Annexation of Texas

“ The annexation of the whole country as a territory, and that upon the avowed ground of laying it all out into slave states, is an open preparation for a Missouri question and a dissolution of the union. I am against that; and for annexation in the mode pointed out in my bill. I am for Texas — for Texas with peace and honor, and with the union. Those who want annexation on these terms should support my bill; those who want it without peace, without honor, and without the union, should stick to the lifeless corpse of the defunct treaty. ”

“ It was impossible to defeat or greatly to delay the annexation of Texas, and although those who opposed it but obeyed the dictates of common morality, they were fighting a battle beyond ordinary human powers.
Here was a great empire offering itself to us—a State which had gained its independence, and built itself into a certain measure of order and thrift through American valor and enterprise. She offered us a magnificent estate of 376,000 square miles of territory, all of it valuable, and much of it of unsurpassed richness and fertility. ”

“ As to the annexation of Texas to your Confederation, for what do you want it? Are you not large and unwieldy enough already? Do not two millions of square miles cover surface enough for the insatiate rapacity of your land-jobbers? I hope there are none of them within the sound of my voice. Have you not Indians enough to expel from the land of their fathers' sepulchres, and to exterminate? What, in a prudential and military point of view, would be the addition of Texas to your domain? It would be weakness, and not power. Is your southern and south-western frontier not sufficiently extensive? ”

“ The people of Texas are sovereign and independent. Under Providence they hold their destiny in their own hands. Justice to them requires that they should have been left free to decide the question of annexation for themselves without foreign interference and without being biassed by foreign influence. Not a doubt exists but that the people of the two Republics are anxious to form a re-union. Indeed, the enthusiastic unanimity which has been displayed by the citizens of Texas in favor of annexation is unexampled 585in the history of nations. ”

“ Texas can not submit to wrong. If this nation has heretofore withheld her rights; if her claims have been deterred for years and she does not at this time command the favorable consideration of Congress, it is not her fault. She received the solemn pledge of this Government to fix her boundaries long before the acquisition of California; that acquisition has been consequent upon the annexation of Texas, and has grown out of it ”

“ The matter was hurried through Congress; the Northern Democrats made no serious opposition, since they saw in this annexation a vast accession of territory around the Gulf of Mexico, of indefinite extent. Thus, Texas, on March 1, 1845, was offered annexation by a Joint Resolution of the Senate and House of Representatives, in the face of protests from the wisest men of the country, and in spite of certain hostilities with Mexico. ”

“ There is no point of view in which the proposition for annexation can be considered, that any serious obstacle in point of form presents itself. If this government be a confederation of states, then it is proposed to add another state to the confederation. If this government be a consolidation, then it is proposed to add to it additional territory and population. That we can annex, and afterwards admit, the cases of Florida and Louisiana prove. We can therefore deal with the people of Texas for the territory of Texas ”

“ The North, therefore, still had an imperial area from which to organize future free States, while the South had not a foot more territory from which to create slave States.
Sagaciously anticipating this contingency, the Southern States had been largely instrumental in setting up the independent State of Texas, and were now urgent in their demand for her annexation to the Union. Two days before the signing of the Iowa and Florida bill, Congress passed, and President Tyler signed, a joint resolution, authorizing the acquisition, annexation, and admission of Texas. ”

“ Nature herself has clearly marked the boundary between her and Texas by natural limits, too strong to be mistaken. There are few countries whose limits are so distinctly marked; and it would be our desire, if Texas should be united to us, to see them firmly established, as the most certain means of establishing permanent peace between the two countries, and strengthening and cementing their friendship. Such would be the certain consequence of permitting the annexation to take place now, with the acquiescence of Mexico ”

“ This misapprehension of the true feeling which disposed this country to look with such favor upon the annexation of Texas is very likely to produce the very state of public opinion which is erroneously supposed already to exist, and which would lead to that very result, the consequences of which we have endeavored to consider, much sooner than is dreamed of by those who are most reckless in giving the impulse. ”

“ With those disasters fresh in the minds of the people, Protection continued to be a leading issue in the succeeding Presidential campaign of 1844—but coupled with the Texas-annexation issue. In that campaign Henry Clay was the candidate of the Whig party and James K. Polk of the Democratic party. Polk was an ardent believer in the annexation policy and stood upon a platform declaring for the "re-occupation of Oregon and the re-annexation of Texas at the earliest practicable moment"—as if the prefix "re" legitimatized the claim in either case ”

“ To colonize in this way at once became popular in the South, and in a few years thousands of American citizens were settled in Texas.
For a while all went well; but in 1833 serious trouble began between the Mexican government and the Texans, who in 1836 declared their independence, founded the republic of Texas, [3] and sought admission into our Union as a state. Neither Jackson nor Van Buren favored annexation, so the question dragged on till 1844, when Tyler made with Texas a treaty of annexation and sent it to the Senate. ”

“ Congress' failure to carry into the Annexation Resolution the boundaries fixed by the 1836 Texas Boundary Act did not, of course, foreclose the possibility that the State's boundary might ultimately be fixed in accordance with that statute. It is significant in this regard to note the opinions ventured in Congress on the probable settlement of the boundary with Mexico which would occur subsequent to annexation. One group asserted that the Texan claims to the Rio Grande, particularly the portion which encompassed New Mexico, could not possibly be maintained. ”

“ Texas has been absorbed into the Union in the inevitable fulfilment of the general law which is rolling our population westward; the connexion of which with that ratio of growth in population which is destined within a hundred years to swell our numbers to the enormous population of two hundred and fifty millions (if not more) , is too evident to leave us in doubt of the manifest design of Providence in regard to the occupation of this continent. It was disintegrated from Mexico in the natural course of events, by a process perfectly legitimate on its own part, blameless on ours ”

“ Partly as a result of the slavery controversy then raging in the United States and partly in fear of war with Mexico, the United States refused annexation.
In the second period, Texas altered her attitude, withdrew her application for annexation, and made plans to perpetuate her republic. During this period, Texas was recognized by powers such as Great Britain, France, Holland, and Belgium. Americans, laboring under the influence of what they considered a Manifest Destiny, feared the influence of foreign powers in Texas. ”