moment was left to confirm, if it could,
by those things which, even much more than valour in the field make or mar
a nation, all that arms appeared to have won.

From almost that moment, the cause and the hopes of Texas have gone
backwards. Her councils have failed to shape out for her anything secure;
noihing respectable abroad, nothing worthy at home, has attended her efforts to
prepare for the contest never relinquished on the part of Mexic0, and certain to
be pushed again as soon as that power was disembarrassed of still closer conflicts
with France, and afterwards with Yucat?n. Gradually, a complete inefficiency
of every thing belonging to a government, a destitution of all resources, a ruin
of all the public character which might have supplied their place, a general loss
of all confidence or sympathy, and finally the visible signs of a total incapacity
to be a nation, of an established imbicility and anarchy, have gathered over her
fortunes. This is in effect avowed by the very authors and defenders of the
treaty. In the midst of her enemies general inactivity, she has contrived to
exhaust all her means of defence; and, therefore, it is said needs our protection.
She has no army ; her navy has been sold at auction. She is without revenue
for even her ordinary expenditures, and her credit is utterly gone. In this state
of collapse urged as one of the grounds for this treaty, with every symptom of
political dissolution upon her, the rattles in her throat, and the last ligidily set-
tling over her members, after she has been plied with divers stimulants of invi-
tation, of threats and wheedling, fomented with certain warm flannels in the
shape of perhaps more than one sort of treaty, the cordial of an army poured
down her throat, and the smelling bottle of a fleet clapped to her nose, a Presi-
dential nurse, and a diplomatic doctor come to us, and tell us, that she is at
death's door — that she has n<f, even hud a finger ache — that, however, she is very

14

poorly — that, again, she is in singulaily fine health and spirits — but that she is
Very bad, and ihe undertaker may be sent for — lhat it is nothing but the me-
grims, produced by certain confabulations with one Mr. Andrews, who has put
tier in great bodily fear, by offering to buy all her negroes, if some body will
lend him the money, and of whom her apprehensions have become, very natu-
rally, almost un control able upon his being compelled, for fear of lynching, to run
away ! All this, certified by any quantity of anonymous letters, they still tell
us, insisting that Texas is perfectly independent, but on the immediate verge of
falling a prey to the first coiner; that she is entirely at peace with every body,
ttnd especially with Mexico, but yet is in the most imminent petil of being over-
whelmed, no body can say precisely how, or by whom ; lhat there has been no
war between her and Mexico for full eight years, though, to be sure, we did last
year mediate for an armistice between them, and though the President's last
'annual message, drawn up since this treaty was set on foot, declared that there
'was war between them, and that war carried on with a shocking inhumanity,
•"Such are the apologies and pretences for this precipitate treaty, made without
authority, and without consulting the American people. Let me return, how-
ever, from my history to my argument, and show a lite further, that, for still
Bother reasons, this thing before us is in no sort a treaty. A treaty supposes, if
'not faith towards the party with whom you are dealing, at least faith towards
yourselves. Here there is none on either side. The treaty will in no sort effect
what it expresses. It in no manner expresses what it will effect ; and this was
perfectly well understood between those who drew it; so that it is a fraud upon*
us, by Texas, to which this Administration are parties.

A treaty is surely not such which conveys not its expressed object, but one
directly opposite. Here we stipulate for a sovereignty, and a territory: we get!
only a war. We bargain for possession, and we have to fight for it, and that
under dishonor for the violation of treaties. If it be a purchase, it is of that
which cannot be delivered, on one side, and cannot be taken on the other by
treaty. If it is a conveyance, it is, as to the sovereignty of what cannot be
alineated, and, as to the territory, partly of what is in disputed possession, and
partly of what never was in possession of Texas, but adversely held and occu-
pied by Mexico. For the professed objects, which we are thus not to get, we
are to give in money, a consideration much larger than appears, and all our na-
tional honer besides. To lighten it, pretended assets, long ago dissipated, are
set for.h; but, as 1 have said, nothing is delivered to us but a quarrel upon dis-
liohorable terms. We get no title but to a war. If this was what we wanted,
why the formality of a treaty, and the expense of a purchase ? Surely we could
f)ave got a fight somewhere for nothing. Why then pay down in advance some
fifteen or twenty millions for one? Why not settle the Oregon question in thaS
way, where we have a right disputed, and an adversary worthy our prowess?

Again, a treaty is something made by a treaty making power; but the actsr
Vhich, as treaties, it has no right to do, are, when done, no treaties at all. The
President and Senate have no right to make war; they cannot, therefore, right-
fully enter into a treaty, the direct effect of which is war, and gives to another
nation a right of war against us, or assumes a war pending. They surely cannot
do lhat, which is an aggression upon another nation, as well as an usurpation
'Upon our own Constitution. It is manifest that, pending a war between Texas
and Mexico, a so called treaty, by which the former alienated to us all her pos-
sessions, and her sovereignty, (the entire subject of the war.) would of course be
nothing but a direct assumption of the war, a substitution of ourselves forTexa*.
True, we may have stipulated for possession only ; but while that possession is a
matter of war, and can only arise out of the fortunate issue of that war — war,
though not stipulated, is the direct and principal effect, and possession unly con-

15

tingent and subsidiary. Texas cannot deliver us possession, but only the war
•upon the event,,of which that possession depends; so that the misnamed treaty
of annexation or incorporation is not such, but war under another name, faith-
lessly and unconstitutionally made, [t is manifest that such would be the object
on the part of Texas, and such alone the expectation on our part.

If Texas be not already in the condition I have described ; if she be not ort
the very eve of political extinction ; if possessed of an independance in any sort
teal enough, (and high and clear it should be, that our honor may be free of all
suspicion,) to justify this step on our part, why should she thus yield up her.
seperate, her individual being, as a people, and become not a State, but a depend-
ant territory ? Nations never do this voluntarily. They recoil as instinctively
from such foifeiture of their own identity, as the soul of each man in them
shrinks from the thought of annihilation, preferring, almost, deliberately to en-
counter any chances of eternal pain, rather than to perish, to be swallowed up
and lost in nothingness. Nothing is stronger than this principle or feeling, im-
planted by nature herself in the hearts of every people as soon as formed. In. a
nation, it is the very life, (he vital fire that must have warmed it up into thought
and motion, and made it a political existence. If Texas never had this, she never
has been a nation free and independent. She has been but a poor automaton,
dressed up, perhaps imposingly enough, in the semblance of one, and like that
haughty Turk, whom most of us have seen playing an exceedingly good game
of chess, apparently hard to beat, but really an empty image all the while, moved
by unseen springs, guided by some operator not far off, who &oks on with a most
disinterested aspect, and has not the slightest apparent connexion with the game.
If Texas was free, independent, the mistress of not only her, own soil, but of
Mexican regions in addition, which no man of hers had ever trod except ia
anklets of iron ; if she laughs at Spanish arms, and has no greater danger to fear,
in any other quarter, than Mr. Andrews, and his shadowy bands; if especially,
she be so strong that it was necessary for us to turn suppliants and intriguers for
a connexion with her ; if, I say, she be all this, why seek to lay down her national
existence, like a heavy burden to be borne no longer? Why foifeit her untiam-
melled liberty, her proud self-reliance, her guardianship of her own interests,
surely now quite hostile to our own, according to the very gentlemen who here
urge this union? With what, at worst, is she threatened?" On the one side, I
see nothing more awful than Mr. Andrews, and on the other nothing more for*
midable than a free trade treaty with England. Are these the things that unman
the Southern chivalry, and make the heroes of San Jacinto quake? Why, as (a
abolition, any alarm which Texas feels, must surely be at the prospective failure
of profits, rather than the danger of the loss of any thing she now has; for it
seems that there are, in all, hut 25,000 slaves in Texas, or about one eighth of
the entire population she claims. Now, where but one man in seven owns a
slave, the popular dread of abolition, extending only to one seventh of the whites,
cannot be very engrossing. Besides, I can see no evidences of any such terror*
In spite of all the contagious alarms, bred in our Slate Depaitment, her people
are calm, her statesmen self- possessed. Her very diplomatists have failed to take
the hint, to comprehend the nods and winks of our cabinet, to copy its simulated
trepidation, to echo the dolorous language of its apprehensions. In short, they
never advert to it at all ; and even our complaisant minister, Mr. Murphy, thougb-
of a soul in which all sons of tornados of the feelings are easily produced, has,
on this mailer, so far bridled "the whirlwind of hi« emotions," as not to attribute
to Texas the slightest share in tliis dread. Yet ii is ihere that these dire plans
are hatching, and over her that. the*e dangers impend ; dangers which she either
does net see, or does not fear; visible and frightful only to those who are two
thousand miles off!

