The time had now come for the interrogation of the candidates, and it was done with all the tact which the delicate function required. The choice of the interrogator was the first point. He must be a friend, ostensible if not real, to the party interrogated. If real, he must himself be deceived, and made to believe that he was performing a kindly service; if not, he must still have the appearance. And for Mr. Van Buren's benefit a suitable performer was found in the person of Mr. Hamett, a representative in Congress from Mississippi, whose letter was a model for the occasion, and, in fact has been pretty well followed since. It abounded in professions of friendship to Mr. Van Buren—approached him for his own good—sought his opinion from the best of motives; and urged a categorical reply, for or against, immediate annexation. The sagacious Mr. Van Buren was no dupe of this contrivance, but took counsel from what was due to himself; and answered with candor, decorum and dignity. He was against immediate annexation, because it was war with Mexico, but for it when it could be done peaceably and honorably: and he was able to present a very fair record, having been in favor of getting back the country (in a way to avoid difficulties with Mexico) when Secretary of State, under President Jackson. His letter was sent to a small circle of friends at Washington before it was delivered to its address; but to be delivered immediately; which was done, and soon went into the papers.
Mr. Calhoun had superseded the necessity of interrogation in his letter of acceptance of the State Department: he was a hot annexationist, although there was an ugly record to be exhibited against him. In his almost thirty years of public life he had never touched Texas, except for his own purposes. In 1819, as one of Mr. Monroe's cabinet, he had concurred in giving it away, in order to conciliate the anti-slavery interest in the Northeast by curtailing slave territory in the Southwest. In 1836 he moved her immature annexation, in order to bring the question into the presidential election of that year, to the prejudice of Mr. Van Buren; and urged instant action, because delay was dangerous. Having joined Mr. Van Buren after his election, and expecting to become his successor, he dropped the annexation for which he had been so impatient, and let the election of 1840 pass by without bringing it into the canvass; and now revived it for the overthrow of Mr. Van Buren, and for the excitement of a sectional controversy, by placing the annexation on strong sectional grounds. And now, at the approach of the election in 1844, after years of silence, he becomes the head advocate of annexation; and with all this forbidding record against him, by help of General Jackson's letter, and the general sentiment in favor of annexation, and the fictitious alarm of British abolition and hostile designs, he was able to appear as a champion of Texas annexation, baffling the old and consistent friends of the measure with the new form which had been given to the question. Mr. Clay was of this class. Of all the public men he was able to present the best and fairest Texas record. He was opposed to the loss of the province in 1819, and offered resolutions in the House of Representatives, supported by an ardent speech, in which he condemned the treaty which gave it away. As Secretary of State, under Mr. Adams, he had advised the recovery of the province, and opened negotiations to that effect, and wrote the instructions under which Mr. Poinsett, the United States minister, made the attempt. As a western man, he was the natural champion of a great western interest—pre-eminently western, while also national. He was interrogated according to the programme, and answered with firmness that, although an ancient and steadfast friend to the recovery of the country, he was opposed to immediate annexation, as adopting the war with Mexico, and making that war by treaty, when the war-making power belonged to Congress. There were several other democratic candidates, the whole of whom were interrogated, and answered promptly in favor of immediate annexation—some of them improving their letters, as advised, before publication. Mr. Tyler, also, now appeared above the horizon as a presidential candidate, and needed no interrogatories to bring out his declaration for immediate annexation, although he had voted against Mr. Clay's resolution condemning the sacrifice of the province. In a word, the Texas hobby was multitudinously mounted, and violently ridden, and most violently by those who had been most indifferent to it before. Mr. Clay and Mr. Calhoun were the only candidates that answered like statesmen, and they were both distanced.
