Gen. Quitman, one of the generals of the Mexican War, was accused of having taken part in an expedition; although the fact was notorious and the accused was arrested on February 3, 1851, the jury discharged him.
Fillmore’s administration demanded the Island of Lobos from Peru; the annexation of the Hawaiian Archipelago was vigorously agitated; with Mexico the voided Garay Concession was disputed and no concealment was made of the intention to secure possession of a right of way across the Isthmus of Tehuantepec, and as little concealment was made relative to the desire of right of way in Nicaragua and Honduras at points where inter-oceanic communication was believed to be easy; it was left to the Governor of Texas, Lane, to gain possession of the Mesilla Valley and to qualify as aggressive the conduct of General Santa Anna and of the Governor of Chihuahua, because they protested against such an invasion and made military preparations; Edward Everett, Secretary of State, refused to take part in the convention to which France and Great Britain invited the United States, to guarantee to Spain the control of the Island of Cuba and to prevent the island from passing to the power of any other nation; the notes of these nations relative to the convention were insolently answered; their conquests in the present century were enumerated, and the advantages which the acquisition of Cuba had to the United States, it being asserted without concealment “that it was essential for her own security.” When, at Ostende, the plenipotentiaries of the United States, accredited to the governments of Spain, France, and England, were treating of the purchase of the Antillean island, for the sum of twenty million dollars, the leaders of these plenipotentiaries, Mr. Soule, was profoundly irritated because negotiations in the matter were not actively undertaken.
So much in regard to the direct participation taken by the American government in these movements, tending solely to augment the territory and the power of the Yankees on sea and land; as regards the expeditions and agitations undertaken by private parties with the indirect support of that government, the list is as long as it is instructive.
Apart from the attempts of Narciso López and other filibusters against Cuba, Rousset Boulbon, although working on his own account, drew all his supplies for the invasion of Sonora from the United States; Crab came into that same district with the hope of conquering it and annexing it, if he had not been opportunely routed by Gabilondo in Caborca; Zerman had an identical purpose in reaching California; Walker proclaimed the Republic of Lower California, placing upon the flag of that newest nation a single star, which, if his adventure had proved successful, would have come to be one more star in the North American flag; routed by General Blanco, he went to Central America, where his presence gave rise to a bloody war and innumerable disturbances.
We should never end if we were to enumerate, one by one, all the schemes which the brains beyond the Rio Grande engender for enlarging their territory and dismembering that of the American republics.
Mexico was compelled to spend great sums in combatting the filibusters who appeared and in shooting or severely punishing them; Spain was obliged to send numerous troops to Cuba and to constantly invoke the moral support of European cabinets; an energetic response had to be given to the proposition to buy Savannah harbor and a round denial to the claims for the island of St. Thomas and others belonging to Denmark and Holland; England was forced to establish long-drawn negotiations, resulting in the Clayton-Bulwer Treaty, which in part assured the independence of Central America; necessarily this unchecked appetite for lands and islands exhibited by the United States caused alarm and apprehension throughout Europe. Finally, it was necessary that the great Secessionist War should came, through which this nation expiated a part of its great crimes, a war which brought it to the verge of ruin, but which taught it, in time, to check itself upon the perilous descent, upon which Polk, Taylor, Fillmore, Pierce, and others had started it—men who, without having the qualities of great statesmen, contributed, by their policy and their counsels, to bring about this great crisis to which their unbounded ambition and the cancer infecting their institutions bore them.
It would seem that those men proceeded with the most refined malice, if they were not blind, when we consider that they said with the greatest calmness, as James Buchanan, in mounting to the Capitol on March 4, 1857, that the great territorial increase which the United States had achieved since its independence was due to pacific and legal measures; now by purchase, now voluntary—as with Texas in 1836—adding: “Our past history prohibits the acquiring of territory in the future, unless the acquisition is sanctioned by the laws of justice and of honor.”
This is equivalent to justifying the conduct of Jackson in Florida, that of Fremont in California, of Austin in Texas, of Gaines in the Sabine district, the continued spoliations of the Indian tribes in the valleys of the Ohio and Mississippi and to the west of the Alleghanies, the scandalous invasion of California in 1842, the no less scandalous war against Mexico, and so many, many deeds which, to the shame of the United States, are recorded in her history.
Thus, as in the preceding chapter, we briefly made known the situation of Mexico in 1859, in this one we have sketched in bold outlines, the neighboring nation, in its tendencies and aspirations, in order that our readers may the better appreciate the bearings of the events which we are about to narrate in the following chapters.