16

The trulh is, this whole business is a fraud, a plan, wiih which John Tyler
intends, if he can, to bamboozle (he American people in the approaching Presi-
dential election. Sir, names lower than befit things often presented in this body,
contemptuous terms rarely ever applicable to matters of such £rave consequence,
can alone convey in their truth these miserable pretences. They are hardly de-
scribable but as trumpery and humbug. The dialect, not of affairs of Slate, but
of ihe gaming table or race course, can alone body them forth in their turpitude,
their nefariousness. The conspirators who conceived them could not well have
talked of them, but as the adepts in Hoyle and the si ud book speak of the plans
by which pocket books are to be emptied, or purses taken. The metaphors and
the vocabulary of such people could alone illustrate or elucidate the purposes to
foe accomplished, or the means to be employed. Without even the assistance of
what we hear, we know how the chief player of this despicable game must have
told his confederates of his expectations. Their common organ, the sporting
calender here of this fraternity, has talked of the thing all the while much in that
jockey phrase which was appropriate to it. From it we could collect the culling,
the shuffling, the stocking of the pack that was going on. Through it, we hav.e
learnt how the President held back this card of annexation as an ace of (rumps,
that was, in the nick of the play, to give him the game, and sweep the board.
At times, however, (as the figures of speech of the Government paper are often
Hot a little mixed, and glide into the loftier style of the camp and the field of
glory,) this trump c^rd became a bomb that was suddenly (o fall from the skies
among the forces or one adversary, or a mine (hat was to blow the assailing legions
of another into the sky. Now, it was to come down upon Mr. Van Bnren's
head, and. now, to burst beneath Mr. Clay's feet, knocking one into the earth,
and ihe other into the air. Presently, again, relapsing into more pacific phrase,
the bomb or (he mine became a high mettled steed, bestriding which the Presi-
dent was to distance in the race of popularity all such mere lackeys as were rode
by others. There stood, booted and spurred, in blue jacket, red cap, and yellow
breeches, the Executive, John Jones holding his bottle, attendan: Secretaries his
whip and stirrup, the Postmaster General his bridle; while the trainer in-chief
(he of the State Department,) stood prepared (o lift him inio the- saddle. Mean-
time, as the Baltimore Convention drew nigh, abandoning their own used up
cavalry, about him came the veteran Indian slayer of the West, his military rival
of (he Lakes, and others of high pretensions. All looked wiih longing eyes at
his saddle. All would have gladly leapt info it, but for John Jones and the
stable boys> who loudly announced that jusiice demanded that the owner alone
of this purse-taker should straddle him; when lo ! the convention appears wiih
a candidate of their own. They thrust by trainer and all, scat Polk in the saddle,
slap the horse on the rump to start him, and bid him go ! And while he hob-
bles off, the dismounted Executive stands aghast. The Secretaries are thunder
struck; while John and the stable boys protest, in vain, that it is the President's
horse, that (here is cheating going on, that this is too bad.

But (o return to the other great cause of fright, which has so alarmed the Sena-
tor from Pennsylvania, (Mr. BUCHANAN,) a? to make him overleap his opinions
as expressed in 1837, a treaty with England that shrill give her all the trade of
Texas. It is difficult to conceive why the possibility of this should produce any
panic. As in the other case, I see no manifestations of the presence of such a
peril to (he minds of those whom it ought chiefly to affect. Still less can I
imagine why those should impute it to them, or should endeavor to fling them
into a iremor about it, who themselves meditate or desire just about the same
arrangements with Britain, as the aim of all rational policy, the requisition uf
all constitutional right.

Texas has no manufactures, no mechanic arts, no moneyed capital to set (hem

17

on foot, no skill formed to them, no body of working population dependant on
them for employment. She is, even for beyond any of our Southern States, a
producer of raw material alone. If, then, to a people like us, of most mixed
occupations, of climates and soils compelling them, where the intimate division
abor is already in existence, where the povyer of supplying ourselves with
almost everything has grown up, vicing, in short, with Europe in°no small part of
le useful arts, and possessing a vast and rapidly swelling internal trade, in com-
parison with which our foreign shrinks into insignificance: if, I say, to a people
'toiled, free trade with Britain be so great a good, what is there in it which
should so horribly frighten Texas? If, nevertheless, it is her pleasure, and that
her free trade friends, to be so excessively discomposed, I think only a few-
plain considerations are needed to set them at their ease. England, it well ap-
pears, is not willing to contiact towards Texas any responsibilities, either politi-
cal or pecuniary. Of that the documents presented to us to prove these designs
fford proof enough; and though these papers are far from being such as are°fit
' be relied on for the affirmative question, where they sustain the negative, surely
they «i ust be accepted. Now, is it in the smallest degree likely that this great,
far-seeing power, the most eminently practical, the least visionary that the world
ever saw, can expect to reduce an American and an Anglo-Saxon republic to
vassalage, by means of a commercial treaty? How long, if it imposed any
terms oppressive of Texas for the benefit of E-igland, could it be expected to
last? She does not trust the uncertain faith of Texas now, when she is weak,
will it be better when she has started up into the vigor of wealth, success, and
populousness, all certain to come about by the means lent, by the, security and
confidence bestowed? Her colonies on our continent, already infected with
radicalism, and endangered by the democracy propagated from our shores,
threaten every day to foil off from h-r, are a burden rather than a benefit, and
cost her much more than they come to. National pride alone induces her to
retain them. Is she likely, then, to burn her fingers with new dependuncies,
planted by us, and reeking with more than Republicanism, more than Democracy,
with repudiation ? Can she trust men filled with so many antipathies to her in-
stitutions,^- is it possible that any thing short of the last public distress can have
induced Texas to cherish, in any seriousness, the idea of coming under England's
monarchical rule? Sad as, in England, is the opinion, unjustly, but somewhat
naturally, entertained of even the best of us, in what light, I pray you, must she
look upon people considered by her the winnowings,"which the fan of the law
has blown from our land?

But consider the broad eye of English policy is supposed to see everything.
Is it probable, then, if she values her West India possessions, that she will ven-
ture to place in such domestic connexion with them, a source from which will at
once gush into them every idea most pernicious, most fatal to her power there?
I can imagine no step more certain soeedily to snatch from her all that the Gulf
washes, or the waters of the Caribbean sea, instead of giving her any more foot-
hold on the mainland. These being the views she must take, as to the question
of her power merely, what will be those in which she must see the thing, as a
question of her trade :? The advantages to be got, and those to be lost are here,
it seems to me, easily measured — it is enough to say, that Texas presents to
English industry, the mart of not above 200,000 inhabitants, in order to dissipate
all this part of the Texas theory forever. Will England quarrel with the com-
merce of this country for that market, or such a market? If she makes a treaty
with it, bestowing peculiar privileges, what becomes of all her conventions with
Vis, stipulating admission to our productions on the same terms granted to any
other ? Has she not like arrangements with every body else ? How, then, will this

18

idea of her extending to the little people of Texas peculiar privileges, hold water
for one moment ?

1 have thus surveyed, Mr. President, the main questions of our competency to

acquire Texas, in the manner proposed— of her thus to dispose of herself— and of

the form as to either in which the thing is to be done; together with the most

mediate points arising incidentally to these. I have shown that our former

right to Texas is an error, and how that error arose ; that a long series of national

acts, originally correct, and irreversible as long as we attempt to preserve the

slightest character as a people, utterly forbids us to recur to that matter, except as

an historical one ; that Texas can make us no title to herself, not being mistress

f any thing but a war, and a debt; and that these, and not Texas, are all we

shall take under this treaty, except as much confusion and uproar at home as

ishonor abroad. Let me now come directly to what the treaty itself sets forth,

and what the accompanying pieces that form what we are allowed to know of its

history, substantiate or betray.

By its title, it is a treaty for the annexation, not the union, of the Republic of
1 exas to that of the United States. Now, what was to hinder it from beinj? an
annexation of the United States to Texas? Constitutionally, (he one is as pos-
sible as the other, inasmuch as the people have not been consulted about either
ir her sovereignty, (which is alleclged by the fact of our entering into the act
L her) can be thus extinguished, so, of course can be ours ; for a State can
but be sovereign. In the eye of right, its size can make no difference ; and as
we, not 1 exas, were the solicitors for the amalgamation, 1 hold that it is rather we
that should have been annexed than Texas. I need hardly repeat that as, in a
lepublican government, the sovereignty is in the body of those who are citizens,
their mere representatives exercising for them only a momentary and a dele-
gated power; nothing but the collective will oHbat people, deliberately given
d distinctly ascertained, could extinguish or aliena'e that sovereignty. To the
reason given some time back, I may add another: that it must be°confessed that
a people is always such when it chooses to be— has always the rio-ht of beino-
governed as it likes. It is clear, therefore, that it cannot have conveyed away
what at its pleasure it has again. But here impossibility lies upon impossibility •
I exas could not give, we could not take her sovereignty by means of a treaty
and if her people, eight years ago, willed to unite her to us, that would not au-
>nze the present act, for two overwhelming reasons: first, because a past act
an act of last year only, an act of another occasion, is not valid for any such
mpose; and, secondly, because that act authorized a totally different thing
namely her union with us, as a Slate, not her annexation as a rr.ere territory,
rely the high State rights doctrinaries who aim at this thing, intent in a most
xtraordmary manner on their present object only, utterly overlook consequences
not only fatal to their own favorite opinions, but really most formidable to the
ure safety of all government upon our present plans, with our intended limita-
ns. * or surely a foreign State can claim nothing at the hands of this Govern-
M or Confederation, to which, as a benefit, our own would not be much better
l least equally, entitled. Suppose, then, one of our own States should, for
e reason or other, desire to give up her sovereignty, like Texas, for a price?
suppose Pennsylvania, with the honorable purpose of paying her debts, should
i, we ^assuming them ? Or suppose, again, what I fear is much less probable,
me Slate of Mississippi were to make the same proffer ? Could this Govern-
buy ihem all out? Why not? What, should hinder it from lending them
»«7 as nil usurer does to young spendthrifts, taking mortgage ufier mort-
e, 1111,1! finally, eating them up with interest, it forecloses upon them, and
s them in ? If ij.can open a shaving shop for foreign sovereignties, surely itv

19

can oblige a brother. If it can speculate in the foreign article, surely it can deal
in the domestic.

