Thirty Years' View (Vol. II of 2)

It was soon ascertained in the Senate, that the joint resolution from the House could not pass – that unless combined with negotiation, it would be rejected. Mr. Walker, of Mississippi, then proposed to join the two together – the bill of Mr. Benton and the resolution from the House – with a clause referring it to the discretion of the President to act under them as he deemed best. It being then the end of the session, and the new President arrived so as to be ready to act immediately; and it being fully believed that the execution of the bill was to be left to him, the conjunction was favored by the author of the bill, and his friends; and the proposal of Mr. Walker was agreed to. The bill was added as an amendment, and then the whole was passed – although by a close vote – 27 to 25. The yeas were: Messrs. Allen, Ashley, Atchison, Atherton, Bagby, Benton, Breese, Buchanan, Colquitt, Dickinson, Dix, Fairfield, Hannegan, Haywood, Henderson, Huger, Johnson, Lewis, McDuffie, Merrick, Niles, Semple, Sevier, Sturgeon, Tappan, Walker, Woodbury, – 27. The nays were: Messrs. Archer, Barrow, Bates, Bayard, Berrien, Choate, Clayton, Crittenden, Dayton, Evans, Foster, Francis, Huntington, Jarnagin, Mangum, Miller, Morehead, Pearce, Phelps, Porter, Rives, Simmons, Upham, White, Woodbridge – 25. The resolve of the House was thus passed in the Senate, and the validity of the Missouri compromise was asserted, and its re-enactment effected in the Senate, as well as in the House. But the amendment required the bill to go back to the House for its concurrence in that particular, which was found to increase the favor of the measure – an addition of thirty-six being added to the affirmative vote. Carried to Mr. Tyler for his approval, or disapproval, it was immediately approved by him, with the hearty concurrence of his Secretary of State (Mr. Calhoun), who even claimed the passage of the measure as a triumph of his own. And so the executive government, in the persons of the President and his cabinet, added their sanction to the validity of the Missouri compromise line, and the full power of Congress which it exercised, to permit or abolish slavery in territories. This was the month of March, 1845 – so that a quarter of a century after the establishment of that compromise line, the dogmas of "squatter sovereignty" – "no power in Congress to legislate upon slavery in the territories" – and "the extension of slavery to the territories by the self-expansion of the constitution," had not been invented. The discovery of these dogmas was reserved for a later period, and a more heated state of the public mind.

The bill providing for the admission of Texas had undergone all its formalities, and became a law on Saturday, the first day of March; the second was Sunday, and a dies non. Congress met on Monday for the last day of its existence; and great was the astonishment of members to hear that the actual President had assumed the execution of the act providing for the admission of Texas – had adopted the legislative clause – and sent it off by a special messenger for the adoption of Texas. It was then seen that some senators had been cheated out of their votes, and that the passage of the act through the Senate had been procured by a fraud. At least five of the senators who voted affirmatively would have voted against the resolutions of the House, if Mr. Benton's bill had not been added, and if it had not been believed that the execution of the act would be left to the new President, and that he would adopt Mr. Benton's. The possibility of a contrary course had been considered, and, as it was believed, fully guarded against. Several senators and some citizens conversed with Mr. Polk, then in the city, and received his assurance that he would act on Mr. Benton's proposition, and in carrying it into effect would nominate for the negotiation a national commission, composed of safe and able men of both parties, such as Mr. Benton had suggested. Among those who thus conversed with Mr. Polk were two (senator Tappan, of Ohio, and Francis P. Blair, Esq., of Washington City), who published the result of their conversations, and the importance of which requires to be stated in their own words: which is here done. Mr. Tappan, writing to the editors of the New York Evening Post, says:

