Mr. Nelson refused to lend the army and navy, because to do so was to violate our own constitution. This is very constitutional and proper language: and if it had not been reversed, there would have been no war with Mexico. But it was reversed. Soon after it was written, the present senator from South Carolina took the chair of the Department of State. Mr. Pinckney Henderson, whom Mr. Murphy mentions as coming on with full powers, on the faith of the pledge he had given, arrived also, and found that pledge entirely cancelled by Mr. Tyler's answer through Mr. Nelson; and he utterly refused to treat. The new secretary was in a strait; for time was short, and Texas must be had; and Messrs. Henderson and Van Zandt would not even begin to treat without a renewal of the pledge given by Mr. Murphy. That had been cancelled in writing, and the cancellation had gone to Texas, and had been made on high constitutional ground. The new secretary was profuse of verbal assurances, and even permitted the ministers to take down his words in writing, and read them over to him, as was shown by the senator from Texas (General Houston) when he spoke on this subject on Thursday last. But verbal assurances, or memoranda of conversations, would not do. The instructions under which the ministers acted required the pledge to be in writing, and properly signed. The then President, present senator from Texas, who had been a lawyer in Tennessee before he went to Texas, seemed to look upon it as a case under the statute of frauds and perjuries—a sixth case added to the five enumerated in that statute—in which the promise is not valid, unless reduced to writing, and signed by the person to be charged therewith, or by some other person duly authorized by him to sign for him. The firmness of the Texian ministers, under the instructions of President Houston, prevailed; and at last, and after long delay, the secretary wrote, and signed the pledge which Murphy had given, and in all the amplitude of his original promise.
The promise was clear and explicit to lend the army and navy to the President of Texas, to fight the Mexicans while they were at peace with us. That was the point—at peace with us. Mr. Calhoun's assumpsit was clear and explicit to that point; for the cases in which they were to fight were to be before the ratification of the treaty by the Senate, and consequently before Texas should be in our Union, and could be constitutionally defended as a part of it. And, that no circumstance of contradiction or folly should be wanting to crown this plot of crime and imbecility, it so happened that on the same day that our new secretary here was giving his written assumpsit to lend the army and navy to fight Mexico while we were at peace with her, the agent Murphy was communicating to the Texian government, in Texas, the refusal of Mr. Tyler, through Mr. Nelson, to do so, because of its unconstitutionality.
In conformity with the secretary's letter of April 11th, detachments of the army and navy were immediately sent to the frontiers of Texas, and to the coast of Mexico. The senator from South Carolina, in his colloquy with the senator from Texas (General Houston), on Thursday last, seemed anxious to have it understood that these land and naval forces were not to repel invasions, but only to report them to our government, for its report to Congress. The paper read by the senator from Texas, consisting of our secretary's words, taken down in his presence, and read over to him for his correction by the Texian ministers, establishes the contrary, and shows that the repulse of the invasion was in the mean time to be made. And in fact, any other course would have been a fraud upon the promise. For, if the invasion had to be made known at Washington, and the sense of Congress taken on the question of repelling it, certainly, in the mean time, the mischief would have been done—the invasion would have been made; and, therefore, to be consistent with himself, the President in the mean time was bound to repel the invasion, without waiting to hear what Congress would say about it. And this is what he himself tells us in his two messages to the Senate, of the 15th and 31st of May, doubtless written by his Secretary of State, and both avowing and justifying his intention to fight Mexico, in case of invasion, while the treaty of annexation was depending, without awaiting the action of Congress.
(The message.)
Here are the avowals of the fact, and the reasons for it—that honor required us to fight for Texas, if we intrigued her into a war. I admit that would be a good reason between individuals, and in a case where a big bully should involve a little fellow in the fight again after he had got himself parted; but not so between nations, and under our constitution. The engagement to fight Mexico for Texas, while we were at peace with Mexico, was to make war with Mexico!—a piece of business which belonged to the Congress, and which should have been referred to them! and which, on the contrary, was concealed from them, though in session, and present! and the fact only found out after the troops had marched, and then by dint of calls from the Senate.