The preamble proceeds to set forth lhaf (he treaty has been concluded in con-
formity wiih the almost unanimous vote of Texas at (he adoption of her Consti-
tution, (1836,) and her present equally unanimous wish. Now, I have already
shown thai, at best, the first fact was of no import; that, further, it was untrue;
and it is notorious that the second assertion is a mere assumption ; about as valid,
for a high and authentic purpose like this, as it would be for an election of our
Chief Magistrate under the forms of the Constitution, to say that John Tyler is
elected, because John Jones, and two princely youths asseverate, all the while,
that he is the people's undivided choice. But again, all this, as a statement of
the motives of the treaty is false, because even to Texas the motives of to day,
are not those of 1836, when her purpose was entirely different ; while the pre-
tences now set up on our part, had then never been imagined even.

As if the mere reiteration of what, is false could make it true, the 1st article of
the treaty goes on to reaffirn all these things, as thus; {: The Republic of Texas,
acting in conformity with the wishes of the people, and of every department of
its government, cedes to (he Untied Stales all its sovereignties, to be held by them
in fall and proper sovereignty." As here, however, with a growing confidence
in itself, assertion takes a fuller swing, let us see precisely what this comes (o.
The " Republic of Texas," as thus conveyed to us, includes all between our
borders and the Rio Grande. These limits embrace Mexican provinces, of which
the Senator from Missouri has given a skilfull and accurate account, with his well
known and accustomed ability. According to (he memoir embraced in the offi-
cial documents of the treaty, the)'' contain a population of probably some 300,000
souls, in addition to that of Texas proper. The latter is estimated at from 100,-
000 to 200.000; but at the former number by (heir own envoy, G neral Hunt,
in 183T. Now, putting aside, as lost in this bolder stretch of false asseveration,
the plain fact, that Texas herself has not assented to such a treaty, what, have we
here ? Has Tamaulipas, or Coahuila,or Chiahuahua, or me Eutaw Band, been
consulted? As for New Mexico, her accession to the surrender must be pre-
sumed to have been signified to that admirable combination of war, traffic, and
diplomacy, (he Sarila Fee expedition ; for that is well known to be the latest
consultation held with that part of the Republic. I should noi have suspected,
from Mr. Kendall's account, that such was precisely the result of the colloquies
with that gentle republican, Governor Armijo. Here, (hen, it strikes me, must
be said to be from three fifths (o three fourths of the " Republic," as we get it,
who cannot e,ven be pretended to have been even consulted as to this cession ;
for these are provinces that have never taken any voice in the affairs of Texas,
for the very simple reason, (hat neither voluntarily nor by compulsion did they
ever submit to her sway, or join in her institutions.

Then follows a long inventory of many airy public chatties, which we shall no
doubt take, when we find them. They sound very like the enumeration of
weapons in an indictment for assault and battery, where, from the abundant
caution of the law, almost every thing — as slicks, stones, slaves, and other imple-
ments of harm, is declared to have been employed, and in fact every tiling with
which it is possible to beat a man. "All public lots and squares, vacant lands,
mines, minerals, salt lakes and springs, public edifices, fortifications, barracks,
ports and haibois, navy and navy yards, docks, magazines, arms, armaments, and
accoutrements, archives and public documents, public funds, debls, tax^s and
dues unpaid at (he time of the exchange of the ratifications of this treaty." Alt
this looks a great deal more like what a nation should and might have, than any
thing that Texas posseses. There are said to he marriage contracts, in which the
bride, though as poor as the beggar's- maid that King Caphitua loved and dressed

20

off in borrowed clothes, has castles, hunting-lodges, villas and hotels, with a long
rent-roll, all in imaginary lands and visionary cities only. It is fit (hat the bride
and (he nation should he supposed to have these things, whether she have them
or not ; they are for her beauty, or her dignity. I fear that, in this pompous
schedule, the only part we shall ever realize is the last, a very solid body of that
sort of public wealth which is usually called indebtedness, and a very plentiful
lack of any thing to pay it with. Of " lots and squares" there may be lots, but
in towns little more than ideal. The mines and minerals have not yet been
worked, through the omission or casualty of not being yet. discovered ; or if any
exist, they are surely those of New Mexico, from which the ingots fly, by some
strange attraction, into a very different treasury. There may be in Texas, a
"salt river ;" but I have never heard of her salt lakes. As to her " public edi-
fices, fortifications, barracks, ports and harbors, navy and navy yards, docks,
magazines, arms, armaments and accoutrements," that figure here in architec-
tural splendor, or make up the " pride, pomp, and circumstance of glorious war,"
these are surely put in for the flourish. Now, God forbid, that I should laugh
at honorable poverty, national or individual. That of Texas is not so. Let her
repudiated bonds, let the "unfortunate difficulty into which she has plunged a
brave and honorable South Carolinian, to whom she owes still more in gratitude
than in money, tell that tale. Is it, at any event, when she is driving a bargain,
that this long display of titular possessions can be fairly made? Would not the
plain words, all her u public property and domain" have been equally determinate
and far more modest? And 'why this long enumeration, unless to catch the
popular fancy?

The next article provides for erecting Texas into a State as soon as may
be consistent with the principles of the Federal Constitution. In this article lies
one of the grand frauds of the whole transaction, as every body knows. It is a
shallow and a shameless evasion of the difficulties known to attend the bringing
her in by treaty as a Stale, a sovereignty. To avoid these, the name, not the
thing, is changed, and one-half the matter only is openly done at present; but
with a care so to stipulate it in this article, that the faith of treaties maybe invoked
in favor of the very fraud of a treaty, " as soon as may be consistent with the
Constitution !" Need I say, sir, that the benefit of this provision may be claimed
the instant you ratify this treaty ? The population of Texas would already en-
title her to one representative in the other House, and that is the first and main
condition to the right of being admitted. Nor was this political evasion the only
one meant. Another, fully as important in the view of a great part of this body,
of Congress, and of the nation, was to be accomplished — the admission, not only
of a foreign State into this Union, but that of a foreign slave Slate. To the,
latter, it was felt that insuperable objections of feeling lay, in addition to those
of constitutionality. But, as now done, the constitutional bar is to be got over
by her consenting for a moment to be called a territory ; while the slave question
is silently passed over by the same means. Here, sir, are some 25,000 slaves
imported by a treaty, a vast and wholesale operation, such as even Cuba and
Brazil never witnessed, and as utterly against our subsisting laws, utterly beyond
any warrant to the treaty-making power. So I must beg leave to add another
clause to my enumeration of points, which prove this treaty an original nullity,
and no treaty at all.

Both these, sir, are abominable and dangerous frauds upon the Constitution,
upon the people, and against the future peace of the Union, already abundantly
put in jeopardy by questions of this sort. As a Southern man, the citizen of
a State, who^e present safely demands that all the public and national guaran-
ties be strictly preserved, and maintained to our subsisting interests of this sort;\
as the public agent of such a community, I will do all that I can to see that no

21

injurious hand shall be laid upon rights within this nation, to which every part
of it is faithfully pledged. But, sir, I should not seek — the wisely moderate
State to which I belong will not seek — any thing beyond our present good secu-
rities, far more likely to suffer, than to gain, from any rash disturbance of them,
under the hazardous idea of extending them. Pray let us hold on to what we
justly have, and not drop it to catch at a shadow. If we can break through the
Constitution to extend slavery, how are we to expect that like breaches will not
be made to subvert it? This scheme is one directly and violently to raise up a
new agitation, that will not fail, and (I say it with a solemn repugnance) is but
too probably meant, to exasperate the head long and the extreme, in opposite
quarters of the confederacy, to rush into speedy disunion.

I would not, in a word, Mr. President, seek to extend slavery, even by fair means.
I know of none, but the assent of the common body of parlies to our contract with
each other. Of these parties, nothing like this can be asked with any probabili-
ty of success, nor ever without an adverse probability of awakening resentments,
distractions, far beyond any good to be accomplished. If, from prudence and
for peace, I would not now attempt such a thing even fairly, it may be judged
with what alarm as well as horror I recoil from the thought of a fraud like this,
aggravating every mischief an hundred fold, and complicating impolicy with
dishonor.

The next article secures all land claims valid under the laws of Texas. Of
course, if, in the event it should prove to be true, (as it no doubt is to a large
extent) that Texas has, for consideration received, granted her whole public
domain twice over, we shall be bound in equity to the claimants, (now our citi-
zsns,) and to her acts, (now our own,) to make good any deficiency ; and thus
may have to piece out her exhausted soil with a broad parcel of our own, per-
haps as large as the real Texas herself.

