Again, we shall presently find good reasons to believe, that had Mexico fairly examined our claims and frankly stated her financial difficulties, a lenient arrangement regarding what were after all moderate sums for a nation to pay could readily have been made. Further still, if Mexico was too poor to discharge her debts promptly, it was incumbent upon her, besides recognizing them, to show a certain appreciation of the indulgence accorded her; but instead of so doing she continued to harass American citizens, and showed, as we shall find, a distinct lack of good-will and even of straightforwardness in her dealings with us.
Finally, it has been repeated over and over again by American and Mexican writers that our claims were urged aggressively. But the history of the matter does not read in that way. Our demands for redress began early in Poinsett’s day. In October, 1829, Butler was directed to lay them before the Mexican government, but at the same time to avoid “anything like menace or defiance.” Morning after morning his table was covered with fresh American remonstrances against official conduct, he reported, and for years his efforts met only with rebuffs; yet his instructions were still to maintain amicable relations, and our government set him the example.[30]
OUR CLAIMS CONSIDERATELY URGED
In June, 1836, Ellis reported that “daily” acts of “injustice and oppression” continued to be perpetrated, while every application for redress was treated with “cold neglect”; yet the next month he was merely instructed to “make a fresh appeal” to the “sense of honor and justice” of the Mexican government, asking that our grievances “should be promptly and properly examined” and “suitable” redress be afforded. In order, however, to check what the British minister called “their usual system of evasion,” a satisfactory reply of some kind within three weeks was to be required, and should it not be made without “unnecessary” delay, Ellis, after giving a fortnight’s notice, was to withdraw. In October Monasterio, after delaying for weeks to answer Ellis, admitted that his predecessors had neglected this business, and promised he would give his first attention to our claims, many of which, as we know, were very simple, very old and very familiar to the foreign office; but his reply, the following month, was mere evasion. Why, asked Ellis, have not the claims presented during the past ten years been either accepted or rejected? But the mystery was not explained, and at the end of December, 1836—after waiting, not three weeks, but three months—he withdrew. Meanwhile Gorostiza distributed among the diplomats at Washington a pamphlet in which he accused our government of grossly dishonorable conduct in regard to Texas; and the unqualified approval of his superiors turned this impropriety into a grave international issue.[31]
President Jackson had originally felt most sympathetic toward Mexico; and although Butler and Ellis agreed that indulgence was a mistaken policy, and her official journal described all Americans as villains and all our claims as the pretexts of smugglers, yet in a Message of December, 1836, Jackson recommended courtesy and great forbearance. The evasions practised upon Ellis, however, and still more the approval of Gorostiza’s insulting pamphlet, sharpened his feelings, and early in February, 1837, he laid the subject of our claims anew before Congress, as it was his right and his duty to do, proposed to make the next demand for settlement from the deck of a warship, and asked for authority to undertake reprisals in case that step also should prove ineffectual. In the official view of Mexico, Gaines’s advance and Gorostiza’s withdrawal from Washington amounted to a formal rupture, even though Castillo, her ordinary representative, lingered in the United States until March; and in our own official opinion the endorsement of Gorostiza’s conduct, the refusal to examine our claims, and the return of Ellis could signify hardly less. Under such circumstances Jackson’s February Message was perfectly normal and proper.[32]
Congress took substantially the same view as the Executive; but there was some fear of Mexican privateers, a good deal of pity for a sister republic supposed to be the victim of circumstances, a little unwillingness to increase Jackson’s power, a pronounced wish to comply exactly with the treaty of amity, which required formal notice in advance of hostilities, and considerable hope that Santa Anna, who had now been restored alive to his country through the magnanimity of the Texans and the Americans, would reciprocate by endeavoring to adjust our claims. Another consideration, however, was probably still more potent. The administration party felt that should war be declared, the opposition would say its real object was the acquisition of Texas; and so Jackson’s well-known desire to obtain that region prevented in large measure, instead of causing, an outbreak of hostilities. It was decided, therefore, to make the final demand for redress in a peaceful manner, and to show full respect for what the House of Representatives described as our “ancient, though now estranged, friend.”[33]
In March, 1837, Van Buren became President, and found it necessary to take some action. The documents bearing on our claims were critically examined; fifty-seven cases, apparently free from doubt, were made out and proved; and in July, Robert Greenhow, interpreter of the state department, presented them at Mexico with a final demand for redress, adding that we had no desire to cause embarrassment by pressing for payment. On one point, however, he insisted: Gorostiza’s conduct must be disavowed. The minister of relations admitted in reply that certain of the cases did not require long examination, which was indeed true; but he said the President, while “most anxious” not to cause delay, wished that “each” of them should be examined “in its turn” and that “nothing should be left undone” which could promote “the most speedy and equitable” settlement.[34]
In November Martínez, a new minister to the United States, whom we received kindly even though Gorostiza’s action had not been disavowed, presented the answer of his government. Instead of the document officially transmitted by Greenhow, an obsolete, incomplete and necessarily inaccurate list of our claims, obtained nobody knows how, had been used; only four of our fifty-seven living cases had even been considered; and not one of these had been disposed of. Accordingly, when our Congress assembled in December, 1837, the Executive laid the whole subject before it anew, analyzed Mexico’s evasive reply—so different from what had been solemnly promised—announced that fresh outrages of a serious and exasperating sort had been committed, and plainly intimated that no hope of a peaceful settlement could be entertained. Evidently the patience of the United States had nearly come to an end; but before Congress was ready to act, Martínez proposed a scheme of arbitration, which—though formally decided upon by Mexico in May, 1837—it had apparently been her deliberate purpose to hold in reserve until all other dilatory tactics should have been exhausted.[35]
ARBITRATION AGREED UPON