Page:The History of Slavery and the Slave Trade.djvu/545

 and just occasion to remedy the mistake made in 1819; to repair, as far as possible, the evil effect of a breach of the constitution, by getting back into the Onion that fair and fertile province which, in an evil hour, we severed from the confederacy.

"This proposition which now inflamed the public mind was not a novel policy. It was strange that a measure which had been urged for twelve years pasl should be met by a tempest of opposition; and very strange that he should be riding upon and directing the storm, who was first to propose the annexation of Texas, as one of the earliest measures of his administration after he was made president he had endeavored to repair the injury inflicted upon the country by the treaty of 1819. As secretary of state in 1819, he negotiated the treaty of transfer; in 1836, as president of the United States, he instituted a negotiation for the reännexation. Through his secretary of state, Mr. Clay, he instructed Mr. Poinsett, minister to Mexico, to urge a negotiation 'for the reäcquisition of Texas and the establishment of the southwest line of the United States at the Rio Grande del Norte. Jackson and Van Buren had continued the effort; and why it had failed, it was useless now to inquire. It was certain, that president Jackson never lost sight of it, and that he continued to look to its accomplishment as one of the greatest events of his administration, to the moment when the title of Mexico was extinguished forever by the battle of San Jacinto.

"Mr. P. considered the boundary line established by the treaty of 1819, as an improper one, not only depriving us of an extensive and fertile territory, but winding with 'a deep indent' upon the valley of the Mississippi itself, running upon the Red river and the Arkansas. It placed a foreign nation in the rear of our Mississippi settlements, within a stone's throw of that great outlet which discharged the commerce of half the Union. The mouths of the Sabine and the Mississippi were of a dangerous vicinity. The great object of the purchase of Louisiana was to remove all possible interference of foreign states in the vast commerce of the outlet of so many states. By the cession of Texas, this policy had been to a certain extent compromised. He also referred to the instructions of secretary Van Buren to Mr. Poinsett, saying: 'The line proposed as the most desirable to us would constitute a most natural separation of the resources of the two nations.'

"Mr. P. next considered the report of a committee of the Massachusetts legislature, which said: 'The committee do not believe that any power exists in any branch of this government, or in all of them united, to consent to such a union, (viz. with the sovereign state of Texas,) nor, indeed, does such authority pertain, as an incident of sovereignty, or otherwise, to the government, however absolute, of any nation.' Both of these propositions he controverted. As to the powers of this government, the mistake of the committee laid in considering it, as to its nature and powers, a consolidated government. The states originally came together as sovereign states, having no power of reciprocal control. North Carolina and Rhode Island stood off for a time, and at length came in by the exercise of a sovereign discretion. So Missouri