The United States was indeed deprived a few years later, at the time of the Gadsden Purchase, of the outlet to the Gulf of California which it should have had. Whether this was due to the climate of that region which made the surveyors shirk their duty, as one story goes, or to the drunkenness of the mapmakers which led them to draw the boundary line crooked, as another story has it, the result is unfortunate and might yet perhaps be rectified by a further purchase. The Southwest should have an outlet on the Gulf in the logic of the case.
This does not involve any desire to take over Lower California which is a peninsula of negligible value for Nordic purposes, and contains a Mexican population which under no circumstances should be incorporated in the United States. From a racial point of view it is indeed fortunate that the desire of James K. Polk's Administration to include the whole peninsula of Lower California in the transfer of sovereignty was not accomplished. Still more disastrous would have been a realization of the wishes of an important element in Congress which desired to annex a large part of northern Mexico.
Similarly, one can scarcely avoid being grateful nowadays that Cuba did not get its independence in the first quarter of the nineteenth century instead of at the end. Henry Clay and others, encouraging the Cuban patriots, had virtually arranged to have the island taken over by the United States. In this instance abolitionist sentiment in the North, which prevented an extension of slave territory, was more beneficial to the true interests of America than it was a generation later—for the acquisition of Cuba would have brought into the union an indigestible mass of Mediterraneans and blacks.
When the suspicions and jealousies of international relations abate somewhat, it may be possible to make a slight rectification of the Arizona boundary which will give the Southwest its intended outlet on the Gulf of California. Such a step would doubtless promote the prosperity of the adjoining Mexican territory in every way. If Mexico could be persuaded to accept a gift of some of the United States' possessions in the West Indies, in return for this favor, the whole transaction would be most satisfactory.
It is now easy to see that Mexico could not have retained Texas under any circumstances, but the catastrophe (from the Mexican point of view) was made quick and certain by the encouragement of American immigration, in spite of refusals to discuss a sale of the whole territory to the United States, and by an attempt to fasten an objectionable State religion on the immigrants they had invited.
In the days of the Lone Star Republic, immigration increased rapidly. The Mexican War not only gave unlimited advertising to the region but furnished many Northerners with an opportunity to see something of it first-hand, and by the close of that conflict there were some 200,000 Americans in Texas. During the decade from 1850 to 1860 the growth of the State was exceeded by few in the Union.
Unfortunately much of this population was made up of Negroes who have ever since formed one of the real handicaps of this immense American Empire. As we have seen, the great bulk of the population of eastern and southern Texas came from the adjoining slave States, and it was not until the time of the Civil War that the northern counties had begun to attract settlers from Illinois, Missouri, and Arkansas. The war put a stop to this movement, but it was resumed later.
Meanwhile southern and western Texas had been attracting a German emigration made up largely of Alpines from the States along the Upper Rhine. This reached serious proportions as early as 1842, when a group of noblemen with uncertain motives fostered an Emigration Society Land Company. The movement continued in force up to the Civil War and indeed had not ceased altogether until the outbreak of the World War. Though Texas had but 20,000 German-born in 1860, these were so concentrated that half of the entire population of the southern part of the State, in the region surrounding San Antonio, was German. Here, as elsewhere, the Germans greatly diminished their value to their adopted country by an unwise insistence on retaining the customs and the language of the Fatherland.
The history of any country demonstrates that national unity is a necessary condition of national survival. Those who have come to the United States of their own will, to profit by what opportunities they find may well be expected to yield a whole-hearted allegiance to the country which thus benefits them, or to move elsewhere.