Page:Centennial History of Oregon 1811-1912, Volume 1.djvu/364



"In the meantime, she is also moving an army along the western frontier from Canada, which, in co-operation with the army from Texas, spreads ruin and havoc from the lakes to the gulf of Mexico.

"Who can estimate the national loss we may sustain, before such a movement could be repelled with such forces as we could organize on short notice ?

"I return you my thanks for your kind letter on this subject, and subscribe myself, with great sincerity, your friend and obedient servant,

Ai^DREW Jackson.

"Hon. a. V. Brown."

This question was also brought before the legislatures of the slaveholding states for expression of opinion. A committee of the state of Mississippi re- porting thereon, said, "Your committee are fully persuaded that this protection to her (slaveholding) interests will be afforded by the annexation of Texas; an equipoise of influence in the halls of congress will be secured which will f uiiiisli us a permanent guarantee of protection."

And so by one subterfuge after another the settlement of the Oregon boundary line was held back until after Texas was admitted to the Union as slave ter- ritory, and upon the express provision of Congress that four slave states might be carved out of Texas. The annexation of Texas and its proposed division into four slaveholding states was mainly the work of John C. Calhoun who had served as secretary of state in the Harrison-Tyler administration from 1841 to 1844. Calhoun saw nothing wrong in the institution of slavery. In his eyes it was not only good, but a positive good to both the white and the black race. He regarded slavery as a perfectly natural relation ; and that if the abolition move- ment then in 1840 being first agitated, should ever succeed, the fate of the southern people would be worse than that of the native Indians. Calhoun was an Irish Presbyterian of the most rigid, arbitrary and unyielding faith, and be believed in his pro-slavery sentiments with his whole soul. He was a bold, brave leader of men of great ability, and of an uncompromising disposition. He swayed the Harrison- Tyler administration to his purposes, forced the annex- ation of Texas, brought on the war against Mexico to seize more slave territory and xised neglected Old Oregon as a pawn on the international chess board to keep the British from seizing Texas or California. The annexation of Texas was formally completed on the 1st day of March, 1845, three days before James K. Polk was inaugurated the eleventh president of the United States. The ques- tion had been carefully nursed along during the entire administration of Tyler and Calhoun. Tyler, a very common-place man, had been extremely anxious to hasten the annexation of Texas as a matter of great moment to distinguish his administration; but Calhoim had been as equally anxious to hold the project back to the last minute, shrewdly seeing that it might arouse such a bitter anti- slavery sentiment in all the northern states as to endanger the election of a southern man to succeed Tyler. And to forestall any such a political revulsion, Calhoun cooked up the war-cry of ' ' Fifty-Four Forty or Fight, " as a platform for James K. Polk to run on to succeed Tyler. It was a great game, shrewdly and successfully played — "A good enough Morgan until after the election." And in all this double-dealing and duplicity the British agents had played into the hands of the slaveholders; as they always did, believing that sooner or later