Page:The War with Mexico, Vol 1.djvu/99

70 hopeless, without attainable object, injurious to both parties and likely to be, in its continuance, annoying and vexatious to other commercial nations"; and this line of policy was followed up in January, 1843. Indeed, Webster gave notice that a formal protest would very likely be made, unless the state of war should be ended or respectable forces take the ﬁeld.

Naturally these remonstrances, however proper, gave much offence; and the translation of John Quincy Adams's brilliant speech at Braintree, Massachusetts, which made an eloquent but mistaken attack upon the American administration, gave the newspapers of Mexico a fresh opportunity and fresh reason to ventilate their suspicions of us. A merciless warfare upon Texas was now announced; and Santa Anna decreed in June, 1843, that all foreigners taken in arms on Texan soil should be executed. In reply to this, our secretary of state declared that American citizens could not be prevented from serving abroad, as Frenchmen and Germans had served in our own revolutionary armies; and that, if captured in Texas, they must he treated as prisoners of war. "On this point," he insisted, "there can be no concession or compromise." '

Here our point of View must be shifted So far we have mainly been concerned with complaints on the part of Mexico, and it Will be admitted that in those affairs the United States did not materially injure her in any unlawful way, and exhibited no malicious intentions. We must now take up certain American grievances; and ﬁrst in order may be mentioned the summary execution of twenty-two of our citizens in 1835. Under the revolutionist Mejía they had left the United States for Texas, but they were conducted to Tampico and there were captured? The minister of relations asserted that they were duly tried, and simply experienced the rigor of the law; but our minister ascertained that no trial took place. In spite of international law and treaty stipulations the government ordered them shot, and shot they were—officially murdered. At the edge of the grave eighteen of them signed a denial, their "dying words," that any intention to invade Mexico had existed in their minds.

Next may come the systematic endeavor of Mexico, even