The complication of this vast scheme, leading to a consummation so direful as foreign war and domestic disunion, and having its root in personal ambition, and in scrip and land speculation, and spoliation claims—the way it was carried on, and the way it was defeated—altogether present one of the most instructive lessons which the working of our government exhibits; and the more so as the two prominent actors in the scheme had reversed their positions since Texas had been retroceded to Spain. Mr. Calhoun was then in favor of curtailing the area of slave territory, and as a member of Mr. Monroe's cabinet, counselled the establishment of the Missouri compromise line, which abolished slavery in all the upper half of the great province of Louisiana; and, as a member of the same cabinet, counselled the retrocession of Texas to Spain, which extinguished all the slave territory south of the compromise line. Mr. Calhoun was then against slavery extension, and so much in favor of extinguishing slave territory as to be a favorite in the free States, and beat Mr. Adams himself in those States in the presidential election of 1824—receiving more of their votes for Vice-President than Mr. Adams did for President. After the failure in 1833 to unite the slave States against the free ones on the Tariff agitation, he took up the slavery agitation—pursuing it during his life, and leaving it at his death as a legacy to the disciples in his political school. Mr. Tyler was a follower in these amputations and extinction of slave territory in 1819-'20: he was now a follower in the slavery agitation to get back the province which was then given away, or to make it the means of a presidential election, or of Southern dismemberment. This scheme had been going on for two years before it appeared above the political horizon; and the right understanding of the Texas annexation movement in 1844, requires the hidden scheme to be uncovered from its source, and laid open through its long and crooked course: which will be the subject of the next chapter, as shown at the time in a speech from Senator Benton.
[CHAPTER CXXXIX.]
TEXAS ANNEXATION TREATY: FIRST SPEECH OF MR. BENTON AGAINST IT: EXTRACTS.
Mr. Benton. The President, upon our call, sends us a map and a memoir from the Topographical bureau to show the Senate the boundaries of the country he proposes to annex. This memoir is explicit in presenting the Rio Grande del Norte in its whole extent as a boundary of the republic of Texas, and that in conformity to the law of the Texian Congress establishing its boundaries. The boundaries on the map conform to those in the memoir: each takes for the western limit the Rio Grande from head to mouth; and a law of the Texian Congress is copied into the margin of the map, to show the legal, and the actual, boundaries at the same time. From all this it results that the treaty before us, besides the incorporation of Texas proper, also incorporates into our Union the left bank of the Rio Grande, in its whole extent from its head spring in the Sierra Verde (Green Mountain), near the South Pass in the Rocky Mountains, to its mouth in the Gulf of Mexico, four degrees south of New Orleans, in latitude 26°. It is a "grand and solitary river," almost without affluents or tributaries. Its source is in the region of eternal snow; its outlet in the clime of eternal flowers. Its direct course is 1,200 miles; its actual run about 2,000. This immense river, second on our continent to the Mississippi only, and but little inferior to it in length, is proposed to be added in the whole extent of its left bank to the American Union! and that by virtue of a treaty for the re-annexation of Texas! Now, the real Texas which we acquired by the treaty of 1803, and flung away by the treaty of 1819, never approached the Rio Grande except near its mouth! while the whole upper part was settled by the Spaniards, and great part of it in the year 1694—just one hundred years before La Salle first saw Texas!—all this upper part was then formed into provinces, on both sides of the river, and has remained under Spanish, or Mexican authority ever since. These former provinces of the Mexican viceroyalty, now departments of the Mexican republic, lying on both sides of the Rio Grande from its head to its mouth, we now propose to incorporate, so far as they lie on the left bank of the river, into our Union, by virtue of a treaty of re-annexation with Texas. Let us pause and look at our new and important proposed acquisitions in this quarter. First: there is the department, formerly the province of New Mexico, lying on both sides of the river from its head spring to near the Paso del Norte—that is to say, half down the river. This department is studded with towns and villages—is populated—well cultivated—and covered with flocks and herds. On its left bank (for I only speak of the part which we propose to re-annex) is, first, the frontier village Taos, 3,000 souls, and where the custom-house is kept at which the Missouri caravans enter their goods. Then comes Santa Fé, the capital, 4,000 souls—then Albuquerque, 6,000 souls—then some scores of other towns and villages—all more or less populated, and surrounded by flocks and fields. Then come the departments of Chihuahua, Coahuila, and Tamaulipas, without settlements on the left bank of the river, but occupying the right bank, and commanding the left. All this—being parts of four Mexican departments—now under Mexican governors and governments—is permanently reannexed to this Union, if this treaty is ratified; and is actually reannexed from the moment of the signature of the treaty, according to the President's last message, to remain so until the acquisition is rejected by rejecting the treaty! The one-half of the department of New Mexico, with its capital, becomes a territory of the United States: an angle of Chihuahua, at the Paso del Norte, famous for its wine, also becomes ours: a part of the department of Coahuila, not populated on the left bank, which we take, but commanded from the right bank by Mexican authorities: the same of Tamaulipas, the ancient Nuevo San Tander (New St. Andrew), and which covers both sides of the river from its mouth for some hundred miles up, and all the left bank of which is in the power and possession of Mexico. These, in addition to the old Texas; these parts of four States—these towns and villages—these people and territory—these flocks and herds—this slice of the republic of Mexico, two thousand miles long, and some hundred broad—all this our President has cut off from its mother empire, and presents to us, and declares it is ours till the Senate rejects it! He calls it Texas! and the cutting off he calls re-annexation! Humboldt calls it New Mexico, Chihuahua, Coahuila, and Nuevo San Tander (now Tamaulipas); and the civilized world may qualify this re-annexation by the application of some odious and terrible epithet. Demosthenes advised the people of Athens not to take, but to re-take a certain city; and in that re laid the virtue which saved the act from the character of spoliation and robbery. Will it be equally potent with us? and will the re, prefixed to the annexation, legitimate the seizure of two thousand miles of a neighbor's dominion, with whom we have treaties of peace, and friendship, and commerce? Will it legitimate this seizure, made by virtue of a treaty with Texas, when no Texian force—witness the disastrous expeditions to Mier and to Santa Fé—have been seen near it without being killed or taken, to the last man?
