ANNEXATION OF TEXAS: SECRET NEGOTIATION PRESIDENTIAL INTRIGUE: SCHEMES OF SPECULATION AND DISUNION.
The President's annual message at the commencement of the session 1843-'44, contained an elaborated paragraph on the subject of Texas and Mexico, which, to those not in the secret, was a complete mystification: to others, and especially to those who had been observant of signs, it foreshadowed a design to interfere in the war between those parties, and to take Texas under the protection of the Union, and to make her cause our own. A scheme of annexation was visible in the studied picture presented of homogeniality between that country and the United States, geographically and otherwise; and which homogeniality was now sufficient to risk a war with Great Britain and Mexico (for the message squinted at war with both), to get Texas back, although it had not been sufficient when the country was ceded to Spain to prevent Mr. Tyler from sanctioning the cession—as he did as a member of the House in 1820 in voting against Mr. Clay's resolution, disapproving and condemning that cession. This enigmatical paragraph was, in fact, intended to break the way for the production of a treaty of annexation, covertly conceived and carried on with all the features of an intrigue, and in flagrant violation of the principles and usages of the government. Acquisitions of territory had previously been made by legislation, and by treaty, as in the case of Louisiana in 1803, and of Florida in 1819; but these treaties were founded upon legislative acts—upon the consent of Congress previously obtained—and in which the treaty-making power was but the instrument of the legislative will. This previous consent and authorization of Congress had not been obtained—on the contrary, had been eschewed and ignored by the secrecy with which the negotiation had been conducted; and was intended to be kept secret until the treaty was concluded, and then to force its adoption for the purpose of increasing the area of slave territory, or to make its rejection a cause for the secession of the Southern States; and in either event, and in all cases, to make the question of annexation a controlling one in the nomination of presidential candidates, and also in the election itself.
The complication of this vast scheme, leading to a consummation so direful as foreign war and domestic disunion, and having its root in personal ambition, and in scrip and land speculation, and spoliation claims—the way it was carried on, and the way it was defeated—altogether present one of the most instructive lessons which the working of our government exhibits; and the more so as the two prominent actors in the scheme had reversed their positions since Texas had been retroceded to Spain. Mr. Calhoun was then in favor of curtailing the area of slave territory, and as a member of Mr. Monroe's cabinet, counselled the establishment of the Missouri compromise line, which abolished slavery in all the upper half of the great province of Louisiana; and, as a member of the same cabinet, counselled the retrocession of Texas to Spain, which extinguished all the slave territory south of the compromise line. Mr. Calhoun was then against slavery extension, and so much in favor of extinguishing slave territory as to be a favorite in the free States, and beat Mr. Adams himself in those States in the presidential election of 1824—receiving more of their votes for Vice-President than Mr. Adams did for President. After the failure in 1833 to unite the slave States against the free ones on the Tariff agitation, he took up the slavery agitation—pursuing it during his life, and leaving it at his death as a legacy to the disciples in his political school. Mr. Tyler was a follower in these amputations and extinction of slave territory in 1819-'20: he was now a follower in the slavery agitation to get back the province which was then given away, or to make it the means of a presidential election, or of Southern dismemberment. This scheme had been going on for two years before it appeared above the political horizon; and the right understanding of the Texas annexation movement in 1844, requires the hidden scheme to be uncovered from its source, and laid open through its long and crooked course: which will be the subject of the next chapter, as shown at the time in a speech from Senator Benton.