The proof is complete that the loan of the land and naval forces was to fight Mexico while we were at peace with her! and this becomes a great turning point in the history of this war. Without this pledge given by our Secretary of State—without his reversal of Mr. Tyler's first decision—there could have been no war! Texas and Mexico would have made peace, and then annexation would have followed of itself. The victor of San Jacinto, who had gone forth and recovered by the sword, and erected into a new republic the beautiful domain given away by our secretary in 1819, was at the head of the Texas government, and was successfully and honorably conducting his country to peace and acknowledged independence. If let alone, he would have accomplished his object; for he had already surmounted the great difficulty of the first step—the armistice and the commencement of peace negotiations; and under the powerful mediation of Great Britain and France, the establishment of peace was certain. A heavenly benediction rests upon the labors of the peacemaker; and what is blessed of God must succeed. At all events, it does not lie in the mouth of any man—and least of all, in the mouth of the mischief-maker—to say that the peaceful mediation would not have succeeded. It was the part of all men to have aided, and wished, and hoped for success; and had it not been for our secretary's letter of April 11th, authentic facts warrant the assertion that Texas and Mexico would have made peace in the spring of 1844. Then Texas would have come into this Union as naturally, and as easily, and with as little offence to any body, as Eve went into Adam's bosom in the garden of Eden. There would have been no more need for intriguing politicians to get her in, by plots and tricks, than there was for some old hag of a match-making beldame, with her arts and allurements, her philters and her potions, to get Eve into Adam's bosom. And thus, the breaking up of the peace negotiations becomes the great turning point of the problem of the Mexican war.
The pledge of the 11th of April being signed, the treaty was signed, and being communicated to the Senate, it was rejected: and the great reason for the rejection was that the ratification of the treaty would have been WAR with Mexico! an act which the President and Senate together, no more than President Tyler and his Secretary of State together, had the power to make.
The treaty of annexation was signed, and in signing it the secretary knew that he had made war with Mexico. No less than three formal notices were on file in the Department of State, in which the Mexican government solemnly declared that it would consider annexation as equivalent to a declaration of war; and it was in allusion to these notices that the Secretary of State, in his notification to Mexico of the signature of the treaty, said it had been signed IN FULL VIEW OF ALL POSSIBLE CONSEQUENCES! meaning war as the consequence! At the same time, he suited the action to the word; he sent off detachments of the army and navy, and placed them under the command of President Houston, and made him the judge of the emergencies and exigencies in which they were to fight. This authority to the President of Texas was continued in full force until after the rejection of the treaty, and then only modified by placing the American diplomatic agent in Texas between President Houston and the naval and military commanders, and making him the medium of communication between a foreign President and our forces; but the forces themselves were not withdrawn. They remained on the Texian and Mexican frontier, waiting for the exigencies and emergencies in which they were to fight. During all that time a foreign President was commander-in-chief of a large detachment of the army and navy of the United States. Without a law of Congress—without a nomination from the President and confirmation by the Senate—without citizenship—without the knowledge of the American people—he was president-general of our land and sea forces, made so by the senator from South Carolina, with authority to fight them against Mexico with whom we were at peace—an office and authority rather above that of lieutenant-general!—and we are indebted to the forbearance and prudence of President Houston for not incurring the war in 1844, which fell upon us in 1846. This is a point—this secret and lawless appointment of this president-general to make war upon Mexico, while we were at peace with her—on which I should like to hear a constitutional argument from the senator from South Carolina, showing it to be constitutional and proper, and that of the proposed lieutenant-general unconstitutional and improper; and upon which he has erected himself into the foreman of the grand-jury of the whole American people, and pronounced a unanimous verdict for them before he had time to hear from the ten-thousandth part of them.
The treaty was rejected by the Senate; but so apprehensive was the senator of immediate war, that, besides keeping the detachments of the army and navy at their posts, a messenger was despatched with a deprecatory letter to Mexico, and the offer of a large sum of money (ten millions of dollars) to purchase peace from her, by inducing her to treat for a boundary which would leave Texas within our limits. This was report: and I would not mention it, if the senator was not present to contradict it, if not correct. Report at the time said from five to ten millions of dollars: from one of Mr. Shannon's letters, we may set it down at ten millions. Be it either sum, it will show that the senator was then secretly willing to pay an immense sum to pacify Mexico, although he now declares that he does not know how he will vote in relation to the three millions responsibly asked by Mr. Polk.
The secretary knew that he had made war with Mexico—that in accepting the gage three times laid down, he had joined an issue which that compound of Celtic and Roman blood, called Spanish, would redeem. I knew it, and said it on this floor, in secret session—for I did not then choose to say it in public—that if there was but one man of that blood in all Mexico, and he no bigger than General Tom Thumb, he would fight. Senators will recollect it. [Mr. Mangum nodded assent.]