Page:Notes of the Mexican war 1846-47-48.djvu/646

640 "most wise and noble Senators" arise in their places in the National Assembly and proclaim the Mexican war an outrage on civilization; and the men who were instrumental in bringing about the condition of things to produce these great results were worthy of bloody graves on that foreign soil, and should be stigmatized on the records of their country, and compelled to limp in penury and want to their graves unnoticed and unsung, and the fact of their having lived blotted from the page of history and the memory of man. I think at least the last part of the title applied by Lord Byron to Lord Bacon applies to them—" The greatest, meanest of mankind."

But let us follow the train of circumstances as they occurred. To carry on the work in the way prescribed, it became, necessary for Texas to revolt from Mexico; and, though she had maintained her independence for nine years and been acknowledged by European powers, as well as the United States, as an independent nation, still Santa Anna, like Pharaoh, had his mission to fulfil, and continued to devastate the country with his horde of minions, until Texas, in her exhausted condition, was compelled to appeal to the United States for succor.

And now enters into the combination of events the only thing that produced the festering sore that so poisons the few who proclaim so loudly about the unholy and cruel war.

Without doubt, the Southern States saw in this what they supposed to be the opportunity to bolster up their waning strength and fix on a firm basis their "peculiar institution," by which they were enabled to revel in luxury on the proceeds of slave labor; a door was opened by which they hoped to add slave territory to the Union.

Texas, to give the United States unquestionable right to succor her in her distress, must apply for and be admitted into the Union, which was done. Then came the army of occupation, then of invasion, and finally the conquest of the whole of Mexico. The United States had the power to dictate the terms of the treaty of Gaudaloupe Hidalgo, and could have demanded, and by the force of arms have held, the entire