The treaty, in all that relates to the boundary of the Rio Grande, is an act of unparalleled outrage on Mexico. It is the seizure of two thousand miles of her territory without a word of explanation with her, and by virtue of a treaty with Texas, to which she is no party. Our Secretary of State (Mr. Calhoun) in his letter to the United States chargé in Mexico, and seven days after the treaty was signed, and after the Mexican minister had withdrawn from our seat of government, shows full well that he was conscious of the enormity of this outrage; knew it was war; and proffered volunteer apologies to avert the consequences which he knew he had provoked.
The President, in his special message of Wednesday last, informs us that we have acquired a title to the ceded territories by his signature to the treaty, wanting only the action of the Senate to perfect it; and that, in the mean time, he will protect it from invasion, and for that purpose has detached all the disposable portions of the army and navy to the scene of action. This is a caper about equal to the mad freaks with which the unfortunate emperor Paul, of Russia, was accustomed to astonish Europe about forty years ago. By this declaration the thirty thousand Mexicans in the left half of the valley of the Rio del Norte are our citizens, and standing, in the language of the President's message, in a hostile attitude towards us, and subject to be repelled as invaders. Taos, the seat of the custom-house, where our caravans enter their goods, is ours: Santa Fé, the capital of New Mexico, is ours: Governor Armijo is our governor, and subject to be tried for treason if he does not submit to us: twenty Mexican towns and villages are ours; and their peaceful inhabitants, cultivating their fields and tending their flocks, are suddenly converted, by a stroke of the President's pen, into American citizens, or American rebels. This is too bad: and, instead of making themselves party to its enormities, as the President invites them to do, I think rather that it is the duty of the Senate to wash its hands of all this part of the transaction by a special disapprobation. The Senate is the constitutional adviser of the President, and has the right, if not the duty, to give him advice when the occasion requires it. I therefore propose, as an additional resolution, appliable to the Rio del Norte boundary only—the one which I will read and send to the Secretary's table—stamping as a spoliation this seizure of Mexican territory—and on which, at the proper time, I shall ask the vote of the Senate.
I now proceed a step further, and rise a step higher, Mr. President, in unveiling the designs and developing the conduct of our administration in this hot and secret pursuit after Texas. It is my business now to show that war with Mexico is a design and an object with it from the beginning, and that the treaty-making power was to be used for that purpose. I know the responsibility of a senator—I mean his responsibility to the moral sense of his country and the world—in attributing so grave a culpability to this administration. I know the whole extent of this responsibility, and shall therefore be careful to proceed upon safe and solid ground. I shall say nothing but upon proof—upon the proof furnished by the President himself—and ask for my opinions no credence beyond the strict letter of these proofs. For this purpose I have recourse to the messages and correspondence which the President has sent us, and begin with the message of the 22d of April—the one which communicated the treaty to the Senate. That message, after a strange and ominous declaration that no sinister means have been used—no intrigue set on foot—to procure the consent of Texas to the annexation, goes on to show exactly the contrary, and to betray the President's design to protect Texas by receiving her into our Union and adopting her war with Mexico.
I proceed to another piece of evidence to the same effect—namely, the letter of the present Secretary of State to Mr. Benjamin Green, our chargé at Mexico, under date of the 19th of April past. The letter has been already referred to, and will be only read now in the sentence which declares that the treaty has been made in the full view of war! for that alone can be the meaning of this sentence:
"It has taken the step (to wit, the step of making the treaty) in full view of all possible consequences, but not without a desire and a hope that a full and fair disclosure of the causes which induced it to do so, would prevent the disturbance of the harmony subsisting between the two countries, which the United States is anxious to preserve."