The time was approaching for the convention to meet, and, consequently, for the conclusion of the treaty of annexation, which was to be a touchstone in it. It was signed the 12th of April, and was to have been sent to the Senate immediately, but was delayed by a circumstance which created alarm—made a balk—and required a new turn to be taken. Mr. Van Buren had not yet answered the interrogatories put to him through Mr. Hamett, or rather his answer had not yet been published. Uneasiness began to be felt, lest, like so many others, he should fall into the current, and answer in a way that would enable him to swim with it. To relieve this uncertainty, Mr. Blair was applied to by Mr. Robert J. Walker to write to him, and get his answer. This was a very proper channel to apply through. Mr. Blair, as the fast friend of Mr. Van Buren, had the privilege to solicit him. Mr. Calhoun, as the political adversary of Mr. Van Buren, could not ask Mr. Blair to do it. Mr. Walker stood in a relation to be ready for the work all round; as a professing friend of Mr. Van Buren, though co-operating with Mr. Calhoun and all the rest against him, he could speak with Mr. Blair on a point which seemed to be for Mr. Van Buren's benefit. As co-operating with Mr. Calhoun, he could help him against an adversary, though intending to give him the go-by in the end. As being in all the Texas mysteries, he was a natural person to ferret out information on every side. He it was, then, to whose part it fell to hasten the desired answer from Mr. Van Buren, and through the instrumentality of Mr. Blair. Mr. Blair wrote as solicited, not seeing any trap in it; but had received no answer up to the time that the treaty was to go to the Senate. Ardent for Texas, and believing in the danger of delay, he wrote and published in the Globe a glowing article in favor of immediate annexation. That article was a poser and a dumbfounder to the confederates. It threw the treaty all aback. Considering Mr. Blair's friendship for Mr. Van Buren, and their confidential relations, it was concluded that this article could not have been published without his consent—that it spoke his sentiments—and was in fact his answer to the letter which had been sent to him. Here was an ugly balk. It seemed as if the long intrigue had miscarried—as if the plot was going to work out the contrary way, and elevate the man it was intended to put down. In this unexpected conjuncture a new turn became indispensable—and was promptly taken.
Mention has been made in the forepart of this chapter, of the necessity which was felt to obtain something from London to bolster up the accusation of that formidable abolition plot which Great Britain was hatching in Texas, and on the alleged existence of which the whole argument for immediate annexation reposed. The desired testimony had been got, and oracularly given to the public, as being derived from a "private letter from a citizen of Maryland, then in London." The name of this Maryland citizen was not given, but his respectability and reliability were fully vouched; and the testimony passed for true. It was to the point in charging upon the British government, with names and circumstances, all that had been alleged; and adding that her abolition machinations were then in full progress. This went back to London, immediately transmitted there by the British minister at Washington, Sir Richard Pakenham; and being known to be false, and felt to be scandalous, drew from the British Secretary of State (Lord Aberdeen) an indignant, prompt, and peremptory contradiction. This contradiction was given in a despatch, dated December 26th, 1843. It was communicated by Sir Richard Pakenham to Mr. Upshur, the United States Secretary of State, on the 26th day of February, 1844—a few days before the lamentable death of that gentleman by the bursting of the Princeton gun. This despatch, having no object but to contradict an unfounded imputation, required no answer—and received none. It lay in the Department of State unacknowledged until after the treaty had been signed, and until the day of the appearance of that redoubtable article in the Globe, which had been supposed to be Mr. Van Buren's answer to the problem of immediate annexation. Then it was taken up, and, on the 18th day of April, was elaborately answered by Mr. Calhoun in a despatch to the British minister—not to argue the point of the truth of the Maryland citizen's private letter—but to argue quite off upon a new text. It so happened that Lord Aberdeen—after the fullest contradiction of the imputed design, and the strongest assurances of non-interference with any slavery policy either of the United States or of Texas—did not stop there; but, like many able men who are not fully aware of the virtue of stopping when they are done, went on to add something more, of no necessary connection or practical application to the subject—a mere general abstract declaration on the subject of slavery; on which Mr. Calhoun took position, and erected a superstructure of alarm which did more to embarrass the opponents of the treaty and to inflame the country, than all other matters put together. This cause for this new alarm was found in the superfluous declaration, "That Great Britain desires, and is constantly exerting herself to procure the general abolition of slavery throughout the world." This general declaration, although preceded and followed by reiterated assurances of non-interference with slavery in the United States, and no desire for any dominant influence in Texas, were seized upon as an open avowal of a design to abolish slavery every where. These assurances were all disregarded. Our secretary established himself upon the naked declaration, stripped of all qualifications and denials. He saw in them the means of making to a northern man (Mr. Van Buren) just as perilous the support as the opposition of immediate annexation. So, making the declaration of Lord Aberdeen the text of a most elaborate reply, he took up the opposite ground (support and propagation of slavery), arguing it generally in relation to the world, and specially in relation to the United States and Texas; and placing the annexation so fully upon that ground, that all its supporters must be committed to it. Here was a new turn, induced by Mr. Blair's article in the Globe, and by which the support of the treaty would be as obnoxious in the North as opposition to it would be in the South.
