Page:Mexico, Aztec, Spanish and Republican, Vol 1.djvu/352





Slidell was negotiating, and, in consequence of the anticipated failure of his effort to be received,—as was clearly indicated by the conduct of the Mexican government upon his arrival in the capital,—General Taylor, who had been stationed at Corpus Christi, in Texas, since the fall of 1845, with a body of regular troops, was directed, on the 13th of January, 1846, to move his men to the mouth of the Rio Grande. He, accordingly left his encampment on the 8th of March, and, on the 25th, reached Point Isabel, having encountered no serious opposition on the way. The march to the Rio Grande has been made the subject of complaint by politicians in Mexico and the United States, who believed that the territory lying between that river and the Nueces, was not the property of Texas. But inasmuch as Mexico still continued vehemently to assert her political right over the whole of Texas, the occupation of any part of its soil, south of the Sabine, by American troops, was in that aspect of the case, quite as much an infringement of Mexican sovereignty, as the march of our troops, from the Nueces to the Rio Grande.

As it is important that the reader should understand the original title to Louisiana, under which the boundary of the Rio Grande, was claimed, first of all for that state, and, subsequently, for Texas, we shall relate its history in a summary manner.

Louisiana had been the property of France, and by a secret contract between that country and Spain in 1762, as well as by treaties between France, Spain, and England, in the following year, the French dominion was extinguished on the continent of America. In consequence of the treaty between this country and England in 1783, the Mississippi became the western boundary of the United States, from its source to the thirty-first degree of north latitude,