The next provides, substantially, that we shall give back to Texas what she,
apparently, has never given to herself — every sixteenth section of the public
lands for purposes of education ; that is, one-sixteenth of her entire soil is to re-
vert to her, or an equivalent somewhere else.

The next article assumes all the debts and liabilities of Texas, however cre-
ated. I have already shown that, with or without any assumption, we became
liable for all her engagements, when we took her sovereignty, and that the faith
she has violated binds us just, as much as that she meant to keep. Not only her
acknowledged, but her repudiated debts, then, are to be paid, and the very stock
which she has, created and sold at, perhaps, but a fifth, or a tenth of the value
expressed ofi its face, is to be redeemed at par, with an interest of eight or ten
per cent. If this provision of the treaty is ratified here, I think I may then pro-
pose an appropriation to erect, in congenial brass, a great and eternal monument
to the anli-assumptionist States and party, that hold it constitutional to assume the
debts of a foreign Stale, but not of our own. High on its glittering sides shall
shine many a lofty name of Southern strict constructionists. The Secretary of
State shall lop the eminence, as the acknowledged chief of all interpreters. At
his feet shall blaze the titles of (he Senator from Souih Carolina, and of the fer-
vid anti-assumpiiomst of Mississippi, whose State herself will merit a peculiar
distinction of being much readier to pay the debts of Texas than her own. A
little lower, but somewhat emulous of her honors, must be emblazoned the
names of Illinois and Pennsylvania, and their Senators. Alabama and Arkan-
sas, if not quite so high, will si ill be eminent, The New Hampshire Senator,
now the sole surviving "Northern man with Southern principles,' shall take to
himself that side of this political mausoleum which looks north ward. Those-
votaries of strict construction, those apostles of anti assumption, John Jones,
Thomas Ritchie, and he of the Charleston Mercury, shall daily, at noon and eve.

22

lead a devout band of innocent youths of party, and virgins of the press, to
strew flowers about it and to hang around the garlands- of their praise.

I should like, had I lime, to inquire into the peculiar causes (unexplained in
even that lucid hody of papers, called the documents,) which have led to the
selection of a single gentleman to he introduced hy name into the benefits of
the treaty, to the pretty little tune of $250,000. What peculiar merits of Mr.
Frederick Dawson, of Baltimore, have placed him so far above all other creditors
of Texas, I cannot stay to ask, though I should be glad the Senate knew.

The Oil) article, besides settling the forms, &c., under which liabilities are to
be ascertained, provides also, with great discretion, how they shall be repudiated.
By one general and positive provision, all the contracts of Texas, as to the rate
of interest on her debt, are set aside, and their evidences, after being ascertained,
replaced by United States bonds at 3 per cent, per annum. But their present
stipulated rate, as declared by the statement of Messrs. Van Zandt and Hender-
son, is 10. A nice little repudiation this, of only 66| per cenf. on the interest
Then, on the principal — if the entire amount now in existence is found to ex-
ceed 10,000.000, the claims are all to be rateably reduced within that amount.
Thus, our Government is, beyond all doubt, making itself directly a party to an
imperative repudiation of interest, and a contingent spnnging of principal. All
this, as I have said, is for debts that become our own, if we merge the national
existence of Texas in ours. Before that act, how can we set aside her contracts
with other parties? We had surely no power over them. It is only by assum-
ing them that we could take any sort of right over them. The repudiation, then,
is oms, not hers; and the more plainly, because she abandons to us all interest
in the fund, (the land sales,) out of which they are to be paid : so that it is for
our profit alone that the repudiation is to be made.

By the next article, the existing Legislative authorities of Texas, her Execu-
tive and Administration are abolished and overthrown, her army ceases to exist,
arid her fleet that was sold under the hammer ceases ; nothing is left of them;
all is stricken out of being but her judicial officers and the subordinate Execu-
tive ones. It is, I presume, not pretended that, the Government of Texas is to
be made to cease at the bidding of the Executive and Senate of this country.
I have shown that there was no act of her people that can seriously be pretend-
ed to have set. her high functionaries aside ; it can then, only, be their own power
and discretion that has thus terminated their functions in their own persons, and
transferred those functions to the disposal of the United Stales, and annulled the
Constitution of Texas, that they were sworn to support. If all this is legiti-
mate, valid, on one side, so is it on the other, and we may, therefore, thank our
stars if it proves to be Texas, not ourselves, which was thus extinguished. Nei-
ther Government possesses any such Revolutionary powers — neither can subvert,
annihilate, transfer itself, by functionaries of constitutional government created
for different purposes.

Attached directly to the treaty, the main features of which I have thus sur-
veyed, comes a document from the Texan plenipotentiaries, meant to show the
power their people had given thus to annex Texas. It only shows the vei v reverse,
inasmuch as it exhibits an authority for a different thing, upon a former occasion,
as 1 have already said. That authority, to the whole extent given, ceased with
the failure and the abandonment of thu elfort made under it to procure from Mr.
Van Buivn's Administration a union between this country and Texas in 1837.
In lieu of such a popular authority, however, it offers the personal assurances of
the plenipotentiaries that they have " the most abiding confidence that, should
the annexation be consummated, the same will receive the hearty and full con-
currence of the people of Texas." This, then, is all we have for the thing.

23

The plenipotentiaries next furnish statements of the extent of the grants made
of their public domain, and of the condition of their Treasury. Of the former
of these, it is sufficient to say that it is only vaguely described as a " late report
of the Commissioner of their Land Office," and was really made in 1841. It
cannot, then, be in the slightest degree depended on. But, besides, a glance at
the most recent maps, the last of Mitchell's, will show that vast grants cover the
whole surface of Texas. Those are laid down upon it, like the names of coun-
ties on our State maps, and equally serve to designate territorially the whole soil.
Besides these, there are great bodies of floating grants and loans, redeemable at
the option of the holder, in lands .to be chosen by him. Such is, in general, I
apprehend, the real condition of their public lands.

The Treasury statement is equally delusive. That which is furnished is only
to the year 1840: for its date is of the 12th January, 1841. This evidently
relates only to their acknowledged debts. The repudiated are left out of view,
and also the issues, said by well-informed people to have been made, and put into
market for just what they would bring, with scarcely a record kept in their Trea-
sury of such emissions. From the character of many of their functionaries, few
doubt that the loosest, possible administration of their pecuniary affairs has gene-
rally prevailed. Certainty, the plenipotentiaries say that " it is known" that
since " the above date, the revenues of the Government have nearly equalled
expenditures; so that the debt has not materially increased ; but it is notorious
that until the present annexation speculation began, Texas scrip was from 3 to
7 cents in the dollar, and that their navy was latterly sold under execution — facts
a little decisive, I take it, but even less significant than the following very frank
or very unguarded avowal, let out in this very document, intended to exhibit to
advantage the state of their finances. Speaking of the Treasury report, above
cited, (for 1840,) the plenipotentiaries say, " since the date above referred to, no
further general estimate (of their debts) has been made at the Treasury De-
partment" These are their own words ; and I ask any man to figure to him-
self, if he can, the state of a Treasury in which, for more than three years, not
an estimate even has been attempted of its liabilities!

Let me now, from these main papers, turn at once (for I must hasten forward)
to the message itself which conveyed them to us, sift the rights which it alleges,
the Slate reasons which it sets forth, and compare it with the further series of
official or other papers, which make up the history of this negotiation.

The President, of course, sets up the independence of Texas as so established
as to warrant our acting as if the struggle between her and Mexico was at an
end. He relies for his justification, partly on the length of the contest, partly on
the failure of Mexico since 1836 to attempt the re conquest with any serious
mass of force; yet, further, on the recognition, by various great Powers, of
Texas as an independent Government; then again, on the inhuman character
which the conflict has assumed; and lastly, on the political necessity imposed
upon us, by a design in which he considers England busy, to subvert our slave
institution, by means of bringing about emancipation in Texas. I need scarcely
say that if the last is a sincere motive, or real justification, it is of a nature so
prepondeiaiing as to reduce the others to insignificance, or cast upon them strong
suspicion of being employed merely to palliate the wrong upon which that ne-
cessity forces us. Nevertheless, I will consider these several points according to
their order, not their importance.

As to the question of the Independence of Texas, a few plain principles of
^common sense can settle that, without any reference to treaties ornaiioual law.

When the revolt of a country, heretofore dependent, takes a more settled form,
by its establishing a provisional government of its own, other nations do not
abandon their neutrality towards the Government from which the insurgents

24

have broken off, by merely recognizing these last as forming a distinct people,,
when they seem fairly to have retidere ! themselves so. Nevertheless, a neutral
must, of course, confine herself to peaceful acts, strictly, as long as the contest
really is such. To supply either party, by public means, with troops, or ships,
or arras, or subsidies, is an abandonment of neutrality ; and so is it equally, to
obtain of either that which is in dispute between them. Precisely in conformi-
ty wiih these principles was the conduct of the Van Buren administration in
1837, when Texas, (after our recognition of her independence, so far as ive
were concerned, so far as we could do it inoffensively towards Mexico,) solicited
a union with us. The Secretary of State then said, on the part of our Govern-
ment :

"In determining: with respect to the independence of other countries, the United States
Lave never taken the question of right between the contending parties into consideration. —
They have deemed it a dictate of duty an I policy to decide upon the question as one of fact
merely. This was the course pursued wiih respect to Mexico herself. It was adhered to
when analogous events rendered it proper to investigate the question of Texan independence."