It must have been a strange despatch for a British minister to receive—an argument in favor of slavery propagandism—supported by comparative statements taken from the United States census, between the numbers of deaf, dumb, blind, idiotic, insane, criminal, and paupers among the free and the slave negroes—showing a large disproportion against the free negroes; and thence deducing a conclusion in favor of slavery. It was a strange diplomatic despatch, and incomprehensible except with a knowledge of the circumstances in which it was written. It must have been complete mystification to Lord Aberdeen; but it was not written for him, though addressed to him, and was sent to those for whom it was intended long before he saw it. The use that was made of it showed for whom it was written. Two days after its date, and before it had commenced its maritime voyage to London, it was in the American Senate—sent in with the treaty, with the negotiation of which it had no connection, being written a week after its signature, and after the time that the treaty would have been sent in had it not been for the appearance of the article (supposed to speak Mr. Van Buren's sentiments) in the Globe. It was no embarrassment to Mr. Van Buren, whose letter in answer to the interrogatories had been written, and was soon after published. It was an embarrassment to others. It made the annexation a sectional and a slavery question, and insured the rejection of the treaty. It disgusted northern senators; and that was one of the objects with which it had been written. For the whole annexation business had been conducted with a double aspect—one looking to the presidency, the other to disunion; and the latter the alternative, to the furtherance of which the rejection of the treaty by northern votes was an auxiliary step.
And while the whole negotiation bore that for one of its aspects from the beginning, this ex post facto despatch, written after the treaty was signed, and given to the American public before it got to the British Secretary of State, became the distinct revelation of what had been before dimly shadowed forth. All hope of the presidency from the Texas intrigue had now failed—the alternative aspect had become the absolute one; and a separate republic, consisting of Texas and some Southern States, had become the object. Neither the exposure of this object nor the history of the attempted annexation belong to this chapter. A separate chapter is required for each. And this incident of the Maryland citizen's private letter from London, Lord Aberdeen's contradiction, and the strange despatch of Mr. Calhoun to him, are only mentioned here as links in the chain of the presidential intrigue; and will be dismissed with the remark that the Maryland citizen was afterwards found out, and was discovered to be a citizen better known as an inhabitant of Washington than of Maryland; and that the private letter was intended to be for public use and paid for out of the contingent fund of the State Department; and the writer, a person whose name was the synonym of subserviency to Mr. Calhoun; namely, Mr. Duff Green. All this was afterwards brought out under a call from the United States Senate, moved by the writer of this View, who had been put upon the track by some really private information: and when the Presidential Message was read in the Senate, disclosing all these facts, he used an expression taken from a Spanish proverb which had some currency at the time: "At last the devil is pulled from under the blanket."
The time was approaching for the meeting of the democratic presidential convention, postponed by collusion with the whigs (the managers in each party), from the month of December to the month of May—the 27th day of it. It was now May, and every sign was not only auspicious to Mr. Van Buren, but ominous to his opponents. The delegates almost universally remained under instructions to support him. General Jackson, seeing how his letter to Mr. Brown had been used, though ignorant of the artifice by which it had been got from him, and justly indignant at finding himself used for a foe and against a friend, and especially when he deemed that foe dangerous to the Union—wrote a second Texas letter, addressed to the public, in which, while still adhering to his immediate annexation opinions, also adhered to Mr. Van Buren as his candidate for the presidency; and this second letter was a wet blanket upon the fires of the first one. The friends of Mr. Calhoun, seeing that he would have no chance in the Baltimore convention, had started a project to hold a third one in New York; a project which expired as soon as it got to the air; and in connection with which Mr. Cass deemed it necessary to make an authoritative contradiction of a statement made by Mr. Duff Green, who undertook to convince him, in spite of his denials, that he had agreed to it. In proportion as Mr. Calhoun was disappearing from this presidential canvass, Mr. Tyler was appearing in it; and eventually became fully developed as a candidate, intrusively on the democratic side; but his friends, seeing no chance for him in the democratic national convention, he got up an individual or collateral one for himself—to meet at the same time and place; but of this hereafter. This chapter belongs to the intrigue against Mr. Van Buren.