Page:The History of Slavery and the Slave Trade.djvu/564

 voted in the affirmative, and 25 in the negative. Of the senators from the free states who voted for the treaty, were Messrs. Buchanan and Sturgeon, of Pennsylvania, Mr. Breese, of Illinois, and Mr. Woodbury, of New Hampshire. Of the democrats from the free states who voted against the treaty, were Mr. Fairfield, of Maine, Mr. Atherton, of New Hampshire, Mr. Niles, of Connecticut, Mr. Wright, of New York, Messrs. Allen and Tappan, of Ohio; also, Mr. Benton, of Missouri, a slave state.

The vote on the question of ratification does not, however, indicate the views of senators on the abstract question of annexation. One objection to the treaty was, that it would involve the United States in a war with Mexico. Another was, that Texas claimed disputed territory; and to receive Texas would compel our government to defend the claim against Mexico. It was also objected, that the annexation was unconstitutional.

In the debate in secret session on the ratification, a large number of senators took part; among whom were Messrs. Benton, Choate, Wright, Walker, and M'Duffie; the two last in favor of the treaty, the others in opposition.

Mr. Benton's great speech was. delivered on the 16th, 17th, and 20th of May, and was in support of resolutions offered by him on the 13th, declaring,

1st. That the ratification of the treaty would be the adoption of the Texan war with Mexico, and would devolve its conclusion upon the United States.

2d. That the treaty-making power does not extend to the power of making war, and that the president and senate have no right to make war, either by declaration or by adoption.

3d. That Texas ought to be reunited to the American union, as soon as it can be done with the consent of a majority of the people of the United States and of Texas, and when Mexico shall either consent to the same, or acknowledge the independence of Texas, or cease to prosecute the war against her, (the armistice having expired,) on a scale commensurate to the conquest of the country.

Mr. Benton contended that the treaty proposed to annex much more territory than originally belonged to Texas; and therefore the proposition for the "reännexation of Texas" was a fraud in words. It was not pretended, even by those who used that word, that the province of Texas, when it was ceded in 1819 to Spain, extended farther than the boundaries included between the Sabine and the Rio del Norte, and the Gulf of Mexico and the Red River, whilst the republic of Texas, as defined in the treaty, included the whole extent of the Rio del Norte, and embraced portions of the department of New Mexico, with its capital, being many hundred miles of a neighbor's dominion, with whom we had treaties of peace and friendship and commerce — a territory where no Texan force had ever penetrated, and including towns and villages and custom-houses now in the peaceful possession of Mexico.

In a message to the senate subsequent to that accompanying the treaty, the president has asserted the doctrine that the treaty signed by him was ratified from that moment; and, consequently, that part of Mexico above mentioned