"When the joint resolution declaring the terms on which Congress will admit Texas into the Union as a State, was before the Senate, it was soon found that a number of the democratic members who were favorable to the admission of Texas, would vote against that resolution. I was one of them. In this stage of the matter it was proposed, that instead of rejecting the House resolution, we should amend it by adding, as an alternative proposition, the substance of Mr. Benton's bill to obtain Texas by negotiation. Mr. Polk was in the city; it was understood that he was very anxious that Congress should act on the subject before he came into office; it was also understood that the proposition to amend the House resolution originated with Mr. Polk. It had been suggested, that, if we did so amend the resolution, Mr. Calhoun would send off the House resolution to Texas, and so endeavor to forestall the action of Mr. Polk; but Mr. McDuffie, his friend, having met this suggestion by the declaration that he would not have the 'audacity' to do such a thing, it was no more thought of. One difficulty remained, and that was the danger of putting it into the power of Mr. Polk to submit the House resolution to Texas. We understood, indeed, that he intended to submit the Senate proposition to that government; but, without being satisfied that he would do this, I would not vote for the resolution, and it was well ascertained that, without my vote, it could not pass. Mr. Haywood, who had voted with me, and was opposed to the House resolution, undertook to converse with Mr. Polk on the subject, and did so. He afterwards told me that he was authorized by Mr. Polk to say to myself and other senators, that, if we could pass the resolution with the amendment proposed to be made, he would not use the House resolution, but would submit the Senate amendment as the sole proposition to Texas. Upon this assurance I voted for the amendment moved by Mr. Walker, containing the substance of Mr. Benton's bill, and voted for the resolution as it now stands on the statute book."

Mr. Francis P. Blair, in a letter addressed to Mr. Tappan, and conversing with Mr. Polk at a different time, gives his statement to the same effect:

"When the resolution passed by the House of Representatives for the annexation of Texas reached the Senate, it was ascertained that it would fail in that body. Benton, Bagby, Dix, Haywood, and as I understood, you also, were opposed to this naked proposition of annexation, which necessarily brought with it the war in which Texas was engaged with Mexico. All had determined to adhere to the bill submitted by Col. Benton, for the appointment of a commission to arrange the terms of annexation with Texas, and to make the attempt to render its accession to our Union as palatable as possible to Mexico before its consummation. It was hoped that this point might be effected by giving (as has been done in the late treaty of peace) a pecuniary consideration, fully equivalent in value for the territory desired by the United States, and to which Texas could justly assert any title. The Senate had been polled, and it was ascertained that any two of the democratic senators who were opposed to Brown's resolution, which had passed the House, could defeat it – the whole whig party preferring annexation by negotiation, upon Col. Benton's plan, to that of Brown. While the question was thus pending, I met Mr. Brown (late Governor of Tennessee, then a member or the House), who suggested that the resolution of the House, and the bill of Col. Benton, preferred by the Senate, might be blended, making the latter an alternative, and leaving the President elect (who alone would have time to consummate the measure), to act under one or the other at his discretion. I told Mr. Brown that I did not believe that the democratic senators opposed to the resolution of the House, and who had its fate in their hands, would consent to this arrangement, unless they were satisfied in advance by Mr. Polk that the commission and negotiation contemplated in Col. Benton's plan would be tried, before that of direct legislative annexation was resorted to. He desired me to see Colonel Benton and the friends of his proposition, submit the suggestions he had made, and then confer with Mr. Polk to know whether he would meet their views. I complied; and after several interviews with Messrs. Haywood, Dix, Benton, and others (Mr. Allen, of Ohio, using his influence in the same direction), finding that the two plans could be coupled and carried, if it were understood that the pacific project was first to be tried, I consulted the President elect on the subject. In the conference I had with him, he gave me full assurance that he would appoint a commission, as contemplated in the bill prepared by Col. Benton, if passed in conjunction with the House resolution as an alternative. In the course of my conversation with Mr. Polk, I told him that the friends of this plan were solicitous that the commission should be filled by distinguished men of both parties, and that Colonel Benton had mentioned to me the names of Crittenden and Wright, as of the class from which it should be formed. Mr. Polk responded, by declaring with an emphasis, 'that the first men of the country should fill the commission.' I communicated the result of this interview to Messrs. Benton, Dix, Haywood, &c. The two last met, on appointment, to adapt the phraseology of Benton's bill, to suit as an alternative for the resolution of the House, and it was passed, after a very general understanding of the course which the measure was to take. Both Messrs. Dix and Haywood told me they had interviews with Mr. Polk on the subject of the communication I had reported to them from him, and they were confirmed by his immediate assurance in pursuing the course which they had resolved on in consequence of my representation of his purpose in regard to the point on which their action depended. After the law was passed, and Mr. Polk inaugurated, he applied to Gen. Dix (as I am informed by the latter), to urge the Senate to act upon one of the suspended cabinet appointments, saying that he wished his administration organized immediately, as he intended the instant recall of the messenger understood to have been despatched by Mr. Tyler, and to revoke his orders given in the last moments of his power, to thwart the design of Congress in affording him (Mr. Polk) the means of instituting a negotiation, with a view of bringing Texas peaceably into the Union."