And a little further on, he says:

" So long as Texas sha'l remain at war, while the United States are at peace with her
adversary, "the proposition of the Texan Minister Plenipotentiary necessarily involves the
question of war with that adversary."

Of like effect, and of authority in some respects still higher, are the following
sentences from the message, about the same time, of a distinguished Governor
of South Carolina, General McDuffie, a near kinsman of the honorable Senator,
though of very different polifics. Speaking of the intention of Texas to apply
for admission into this Confederacy, he says:

" In my opinion, Congress ought, not even to entertain such a proposition, in the present
state of the controversy. If we rdmit Texas into our Union while Mexico is still waging
Svar against that province, with a view tore-establish her supremacy over it, we shall, by
the very act itself, make ourselves a party to the war. Nor can we take this step without
incurring this heavy responsibility, until Mexico herself shall recognize the independence of
her revolted province."

Again, a little later, what said the Envoy 'of Texns herself, when moving
this question a second time, in 1842? The words, considering the importance
of the subject, and that this was its opening, can pass for nothing short of those
of Texas herself. Mr. Van Zandt. writes, on the 14th December, 1842. to our
Secretary of State, to urge an interposition to stop the war by receiving Texas
into the Union, and says, distinctly :

"If Mexico believes herself able to resubjugate Texas, her right to make the effort will not
be denied," &c.— (Senate Doc. 341, p. 17.)

This plain principle Mr. Webster copies almost literally into the interposition
which he accordingly, on the 31 st January following, addresses to Mexico :

" Mexico has an undoubted riirht to subjugate Texas, if she can, so far as other States are
concerned, by the common and lawful means of war." — ^Same Doc. p. 70.)

In conformity with these same plain facis and principles, Mr. Thompson, our
Envoy, thus repled_res to Mexico, on the 14th March following, our observance
of the duties of a neutial :

" In obedience to your instruction*, I then alluded, in the most friendly and respectful
terms, to the character of the war now going on between Mexico and Tex is, and told him,
(Santa Anna,) ilwt. wki/s' our Gor-rnment was determined to oh^rvc ih°, ^f.ric'es/. nen'ratify,
in that war, it f e t that it was its duty to remonstrate, in the most respectful manner, with
both Governments, against predatory'forays, really not war, which were now made by both
Mexico and Texas," tec.

Finally, the present Secretary of State, in his letter of April 18th, (same do-

25

iment, p. 50,) to the British Minister, directly admits every thing in the follow-
ing avowal, (p. 51 :)

" It is true the United States, at an early period, recognized the independence of Texas;
but, in doing so, it is well known that they but acted m conformity with an established prin-
ciple to recognize the Government dv facto."

The recognition, then, as Mr. Forsyth said, did not enter into any question
of right, and, as thus limited, hound us necessarily to the observance of every
neutral duty, until that question had been settled between the parties to it;
while, on the other hand, it implied, of course, nothing unfriendly to Mexico.
The distinguished Senator from Pennsylvania, who has lately taken a promi-
nent part in this matter, was therefore wrong, when he resisted in this body
even the mere recognition of the independence of Texas, as likely to engage us
in war with Mexico, and to involve us in national suspicion ; for neither of
these facts would have followed a mere recognition, as long as we went no
further. Mr. Buchanan then said, by way of objection to the bare recognition :

" We can never, with any proper regard for the welfare of our constituents, devote their
energies and their resources to the cause of planting and sustaining free institutions among
the people of other nations."

Again, he said, on the same subject : ibTflTy

" But let us not, by departing from our settled policy, give rise to the suspicion that we
have got up a war for the purpose of wresting Texas from those to whom, under the faith of
treaties, it justly belongs. Since the treaty o/1819 with Spain, there can no longer be any
doubt but that this province is a part of Mexico.1"

The citations which I have made from our own high official acts, from a series
of declarations addressed either directly to Mexico herself, or, when to her oppo-
nent, none the less pledges to Mexico than icpulses to Texas, show beyond dis-
pute, that when, in last November, her Envoy put in a protest against all that
the Executive was then preparing, and all ih.it he has since accomplished in
this treaty, Mexico but repeated to us our own language, but recalled to us our
own pledges to her and the world. We had proclaimed, again and again, in
solemn and decisive forms, that we coultl not incorporate Texas, (the war yet
pending between her and Mexico,) without an niter breach of national faith —
without making ourselves directly a party to that war. When, therefore, an,
administration was found abandoned enough to occupy itself with violating all
these duties, so often recognized — all these pledges, so often given — what could
Mexico, for purposes of justice, do more rightful, or what, for purposes of peace,
more necessary, than to give us the notice of the consequences authorized by
all international law, and as clearly authorized by so many voluntary pledges
of our own? She protested then; and how was that protest received ? As
nothing short of an insult and a threat ! With a singular mixture of audacity
and fraud, the Executive, through the head of the State Department, turned
this perfectly legitimate and even necessaiy notice into a pretended offence, and
made the simulated wound of its dignity and honor a pretext for the refusal of
all peaceful arid proper assurances. Busily engaged all the while (as we now
know) in finding the means of carrying into effect, by surprise, against our own
people as well as Mexico, this perfidious plan, all the indignation of outraged
integrity, all the sensibility of stainless truth, were assumed, to cover the trickery
until iis moment of calculated success, and double its turpitude with this inso-
lent affectation of affronted virtue !

Nor were our pledges confined to mere words, however solemn — to declara-
tions, however sacredly binding: we carried into an act of the highest nature
as a tie, a bond of faith still more peculiar. We put in our mediation, as a
friendly, an impartial, and a humane power, to stay the strife on foot, to bring

26

it to a safe and honorable conclusion for both parties : and it is while the mat-
ter has thus stood suspended in part by our intercession — while Mexico, trusting
to our honor, which should always be a safe reliance, exchanges arms for ne-
gotiation— that our President secretly sets on foot a traffic with her opponent,
and presently, when the bargain is made, alleges for our justification that very
truce which had been granted, in part, at our intervention ! Sir, a more infa-
mous fraud, under the mask of amity, was never committed. Could we sanc-
tion it here, the name of "-Punic Faith" so long the by-word of the earth, or
Ligurian or Numidian duplicity, so much the transmitted abhorrence of man-
kind, wherever not mere oath breakers, will grow honorable and fair beside our
own ; for (his, I insist, is a crime without even a single bad example of other
nations, of its kind, to countenance it, to keep company with it in ignominious
fellowship. Not even in Texan breasts does the dishonest thought of such
villainous collusion seem to have entered, but by suggestion from our State
Department. It is thence that the lesson of iniquity is darkly breathed through
Mr. Murphy into President Houston's ear, in the execrable exhortation which
may be found in the despatch of January 16tb, (Doc. 341, p* 47.) It is in the
following strain that those speaking in the name of this country, after drawing
the parties into an armistice, endeavor to work one of them up to making the
very negotiation we have meditated, an utter fraud for our benefit:

"The pending negotiation wiih Mexico ought not to present any difficulty, unless Texas
is prepared to go back again under the dominion of that power. As it is certain she will
not consent to this, under any possible circumstances, the result of that negotiation cannot
affect unfavorably the proposition of annexation to this country. If Mexico should acknow-
ledge the independence of Texas, then Texas will have an undisputed right to dispose of
herself as she pleases; and if Mexico should refuse that acknowledgment, Texas will the
more need the protection which the United States now offers. She can require nothing more,
in this last event, than that the United States shall take upon themselves the adjustment of
her difficulties with Mexico."

In every mediation, the powers interposing their good offices can surely be
held to nothing less than a pledge to each of the parties, that the mediator be-
lieves both sincere in their intentions, and that the mediation shall not be turned
into a fraud upon either. Not a little, indeed, is the mediator bound, should
fraud ensue, to aid in punishing the party so abusing the good office done. Ifr
as in this case, there be several mediators, then all of these are bound to a mutual
enforcement of good faith, and to sustain against any serious wrong the party
made to suffer by perfidy in the negotiation. Such is the position, as full of
danger as disgrace, in which the Executive has ventured to place us. Wer
one of the mediators, are tound contriving the ruin of one of the parties, and for
this purpose persuading the other not to regard the negotiation on foot ; telling
him that it cannot possibly come to anything — that he can't be worsted, there-
fore, and may be bettered, by conducting it without any sincerity !

Nor, in the shameful management of this business, has the dignity, the self-
respect of our country been less prostituted than its morality. Mark the despi-
cable wheedling with which the Executive approaches the Government of
Texas ! — the cringes, the congees, the coaxings, with which we are made to seek
to propitiate its favors ! Hear how our Government is made to whine and
supplicate :

"The failure of the proposition heretofore made by Texas for admission into our Union,
should not be allowed to influence her present course. At that time, the question was no*
understood in this country. It had not been canvassed, even by leading politicians, much
*ess by the people at large, and the Consequences dependent upon it were not then develop
e&^s they now are. If the proposition could have been placed at that time in the light in
which it is now seen, there would have been no hesitation upon the subject. Indeed, it was-
then regarded rather as a question of time than anything else; for I am well assured that a
majority of the people of this country have always considered the annexation of Texas t<?

