Page:American Historical Review, Volume 12.djvu/798

 PRESIDENT JACKSON AND THE TEXAS REVOLUTION John OL'I^■CY Adams with his monumental diary proved that General Jackson was willing in 1819 to see the United States re- linquish her vague claims to Texas in return for the definite ad- vantages of the Floridas.^ But when the Texas fever did attack him the treaty of 1819 appeared an egregious blunder, and, while fiercely denying that he had ever approved it,= he spent no little time and energy in trying to rectify it. Did he in doing so resort to the Machiavellian intrigues which have sometimes been ascribed to him?^ It is the aim of the present paper to submit evidence for the defense which it is hoped may point the way to a positive acquittal. It will consider: (i) the efforts of President Jackson to purchase Texas, (2) his connection with Sam Houston's alleged plot to revolutionize the country, and (3) the charges made against the government of breach of neutrality during the Texas revolution, (a) in contributing men, money, and supplies to the rebels, and (hi) in the occupation of Nacogdoches by General Gaines. To Adams the treaty was always a blunder. He opposed it when it was made, and within twenty days of his inauguration as president had taken steps to regain as much of Texas as its new mistress could be induced to surrender. On March 26, 1825, Clay at his request instructed Poinsett to appoach the Mexican government for a readjustment of the Texan boundary. The Sabine was unsatisfactory to the United States, and he suggested that the Brazos, the Colorado, or even the Rio Grande might be substituted for it. Nothing came of this, and again in 1827 (March 15) Clay wrote Poinsett that the President was willing to promote the success of the negotiation " by throwing into it other motives than those which strictly belong to the subject itself". Therefore he was authorized to offer a million dollars for a line beginning at the mouth of the Rio Grande, following that river and the Pecos to the source of the latter, thence north to the Arkansas, and then 'Adams, Memoirs, IV. 238-239, XI. 348, 349, XII. 131; Sumner, Andrew Jackson, 67 ; Parton, Life of Atidrew Jaekson, II. 584-588. = Schouler, History of the United Slates. IV. 251 and note; Niles's Register. L. 185. 'Adams, Memoirs, XI. 349; Wise, Seven Decades of the Union, 148; Sumner. Andrc-v Jackson, 354; Schouler, History of the United States. IV. 251. 78S