Yours affectionately,

James Buchanan.

P. S.—Give my love to Mary and all the rest.

CHAPTER XIX.
1844–1845.

ANNEXATION OF TEXAS—ELECTION OF PRESIDENT POLK—THE DEPARTMENT OF STATE ACCEPTED BY MR. BUCHANAN.

In the Presidential election of 1844, there was a third party in the field. By this time, the anti-slavery sentiment in some of the Northern States had taken the form of a political organization, which called itself the “Liberty” party, and was called by the others the party of the “Abolitionists.” Their candidate for the Presidency was Mr. James G. Birney, of Ohio, a gentleman who had taken a leading part in organizing “The American Anti-Slavery Society,” and was at this time its secretary. He had never held a public office. Texas, which had in 1836 made itself independent of Mexico, had been for more than nine years a slaveholding country, with a republican form of government. Between that government and the United States a secret treaty was negotiated, after Mr. Tyler became President, for the annexation of Texas to this Union. It had been submitted to the Senate, and had been rejected, chiefly because Texas claimed to carry her western boundary to the Rio Grande; and to incorporate her with the United States and to adopt that claim would, it was supposed, give Mexico a just cause for war. After the sudden death of Mr. Upshur,[[89]] who became Secretary of State when Mr. Webster retired from President Tyler’s cabinet, Mr. Calhoun, who succeeded him, took up and carried out a new negotiation, which Mr. Upshur had begun, for making Texas a part of the United States by the action of Congress. This project was pending, and more or less suspected, or believed not to have been relinquished, when the three parties made their nominations for the Presidency. The Democratic party, by the nomination of Mr. Polk, and by their avowed declarations, made the annexation of Texas distinctly one of their party measures. The Whigs, in nominating Mr. Clay, selected a candidate who was understood to oppose the annexation, not because Texas was a slaveholding country, but because it might lead to a war with Mexico. They did not proclaim it as a part of the policy of their party to prevent the annexation of any more slave territory. This was one of the principal reasons why Mr. Birney drew many votes away from Mr. Clay. As Mr. Polk obtained a majority of sixty-five electoral votes over Mr. Clay, and as six of the States which voted for him were Northern and non-slaveholding States, including both Pennsylvania and New York, the Democratic party claimed a right to say that the country had pronounced for the annexation of Texas, its slavery notwithstanding. The correspondence between the Government of the United States and Texas was submitted to Congress by President Tyler, in December, 1844. Joint resolutions for the annexation of Texas were finally adopted by Congress on the 1st of March, 1845. They admitted Texas into the Union, as a State whose constitution recognized slavery, and they also pledged the faith of the United States to allow of the future formation of four more States out of Texas, and to admit them into the Union, either with or without slavery, as their constitutions might require, if formed below the Missouri compromise line of 36° 30′, but if formed above that line, slavery was to be excluded. In the Senate, there were twenty-seven votes for the admission of Texas on these conditions, and twenty-five votes against it; of the affirmative votes, thirteen were from free States, and four of these were from New England. The Missouri compromise line was extended through Texas; the “Wilmot Proviso,” which aimed to exclude slavery from the whole of this newly acquired region, came up a year later.

Mr. Buchanan’s course as a Senator, on these resolutions, can easily be inferred from what has already appeared in regard to his sentiments on the whole subject of Texan independence, and the relations of that country to the United States. But the official record shows, with entire distinctness, that against the constitutional objection which maintained that new States could not be admitted into the Union unless they had lawfully arisen within the United States, he held with those who rejected this restriction, and who maintained that a foreign State could be made a member of the Union. After the joint resolutions had come before the Senate from the House of Representatives, the Senate Committee on Foreign Relations, by a majority report, recommended their rejection. Mr. Buchanan, who was a member of that committee, did not make a minority report, but on the 27th of February (1845), he said:

He did not rise to debate the question. He had heard some of his respected friends on this side of the Senate, in whose sincerity he had the most entire confidence, observe that if these resolutions should pass the Senate, the Constitution would receive a mortal stab. If Mr. B. thought so, great as was the acquisition we were about to make, he should be the last man in existence to acquire the richest benefit the world could hold out to our grasp at such a price.

Mr. B. said he might have assumed the privilege of reply which belonged to him from the position he occupied on the Committee on Foreign Relations; but he waived it. Not because the arguments on the other side had not been exceedingly ingenious and plausible, and urged with great ability; but because all the reasoning in the world could not abolish the plain language of the Constitution, which declared that “new States might be admitted by Congress into the Union.” But what new States? The convention had answered that question in letters of light, by rejecting the proposed limitation of this grant, which would have confined it to States lawfully arising within the United States. The clause was introduced with this limitation, and, after full discussion, it ended in the shape it now held, without limitation or restriction of any kind. This was a historical fact. It could not be denied. Planting himself upon that fact, and having heard no argument which shook the position—believing, as he most conscientiously did believe, that the Constitution would not be violated in the least by the adoption of the pending resolutions, he here entered his solemn protest against the solemn protests which had been made on the other side, and which went almost the length of implying that he, and the advocates of these resolutions, were knowingly and of design violating the Constitution and their oaths, to secure a favorite political measure. This was the greatest public act in which Mr. Buchanan had ever had the honor of taking an humble part; he should do it cheerfully, gladly, gloriously, because he believed that his vote would confer blessings innumerable upon his fellow-men. now, henceforward, and forever.

Mr. Berrien said he would not consent that this debate should close with the declaration of the Senator from Pennsylvania (Mr. Buchanan), that the convention had not determined the sense of the term “new States.”