Page:The War with Mexico, Vol 1.djvu/89

60 part desired the land, aside from its intrinsic value, as a needed protection to New Orleans and the Mississippi; and Mexico not only appeared to misprize it, but could have strengthened herself somewhat by letting it go. Later it became a fashion with her public men to declaim about its preciousness and beauty; but as late as 1836, according to Santa Anna himself, many ofﬁcials did not know where Texas was or What nation claimed it. Mexico had ten times the area she could people, and what she needed in that quarter was the means of shielding her northern settlements from the Indians, Moreover, under contracts already made, Texas was ﬁlling up with men who, as President Victoria saw in 1825, were not at all likely to assimilate with the Mexicans; and since it was recognized that a mistake had been made in admitting such colonists, it might well have seemed the part of wisdom to cut off the infected section before it should set an example of dissatisfaction, and perhaps cause trouble also with the United States

Poinsett, accordingly, taking the matter up in July, 1825, stated frankly that the treaty of 1819 was recognized by his country as binding, but expressed a desire to lay it aside, and ﬁx upon a more satisfactory line. This pleased Victoria and Alaman, for they imagined they could push the boundary eastward almost to the Mississippi, but in spite of Poinsett's urgency and his dropping the plan to extend our territory. a long delay followed At last, however, on January 12, 1828, a. treaty of limits reaffirming the agreement with Spain was duly signed. ln the course of April it reached Washington and was ratified. On the last day of the month our secretary of state notified the Mexican representative that he was ready to exchange ratifications, and reminded him that under the terms of the instrument this would have to be done by May 12; but Obregón was not prepared to act, and for that reason the treaty failed.

Yet the Mexicans not only held that the United States caused the miscarriage in order to prosecute designs upon Texas, but charged officially as well as on the street, with neither evidence nor plausibility in favor of the accusation, that our minister stole the paper—entrusted to him on May 10 for transmission—which would have authorized Obregón to exchange the ratiﬁcations, So we had in 1830 this extraordinary picture: