ANNEXATION OF TEXAS: SECRET NEGOTIATION PRESIDENTIAL INTRIGUE:
SCHEMES OF SPECULATION AND DISUNION.
The President's annual message at the commencement of the session
1843-'44, contained an elaborated paragraph on the subject of Texas
and Mexico, which, to those not in the secret, was a complete
mystification: to others, and especially to those who had been
observant of signs, it foreshadowed a design to interfere in the war
between those parties, and to take Texas under the protection of the
Union, and to make her cause our own. A scheme of annexation was
visible in the studied picture presented of homogeniality between
that country and the United States, geographically and otherwise;
and which homogeniality was now sufficient to risk a war with Great
Britain and Mexico (for the message squinted at war with both),
to get Texas back, although it had not been sufficient when the
country was ceded to Spain to prevent Mr. Tyler from sanctioning
the cession--as he did as a member of the House in 1820 in voting
against Mr. Clay's resolution, disapproving and condemning that
cession. This enigmatical paragraph was, in fact, intended to break
the way for the production of a treaty of annexation, covertly
conceived and carried on with all the features of an intrigue,
and in flagrant violation of the principles and usages of the
government. Acquisitions of territory had previously been made by
legislation, and by treaty, as in the case of Louisiana in 1803, and
of Florida in 1819; but these treaties were founded upon legislative
acts--upon the consent of Congress previously obtained--and in which
the treaty-making power was but the instrument of the legislative
will. This previous consent and authorization of Congress had not
been obtained--on the contrary, had been eschewed and ignored by
the secrecy with which the negotiation had been conducted; and was
intended to be kept secret until the treaty was concluded, and then
to force its adoption for the purpose of increasing the area of
slave territory, or to make its rejection a cause for the secession
of the Southern States; and in either event, and in all cases, to
make the question of annexation a controlling one in the nomination
of presidential candidates, and also in the election itself.
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.