Occasions upon which the eminent right of self protection has been adopted as a principle of action in the United States, are not wanting in our political history. The circumstances in all, are of course not precisely the same, but the policy is identical. The conduct of our government in regard to General Jackson's invasion of Florida for the suppression of Indian cruelties may be referred to. But congress might have found a still more analogous case, in the dispute between Spain and the United States as to the eastern limits of Louisiana. Spain alleged that Florida extended to the Mississippi, embracing what was then a wilderness, but, now, forms the populous States of Alabama and Mississippi; while our government asserted that all the territory eastward of the Mississippi and extending to the Rio Perdido belonged of right to us by virtue of the treaty concluded at Paris on the 30th of April, 1803. By acts of congress in 1803 and 1804 the president was authorized to take possession of the territory ceded by France, to establish a provisional government, to lay duties on goods imported into it; and, moreover, whenever he deemed it expedient, to erect the bay and river Mobile into a separate district, in which he might establish a port of entry and delivery.
In 1810, President Madison believing that the United States had too long acquiesced in the temporary continuance of this territory under Spanish domain, and that nothing was to be gained from Spain by candid discussion and amicable negotiation for several years, solved the difficulty by taking possession of Mobile and Baton Rouge and extending our jurisdiction to the Perdido. This possession, he took means to ensure, if needful, by military force. Mr. Madison's conduct was assailed in congress by the federalists who regarded it as an unjustifiable and offensive demonstration against Spain, but it was defended with equal warmth by the opposition,—especially by Mr. Clay,—and the Rio Perdido has ever since continued to form the western limit of Florida.[96]
When nations are about to undertake the dread responsibility of war, and to spread the sorrow and ruin which always mark the pathway of victorious or defeated armies, they should pause to contemplate the enormity of their enterprise as well as the principles that can alone justify them in the sight of God and man. Human life cannot be lawfully destroyed, assailed or endangered for any other object than that of just defence of person or principle, yet it is not a legal consequence that defensive wars are always just.[97]
"It is the right of a State," said that profound moralist and statesman, Sir James Mackintosh, "to take all measures necessary for her safety if it be attacked or threatened from without: provided always that reparation cannot otherwise be obtained; that there is a reasonable prospect of obtaining it by arms; and that the evils of the contest are not probably greater than the mischiefs of acquiescence in the wrong; including, on both sides of the deliberation, the ordinary consequences of the example as well as the immediate effects of the act. If reparation can otherwise be obtained, a nation has no necessary, and therefore no just cause of war; if there be no probability of obtaining it by arms, a government cannot, with justice to their own nation, embark it in war; and, if the evils of resistance should appear on the whole greater than those of submission, wise rulers will consider an abstinence from a pernicious exercise of right as a sacred duty to their own subjects, and a debt which every people owes to the great commonwealth of mankind, of which they and their enemies are alike members. A war is just against the wrongdoer when reparation for wrong cannot otherwise be obtained; but is then only conformable to all the principles of morality when it is not likely to expose the nation by whom it is levied to greater evils than it professes to avert, and when it does not inflict on the nation which has done the wrong, sufferings altogether disproportioned to the extent of the injury. When the rulers of a nation are required to determine a question of peace or war, the bare justice of their case against the wrongdoer never can be the sole, and is not always the chief matter on which they are morally bound to exercise a conscientious deliberation. Prudence in conducting the affairs of their subjects is in them a part of justice."
These are the true principles by which Mexico should have judged the controversy between us, before she rejected all our efforts to negotiate, and forced our government to prepare for hostilities.
The idea of war, for mere conquest, seems now to be obsolete among civilized nations. To political dominion, as exhibited in the various governments of the old world, and in most of the new, geographical limits are definitely assigned. This fact must, hereafter, greatly modify the objects of war, by narrowing them to principles instead of territory. Principles, however, are always the fair subjects of controversy for the diplomatic art. Yet such is the perversity of human nature, that, although we are convinced of the propriety and possibility of adjusting our disputes by reason, we nevertheless go to war for these very principles, and, after having done each other an incalculable amount of injury, at last sit down like cripples, to negotiate the very matters which ought to have been treated and terminated diplomatically at first. It is, perhaps, the folly of mankind to believe that there is more wisdom in negotiators and diplomacy when nations are lame and weakened by war than when they are full of the vigorous energy and intelligence of peace!
Note.—It may be useful to record the following proclamation of General Woll, before annexation, in order to show, that the agreements between Santa Anna and the Texans in 1836, are not the only Mexican documents in existence which seemed to open the boundary question between Texas and Tamaulipas.
"Headquarters of the Army of the North, Mier, June 20, 1844.