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Rh in its own keeping, and needed no adınonition to save it from stain or dishonor. Bocanegra disclaimed any intention to threaten, and still less to provoke and excite; but resolved to use the right that no one could deny his country, that of regarding the annexation of Texas to the United States as a hostile act, involving a violation of international law, and particularly of the treaty of April 5, 1831, between the two governments. In protesting against the violation of her rights she fulfilled an obligation peculiar to her sovereignty and independence.

On the 13th of September, 1843, Mr Upshur, who had become President Tyler's secretary of state, informed the American minister in Mexico of his government's intention to demand from Mexico that she should either make peace with Texas or show her ability with respectable forces to prosecute the war.

It is not clear why the government of the United States should take umbrage at Mexico's failure to wage an active warfare on its friends in Texas. Its animus in the effort to bully Mexico into making peace with Texas appears revealed in Secretary Upshur's note of September 8th to Murphy, American diplomatic agent in Texas, wherein he speaks of a rumor about a scheme in England to furnish the Texan government with pecuniary means to abolish slavery, indemnifying the masters, and the lenders to receive for their money large tracts of land in Texas. Such an