27

their lenitory as an event that must- happen, sooner or later. At all events, no other ques-
tion can grow out of the failure of i he first proposition than one of mere etiquette or national
self-respect. I have anticipated and provided for this Supposing that Texas might fee'
some reluctance to renew a proposition which had been once rejected. I have invited her,
through her Charge at Washington, to enter into negotiations up »n the subject."

Every body understands that this Treaty has been shaped for individual aim? alone ; that
its moving cause was a desperate Presidential speculation; that iis main agents were the
gamblers and brokers of the bankrupt finances and fraudulent land slants Of Texas. —
Through legitimate and sober negotiation, necessarily deliberate and quiet in its movements,
nothing could be done rash enough, extravagant enough, nor noisy enough, to be brought to
bear, in popular agitation, upon the Baltimore Democratic Convention, and, through its de-
cision, upon the next Presidential election. Jn this one great aim, all public purposes were
forgotten. For this, we were to take, not the justest, nor the most feasible method, but the
suddenest. 'I hat might certainly, in the end, plunge us in endless difficulties, disaster, dis-
honor—every thing most to be deplored; but all these, though speedy effects, would be
tardy enough only to injure the Un on after they had served the momentary purpose of the
•President yet again to be. 'J heir iatal consequences were at least not swift enough to arrive
before the struggle in the Democratic Convention.

Such being the great ruling aim, of course the subordinate questions were to take that
form which would best suit those who were likeliest to lend to the plan the animated, the
vigorous, the vehement support of strong individual interest, not the mere affected fervor of
patriotism. Next to the mighty electioneering interest came, therefore, in the treaty, what-
ever could enlist the zeal, by enlisting the cupidity of that great and wide spread body of
adventurous speculators, who were dipped deep in Texas lands or Texas bonds.

I pass, however, to other things. Having shown that rightfully, this Government could
not, pending a war, step in to decide between two States, the subject of the dispute, (which
is here the right to Texas,) and that we had so declared in every form, up to the time when
this intrigue and fraud was set on foot. I will next show that, in many parts of this cor-
respondence, there are the most direct and decisive contradictions to the President's mere
assumption and allegation, that Texas is able to withstand Mexico, that Texas has obtained
a positive and permanent independence.

That fact or assumption, is abundantly disproved by evpry circumstance in her position,
by a great part of what the President urges, and especially by the alarm which he spreads
of the imperative necessity of acting "notv," because Texas must otherwise be driven upon
very hard terms, and at once, into the arms of some European power. But what foreign
power, having trea'ies with Mexico, would be faithless enough to deal with Texas as our
President has done * In the very message itself that accompanies the treaty, the President
says, "It cannot be denied that Texas is greatly depressed in her energies by the long pro-
tracted war with Mexico. Under these circumstances, it is but natural that she should seek
for safety, and repose under the protection of some stronger power." Yet, we are told, this
treaty does not make war by giving that protection and repose. Again he says, •' 1 repeat,
the Executive saw Texas in a state of almost hopeless exhaustion." What exhaustion ?
That occasioned by the pending war with Mexico, which we are now asked to assume, in
direct violation of our treaty of peace and amity with Mexico, and thereby to disgrace the
United States in the eyes of the civilized world. I cannot, and I will not, advise and con-
sent to the ratification of a treaty for any such purpose, or one attended by such consequen-
ces. Were I to de so, with my views, I should be laithless to myself, to my constituents, to
my country and my God.

What says Mr. Secretary Upshur, in the very outset of this business in his letter ol the 8th
August last ? " Pressed by an unrelenting army on her borders, her treasury exhausted, and
her credit almost destroyed, Texas is in a condition to need the support of other nations, and
to obtain it upon terms of great hardship, and many sacrifices to herself." On this subject,
our Minister in Texas, says, ;" Inasmuch as the commissioners of Texas, now in Mexico, in
treaty or negotiation touching an armistice, are supposed not to have concluded their labors,
and it is clear to the President of Texas, that so soon as this negotiation in relation to annexa-
tion is known to the Government of Mexico, all negotiation on that, and all other questions
between Texas and Mexico will cease, and that the President of Mexico will instantly com-
mence active hostilities against Texas, which Texas is wholly unprepared, by sea or land, to
resist."

I presume no one will think it necessary to call on me for further proofs, that it was per-
fectly well known to the Executive that Texas is incapable of defending herself; that her
Independence was merely nominal ; that her condition is now far more precarious than in
1837; that she has progressively grown weaker since then, and Mexico stronger; and that,
in very truth, her Independence, which was the gift of the individual aid and sympathy of

28

our citizens, ceases the moment she shall no longer be upheld by the hope of help from the
United Stales.

To take the measure of the credulity of folks like these, especially when their wishes
and designs come to the help of their belief, may seem somewhat rash ; but still as I do not
know that they have eaten of that plant which was said of old to make men mad, I must
hold it utterly out of the question to suppose that they can have swallowed all this stufT
about Mr. Andrews. Certainly, even the Secretary ot State, who first seized upon the
thing, saw full well the extreme nonsense of it, in one of its main points; and, in remarking
upon it in his letter to Mr. Murphy of- the 8th August last, after repeating the statement of
the " private citizen of Maryland," he admits, in the very oatset, " that there is some diffi-
culty in comprehending the terms of the proposition as stated," which is as good as to say
that it is nonsense. And so it surely is ; for what is the plan ? " That an English compa-
ny should be raised, and pay Texas for her slaves." Here one would think was the end of
the bargain ; for when equivalents are to be interchanged, what more is to be done ? Texas
here would give up her slaves, and the English association its money — so one would say.
But this is far from being the result ; for Texas has paid for the money, thus far, only in
slaves ; whereas she is to pay over again in lands ! Nor is that all; when she has thus
paid twice over, it is but a loan after all ; and the English Government is to aid the third
operation, to come in as a guarantee of the interest! Of course, then, the principle still
remains against Texas as a debt ! Well might the Secretary confess that there were some
obscurities in the plan ! Yet that is far from hindering his blazing out upon it, and making
it not merely the corner-stone, but the entire foundation of a mighty national affair. Nor
does it become a whit more rational, in the corrected version which Mr. Murphy under-
takes to give. In it, again, the Texans are first to give their slaves to the full value of a
loan, and then to grant, in addition, a vast amount of lands, so large as to form a future fund
for the abolition of slavery all over the United States ! The main difference which he
makes is, that the British Government was to guarantee, not Texas, but the punctuality of
her own citizens ; and really I do not see that there was any thing very alarming in that,
though much extremely improbable. Such is this strange tale; and though, as I have said,
the Secretary evidently sees its folly, yet what does he do? Inquire into it ? Not at all.
Resort to the British Government for explanations ? By no means. Instantly, a letter full
of simulated alarms is written to Mr. Murphy. To the English Minister here, or to his
court, not a word is said, not a syllable to Mr. Everett, until just one month and twenty
days after the first letter to Mr. Murphy, the overture to the whole opera that has be n sung
us since, and in which (as I am told is usual in overtures) the rudiments, or what musicians
call the motives of the whole peice may be found. This idle tale, then, discredited by him*
self, is made, with not the smallest attempt to fathom it, the basis of all these proceedings.
It is not till fifty-one days afterwards, the 28th September, that Mr. Everett is directed ta
look into the affair ; and on the 16th October, just eighteen days after that, when yet Mr.
Everett could but just have got the despatch, we learn, from the note to Mr. Van Zandt,
that the Executive, in view of " recent occurrences in Europe," had made up his mind
to invite Texas, in all haste, to be annexed to the United States ! Meantime, with all
his precautions not to diminish, by inquiry, the small pretences on which he has seized,
the Executive has got some information on the subject. He has learnt by Mr. Murphy's
letter of the 24th September, that Mr. Andrews had been driven out of Texas by its popu-
lace, as soon as they heard of what he had been about, and the envoy himself expressly
entitles the whole affair, " the ridiculous transaction ? layed off in London" Nor, indeed,
did Mr. Upshur himself attach any real consequence to it; for in his despatch on the sub-
ject to our Minister at Mexico, on the 18th November, he directly admits that there is no
proof of any English design such as he was not only imputing, but acting upon ; for he says,
*' I have no sufficient reason to suppose that England desirec to acquire it, (Texas,) but the
subject in all ils bearings is of deep interest to the United States." Thus, sir, disappears^
before a little scrutiny, all these phantoms of English abolition in Texas. Nothing re-
mains of them but a parliamentary flourish of a man of no high repute in England, Lord
Brougham, some general declarations by the Premier, such as Premiers must always make
when popularity demands it, and the frank avowal of Lord Aberdeen to Mr. Everett, that
the Government had been solicited to stand guarantee to Texas, on a loan offered by the
Abolition society, but had refused; and that it had suggested to Mexico to connect the ad-
mission of the Independence of Texas with the abolition of slavery there; but that Mexico
had refused to listen to the suggestion, and that it had not, therefore, been renewed.

