"A leading member of the Mexican cabinet once remarked to me," says Mr. Thompson, in his Recollections of Mexico,[42] "that he believed the tendency of things was towards the annexation of Texas to the United States, and that he greatly preferred such a result either to the independence of Texas or any connection or dependence of Texas upon England; that if it became an independent power, other departments of Mexico would unite with it either voluntarily or by conquest, and that if there was any connexion between Texas and England, English merchandize would be smuggled into Mexico through Texas to the utter ruin of Mexican manufactures and revenue.
"In one of my last interviews with Santa Anna," continues the American minister, "I mentioned this conversation. He replied with great vehemence that he would 'war forever for the reconquest of Texas, and that if he died in his senses his last words should be an exhortation to his countrymen never to abandon the effort to recover the province;' and, added he: 'you know, sir, very well, that to sign a treaty for the alienation of Texas would be the same thing as signing the death warrant of Mexico, for, by the same process, the United States would take one after another of the Mexican provinces, until they possessed them all.'"
Such were the feelings of Mexico in regard to annexation, and such the anxieties in cabinets of all parties in the United States to restore our ancient limits, when the presses of our country intimated, in the year 1844, that President Tyler was negotiating a treaty of union with Texas as an independent power. It was on the eve a presidential canvass; and whilst the incumbent of the executive chair sought very naturally to present himself to the people with the successful results of a popular and beneficial negotiation, there were other candidates who opposed the measure both on principle and policy, as well as on account of the mode in which it was to be effected.
I might very properly in this historical sketch pass over the narrative of annexation, and, deal with the union, ultimately effected between Texas and the United States as the only important fact. Texas, bound to the North American confederacy by a solemn act of congress,—the indisputable constitutionality of which is implied in its passage,—is, indeed, the only subject which the historian is compelled to regard. Whatever results ensued, whether they were perceived and predicted by the statesmen of the time, or, were entirely latent until developed during the last two years, must be entirely attributed to the act of congress which consummated annexation and reposed in the hands of a president the executive power of solemnizing the union. Nevertheless, I believe it due to impartial history that I should state concisely the causes which seem to have provoked annexation, and, indeed, rendered it almost necessary at the time when it occurred.
We have seen that active hostilities by Mexico against the insurgents had either ceased for nearly seven years, or had been confined to such border forays as resembled predatory incursions rather than civilized hostilities. Statesmen, in all parties, regarded the war as ended; for Mexico, impoverished by the thriftless administrations that ruled and plundered her during the short intervals between her revolutions, was in no condition to carry it on with reasonable prospects of success. France, England, Belgium and the United States, had acknowledged Texan independence and established diplomatic relations with the republic. Emigrants settled the interior, and invited accessions. The constitution and laws of the nation were fixed upon a firm basis, while the government was conducted with ability. A lucrative commerce from foreign countries began to pour into the territory. New towns sprang up every where, and Texas exhibited to the world every evidence of an orderly, well regulated government, with infinitely greater strength and stability than the military republic from which she was divorced. Mexico, nevertheless, refused to recognize her independence notwithstanding her inability to make any effort for reconquest. The leading men of Texas anxiously desired that their national independence should continue, and the moral sense of the world, in contrasting the superior progress of the Anglo-American race with the anarchy and feebleness of Mexico, was naturally solicitous to behold the infant colony successful rather than to see it fall a prey to the passions of a people with whom it had no sympathy, and, in whose victory, they might witness the outpouring of a pent up wrath which would never cease in its vindictive persecutions until the province was entirely desolated.[43] This was not alone the common feeling in the United States, but it prevailed in Europe also. The British minister of foreign affairs, Lord Aberdeen, and that zealous partizan of liberty, Lord Brougham, took occasion in the house of peers in August, 1843, to express their solicitude as to the prospects of Texas. Lord Brougham characterized it as a country as large as France, possessing the greatest natural capabilities, but, at the same time he perceived in it an embryo state, (a large portion of whose soil was adapted to cultivation by white labor,) which might become a boundary and barrier against the slavery of the United States of America. If, by the good offices of England, Mexico could be induced to acknowledge Texan independence upon the condition of abolishing slavery, he suggested the hope that it would lead to the extinction of slavery in the southern States of our Union.
Lord Aberdeen replied to Lord Brougham, that England had not only acknowledged her independence, but had also negotiated with Texas a treaty of commerce as well as one for the abolition of the slave trade. He did not believe that there was any importation of slaves into Texas by sea, but, he alleged, there was a large influx of slaves from the United States to that country. As soon as negotiations were commenced with Texas, the utmost endeavors of England had been used to end the war which prevented the full recognition of the independence of Texas by Mexico; but all their endeavors had been met by difficulties, although he was happy to declare that an armistice had been established between the two powers which he hoped would lead to the absolute acknowledgment of her independence. In the existing state of negotiations between the parties, however, he thought it would not contribute to an useful end to express any opinion as to the state of those negotiations, nevertheless he assured his noble friend that the matter would be pressed by every means in the power of her majesty's ministers.
The answer of Lord Brougham to this conversational speech of the minister of foreign affairs, was brief but ominous. Nothing, he declared, could be more satisfactory to him, whilst the statement of his lordship "would be hailed with joy by all who were favorable to the object of anti-slavery societies."[44]
I do not design in this history to discuss either the slavery question or the British project of propagating seditious opinions upon negro servitude by means of diplomacy on this continent. But, when we remember the guaranties of our constitution and the preponderance of the black population in our southern States, it must be conceded that it requires no great degree of sensibility to alarm the white inhabitants of that section and to render them anxious to counteract the avowed machinations of Great Britain. The abstract question of the right of slavery is altogether distinct from slavery as it exists in this Union, and as the foundation of property, population, labor, and, even, existence in the south.
For many years past the fanaticism of freedom has been warring against slavery, until it has created in our country a fanaticism of slavery which was quite as relentless in its obstinacy. It was therefore, natural that individuals who had refused our own congress the right to interfere with slavery, by denying the privilege of petition for the abolition of slavery in the District of Columbia, should resist most ardently the jesuitical propagandism of a foreign power.