I take it, therefore, that all this official history of the motives and the rise of this proceed-
ing is entirely false, meant but to mislead. Nor are we without proof of the fact, a great \
deal more substantial than the Executive concludes treaties, sends out military and naval (t
forces, and puts us in a state of war upon. In other times, that which I am about to cite,
however well shown by facts to be authentic, would scarcely, from its mere form (a news-

29

iper communicatien) have been brought into the Senate., but now things infinitely less fit
to be produced are brought here upon the gravest occasion, and I surely need not hesitate
to give what I take to he the true secret history of this Texas treaty.

An annexation meeting was lately attempted in the venerable town of Williamsburg,
Virginia, the capital in some sort of the former judicial circuit of the original negotiator
of this treaty. At it, among others, appeared Judge (now Professor) Beverly Tucker, of
William and Mary, whose extreme intimacy and whose close coincidence of political opin-
ions and purposes with Mr. Upshur, various members ef this body perfectly understand.
The Professor, upon this occasion, entered into a recital of the true origin of this matter,
claiming himself to have set it on foot. The outline of what he told ha§ been reported and
publ shed, about two weeks since, in the Richmond Whicr. It is no do,ubt faithful, since
though exceptions have been subsequently sent in and published to other parts of the re-
port, the fidelity of this portion of it remains unirnpeached. An abstract is as follows :

" Having first avowed his intimate acquaintance with this whole subject, and that he possessed peculiar
opportunities for being informed upon it, he stated that the FIRST proposition for annexation was made to
him, and BY him next made to the late distinguished Secretary of State, Judge Upshur. He stated that he
owned a large tract of land in Texas, and one half of about GO slaves, in partnership with a certain gentle-
man there (name not recollected) of whom he spoke in the highest terms ; that this gentleman, in a letter
written some time in the year 1843, mentioned the subject of annexing Texas to the American Union ; that
he ( Professor T) immediately caught the idea and at once opened the subject to his friend Judge Upshur ; that
Judge U. as eagerly took hold of an idea, declaring in a private letter that he was the only man in the Union
who could do the thing— that he could show the Northern people that annexation was their interest, and as
thia was the weak point of a Yankee, there could be no difficulty in reconciling the Yankees to annexation ;
but if ihis could not be done, let things corne to the wor»t. These fac s were given from priva e letters
which had passed between Professor i'ucker and Judge ITpshur, and was communicated with egotistical
complaisance and evident pride, as if the communicator was desirous to have the world know that he and
his friends were alone entitled to the glory of starting this great project oj[ annexation !

" I must state another fact which wiil illustrate the spirit with which thi.s matter was undertaken by one
of the distinguished actors in it, the country has a right to know it. Professor Tucker stated among other
things of a like character, that Judge Upshur had declared that if he could find one man in Congress with
firmness enough, he would, at the next session of Congress, bring things to a direct issue between the
North and the South."

This latter part, it must be confessed, smacks not a little of those resolutions from Beau-
fort, South Carolina, which all have read with astonishment and pain, and with the open
declarations of many of the leading presses of the South Carolina party, especially their or-
gan here, which has declared that Texas was to be preferred to the Union. Allow me ta
examine that position for them, and to see what a new Southern Confederacy, founding its
existence on an act of rapine like this, and on a violent disruption of its previous national
ties, would be.

Let us suppose, for a moment, that what cannot .well happen without a violent convulsion-
is nevertheless brought about without any, and that a separate Confederacy quietly estab-
lishes itself through all the States West and South, to the Ohio. The good which is to
follow for its people shall be, lor the sake of argument, security to slave institutions at large,
Free Trade, the opening to migration of a new, a fertile, and a highly genial region, and an,
advanced value of slave property, as the consequence of all, but of the last especially. Let
us see how these causes will work.

If slaves advance in price, that cannot be in countries of exhausted soil, already stocked
with them, or in those where, from climate, the sugar and cotton culture cannot be carried
on in competition with the rich soils in the lower valley of the Mississippi and beyond. —
They will, then, only rise in price in Maryland, Virginia, North and South Carolina, Geor-
gia, Tennessee, and Kentucky, because they will be sold to be carried away. A.nd as a rise
in their value will make a larger capital necessary to carry on planting where it is already
unprofitable, of course ihis latter cause will hasten their rapid transfer South, by adding to-
the cost with which slave labor must be carried on North.

They will be swept off', then, in but a short time, and the very States where this scheme
pretends to secure the permanence of slave property will be stripped, within four or five
years, of all slave property whatever. With them will go a large body of their masters,
nearly all averse in the extreme to turn wholesale slave-sellers, and attracted by the cheap
lands and large profits of the new country. Such numbers will probably yield to these in-
• ducements, that, from some parts of Virginia, a great portion of North Carolina, and nearly
all South Carolina and Georgia, except the rice lands, it will be a migration almost en masse,
and hardly any will remain that can get away.

Thus, then, by a speedy change in the labor and property of the seven Sfates I have men-
tioned, they will take just the same relation to the slave interest south-west of them as
Pennsylvania and the North now bear to the planting States ; and abolition, sure to exist

where there are no slaves, will occupy the northern, and plague and threaten the Southern,.

part of the new Confederacy, just as of old. In the great tract thus abandoned by much of

its proprietary, and more of its laboring population, lands must of course sink prodigiously

30

in value. At last, for want of purchasers, many of them will be abandoned by their own-
ers, one half whose slaves alone will, upon lands bought in Texas with the other half, make
far better crops lhan nil on the worn and ill-used soil they now exhaust rather than culti-
vate. Nor is ihis all: another very serious cause of depreciation will act. In the greater
part of the Southern States, there is a heavy public debt. On a diminished population and
depreciated property, that debt (which even now they can hardly provide fur; will fall with
a terrible weight of taxes ; and these will operate strongly to induce fresh migration into
a new country whose debt has been assumed, and where there will be light taxes only.—
This effect cannot but happen as to Virginia, South Carolina, Georgia, Alabama, my own
State, Arkansas, Louisiana, Ohio, Indiana, and Illinois.

There may, in a word, be benefits in the plan to Texas — very great benefits; but they
will be such as, to fill her veins, will drain the very life-blood of most of the present South-:
ern States There may be advantages to those who are to break up and to leave their native
communities; but to those who remain and cling faithfully to them, the results will be de-
plorable. Property v\ill decline; cultivation will cease in its main branches; new objects
and methods of tillage, new forms of industry, will have to be sought ; all improvement will
cease; the whole society will go backward for a time; and every thing, in a, word, will de-
cline, except taxes, and perhaps repudiation.

From this changed order of things, what relief will Free Trade bring, where the staples
that bred the desire of it have ceased to be grown in these nearer Southern States? They
will be planting States no longer; and their soil and climate tit them little for farm-
ing1, for grazing, or for grain-growing Producing no longer anything for exportation,
what sort of a boon will Free Trade be to them ? It strikes me that it will be not a little
like a present of mustard to a "nan who has no meat, or ruffles to one without a shirt. But,
sir, to them, in such a Confederacy, yet another condition of things must ensue. In the
States which I have described, in the necessities imposed by their position, it is among them
that manufactures must spring up, as the most profitable employment. In this, then, again,
they will occupy, as in regard to slavery, the very same relation to the States beyond them
as New England now does to the South. The existing sectional opposition of interests will
thus start up afresh between the extremeties of the new league; and the present Free
Trade men (including some of the distinguished gentlemen whom I see around me,) will,
unless they, in the meantime, have gone to Texas, become violent advocates of a protective
lariff— unabated enemies of Free "1 rade.

Alieady, sir, from the causes I have mentioned, acting only with less intensity, this very
state of things is coming about. Maryland is already a Tariff State ; Virginia, North Caro-
lina, and Georgia, are rapidly becoming so; my own State and Kentucky have shown how
they regard that policy. What 1 have said is but the history of what we have seen and are
seeing, the facts on.y compressed, by more sudden and stronger causes, into a few years' space.

Such and so conclusive are the economical,, the pecuniary objections to this scheme ot
Southern Confederacy: but there is, further, a political, I might almost say a physical diffi-
culty, of which these statesmen have not considered, though it is not less obvious than it is
insuperable. Near its very centre, their intended territory is crossed by a mighty valley,
itsel , at no distant day, an empire. Do they expect to bridle, with what will be compara-
tively but a little Atlantic border, that wide and powerful region ? Do they think to give
law to the entire Mississippi, by seizing upon its mouth ? Sir, the race that possesses that
great stream, is not one, in point of either spirit or strength, to be tamed to the will of any
builder of political castles in the air, that thinks, at a word, to lock them in from the sea.
That vast valley must have one common social destiny ; nor will the arrangements which
schemers make, in South Carolina or Texas, at their ease, pluck away from the Great West
its passway abroad, and reduce it to dependence. No ! 'J he strong do not follow the for-
tunes ot the weak ; and if the one or the oiher is to submit, the Great West is much more
like to give the law to this new realm, than to receive the law from it. I have shown what
consequences, what new social arrangements, this entire plan would work ; how surely it
must empty of all their slave population, Kentucky, Missouri, Tennessee, and part of Alaba-
bama. Now will these, after having been, by the very execution of this scheme, converted
into free States, and will the many and populous countries behind them, consent to be a mere
appendage to a league like this ? Never, sir ! The entire valley, I repeat, must ever have
a common political destiny. Its natural ties, and thsoe of habit and feeling, bind it to this
Union. f 'here is ever to be a Southern Confederacy, it cannot stretch across to Texas, but
must be girdled in by the Mississippi. Such a thing, agitators and speculators may talk of;
but I do not think any man here will live to see it; and I am sure, if he does, he will live to
see troubles, disasters, conflicts ending but in mutual injury, misfortune, and misery, which,
will make him deplore that he has lived so long.

I think I have thus shown what will be the special benefits, the benefits to the slave
States as they now are, which this thing promises ; that it will transfer a large part of

.. ..

31

i p°PuIatiDn and wealth ; that it will break down the value of their lands; that it will
da heavily to taxation ; that it will revolutionize property and pursuits ; that as it will only
shift the slave region further South, and convert as large a space into free States as it adds
slave territory, it will leave the very interest for which all this is to be done, still weaker
than before ; that if dismemberment, which I regret to say seems to me clearly in the con-^
temptation of a part of these political projectors, ensues, it will inevitably reproduce on a'
smaller theatre the same questions of protection and of abolition, the same sectional strife,
which, in an evil hour, has bred the disaffection that urges men to this design ; that if such
lismemberment come, it would not quietly stretch across to Texas ; that a war for the low-
er Mississippi would probably follow : and now let me add, that I see no possible event from
such a war, but that the new Confederacy,- to sustain itself against the superior force of the
rest of the Union, must do precisely what we are told Texas is about to do, and in this very
prudent plan for the permanent security of slavery, cast itself for protection upon that very
\foreign power, whose alarming designs of abolition are made the great bugbear to frighten
us into the jaws of this plan, and drive us, by terror, into crime and shame.

But advantages of a more general nature are alleged, such as will benefit the whole Union,
They tell us that it will give us a new and a noble territory; that its peopling will offer a
fresh mart for the manufactures of the North, the provisions of the West, and additional em-
ployment for our Eastern shipping ; that it will add to our military security ; that it will
prevent smuggling; that it will afford scope for the illimitable Anglo-Saxon propensity to

advantages

we are to pay for them. I should still, under my special duty to my own State, and to ma-
ny others, vote against a measure which will deeply injure them. The Union is well as it
is, and has much greater need to govern itself well, to manage wisely what it has, than to
call upon a large part of it to submit to a grievious loss with the object of merely extending
our territory.

All know, sir, what a deplorable system of farming that is, where the landholder grasps at
more than he can employ, cultivating most wretchedly a large surface, while the skilful til-
lage of but half as much would, with the same labor, yield him a larger crop, and give him
an improving soil, instead of one growing every day worse. This individual propensity, long
the misfortune of our husbandmen, is now rapidly correcting itself; and so will soon do, I
trust, that kindred national rage for wide, rather than well- managed possessions, which mea
have largely counted on, in calculating the popularity of this attempt.

If extent of possessions is to stand to us in the pla'ce of public honor, and beneficence and
wisdom of sway, still we must yield in that species of glory to Russia, whose arbitrary rule
covers a far wider surface of misgovernment. Nor shall we yet at all equa* Tamerlain or
Ghengis Khan, who had the honor of reducing under their absolute domain still broader
tracts. Spain herself, whom we now so despise, once held in fee almost a third of the knowa
world. Her thirst for misused dominion was as unscrupulous as ours can aspire to be; her
enterprize as active; her military spirit far higher. What, then, is to assure us, treading
the same career, from the same, or a yet speedier fate ? There are surely simple lessons in
these things, which every citizen of a land like this, where all order is but the result of in-
telligence, should have learnt — that there is more genuine gratness in governing wisely evea
a narrow territory, than in stretching ever so widely, a cruel, an unjust, or an imcompeteat
dominion, that only acquires, but knows not how to rule, to benefit. What is a mere em-
pire of disorder, compacted together by none of the true arts of sway. It is preparing but
a speedier downfall for all that we have of good, or right or happy. "Already we have cast
the wide foundations of what, if we persevere in the sober and steadfast, and sure greatness-
before us, must rapidly become the noblest government that the earth has ever seen. Are
we to abandon the brightness, the certainty of a public destiny like that before us, for a
scheme as wicked as it is wild ; that, to compensate for the general abhorrence with which
it will turn the eyes of all nations upon us, offers us no probability but that of earlier dis-
ruption, and decay? la all the past, history has presented one uniform truth — that govern-
ments must be oppressive somewhat in proportion to their extent. Already fierce divisions,
conflicts of interest the most threatening, warn us to keep within our present limits, and, at
least, before we add to them, to compose, to consolidate, to unite. At this instant, the very
men who would teach us to dream this sad and perilous vision of a greatness without honor
or prudence or need, are many of them intent ou demolishing the very grandeur to which
they invite you. It is disunion that beckons on to this scheme of rapacity: you are to
plunder, that disunion may possess; you are to steal, that it may. receive ; you are foully and
faithlessly to wrest Texas from Mexico, in order that disunio'n may be furnished with a
'broader and surer basis for a new confederacy. These men tell us that they themselves
groan under the curse of this government; and in ihe same breath, that they pant to impart

32

xts blessings to others ; they rare of England, and her teuible designs ; and what are
des:gns? Apparently nothing worse than their own summum b(mu>nt Free Trade, the acme
of atl wise policy ! But if the embrace of England be so terrible, \vthy seek a seperation.
which must fling them at once into her arms ? I remember too well the day when a direct
dissociation from us, a direct association with England, gave them any thing but alarrnj^H
days of nullification; nor have their thoughts changed since then, if their language j^H
prets them. As little can I (rust their promised advantages, in the new region, fc
manufacturers, our provision trade, or our navigation, Texas, they design as a new
men i of the Free Trade region, an addition of anti-tariff votes. W hat will the
tion of ils present population of not 150,000 add to our trade ? And its augmented
lien will consist of but our own citizens, whom we already supply. As to the pan
trade, they themselves boast that the upper regions of that country are fit only furjj
raising; so that i: is likelier to be the rival of Kentucky and Ohio abroad, than their
tomer at home. If the carrying of its cotton and si gar is to employ our shippin then it
must be at the expense of a great overproduction of the first of those articles, with which,
we now glut the market of the world. In short, sir, I see nothing but what is utterly falla-
cious in the object, and utterly bad and disgraceful in the method. 'J he entire plan is a
complication of rapine, of impolicy, and of imposture, such as i had trusted never to see
presented for public favor in this country, by any that presumed to set themselves up as the
guides and ihe lights of this nation.

To Texas he»seif, meantime sir, I give, as I have ever given, my warm sympathies HI
her bravo strugrla for t.-e highest privilege to which a people can rise — independence. I
acknowledge the kindred blood that runs in the veins of her people. Most gladly would I
see her free; but free by her own arms, the only sure, the t>nly noble way to freedom, such
as our common forefathers trod. I have no confidence in any liberty that is the gift of
others, and not wrought out by the good right hands of the free themselves. Even them,
sir, the successful battle field may have won, but something yet nobler than valor is neces-
sary to keep the bright attainment, a spirit as calm, as right, as wise, as pure, as order-loving
as it is brave, and that knows how to conquer what is far more difficult to subdue than any
foe without— the foe within, the wild tendency to misrule, to faction, to disorders that shake
or disgrace the State, to a rage of personal selfishness or corruption that heeds no claim of
country, to a liberty that knows little of private morality, and nothing of that true public
spirit without which freedom is but a letting loose of every man's hand against the rest, m
ihe ignoble anarchy of parties intent only on pillaging the State, and of leaders without ca-
pacity and without the thought to govern any thing but a caucus.

Most gladly, then, were there no such things as national honor or faith — were treaties
but so much waste paper — were Constitutions as idle within as the great
people and people empty without, would 1 assist Texas in her struggle.
spects, and my good wishes, in honor of many men really aoble and brave, w
have engaged in it. 1 yield them my sincere sympathies and best wishes jKn lean, at
present, yield them nothing more. I will not set my feelings above an hones^^^^^^Ht
ray duties. I will not, out of kindness to Texas, trample on all the solen^^^^^K
which we owe to faith, to peace, to justice, to the Constitution, to this Unios^^^^^Hfe
principles that are to sustain it, and to its people. I pretend not, however, ^i^^^^^^Kj
phetic skill of politics which can settle questions like this for all time tocome.^|^^^Kj|
effort at statesmanship is but to reach, and prudently to resolve, the question now to be acted
on. These things may take another form. Annexation may, at some day, assume a shape
neither perilous nor dishonorable, nor coupled with any of those sectional dissentioas, or de-
signs which would now deter me from it. It may present itself, and probably will, as a
question of expediency alone. {Should it so come, while I have any public part to take on it,
1 will, as now, endeavor calmly to examine all the attendant circumstances, and to guide
myself in action by them, and the wishes of the people I represent. With giving my vote
against ratifying the present treaty, my present duty on that subject will be performed.

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