All this was perfectly satisfactory with respect to the President elect; but there might be some danger from the actual President, or rather, from Mr. Calhoun, his Secretary of State, and who had over Mr. Tyler that ascendant which it is the prerogative of genius to exercise over inferior minds. This danger was suggested in debate in open Senate. It was repulsed as an impossible infamy. Such a cheat upon senators and such an encroachment upon the rights of the new President, were accounted among the impossibilities: and Mr. McDuffie, a close and generous friend of Mr. Calhoun, speaking for the administration, and replying to the suggestion that they might seize upon the act, and execute it without regard to the Senate's amendment, not only denied it for them, but repulsed it in terms which implied criminality if they did. He said they would not have the "audacity" to do it. Mr. McDuffie was an honorable man, standing close to Mr. Calhoun; and although he did not assume to speak by authority, yet his indignant repulse of the suggestion was entirely satisfactory, and left the misgiving senators released from apprehension on account of Mr. Tyler's possible conduct. Mr. Robert J. Walker also, who had moved the conjunction of the two measures, and who was confidential both with the coming in and going out President, assisted in allaying apprehension in the reason he gave for opposing an amendment offered by Mr. Ephraim H. Foster, of Tennessee, which, looking to the President's adoption of the negotiating clause, required that he should make a certain "stipulation" in relation to slavery, and another in relation to the public debt. Mr. Walker objected to this proposition, saying it was already in the bill, "and if the President proceeded properly in the negotiation he would act upon it." This seemed to be authoritative that negotiation was to be the mode, and consequently that Mr. Benton's plan was to be adopted. Thus quieted in their apprehensions, five senators voted for the act of admission, who would not otherwise have done so; and any two of whom voting against it would have defeated it. Mr. Polk did not despatch a messenger to recall Mr. Tyler's envoy; and that omission was the only point of complaint against him. Mr. McDuffie stood exempt from all blame, known to be an honorable man speaking from a generous impulsion.

Thus was Texas incorporated into the Union – by a deception, and by deluding five senators out of their votes. It was not a barren fraud, but one prolific of evil, and pregnant with bloody fruit. It established, so far as the United States was concerned, the state of war with Mexico: it only wanted the acceptance of Texas to make war the complete legal condition of the two countries: and that temptation to Texas was too great to be resisted. She desired annexation any way: and the government of the United States having broken up the armistice, and thwarted the peace prospects, and brought upon her the danger of a new invasion, she leaped at the chance of throwing the burden of the war on the United States. The legislative proposition sent by Mr. Tyler was accepted: Texas became incorporated with the United States: by that incorporation the state of war – the status belli – was established between the United States and Mexico: and it only became a question of time and chance, when hostilities were to begin. Mr. Calhoun, though the master spirit over Mr. Tyler, and the active power in sending off the proposition to Texas, was not in favor of war, and still believed, as he did when he made the treaty, that the weakness of Mexico, and a douceur of ten millions in money, would make her submit: but there was another interest all along working with him, and now to supersede him in influence, which was for war, not as an object, but as a means – as a means of getting a treaty providing for claims and indemnities, and territorial acquisitions. This interest, long his adjunct, now became independent of him, and pushed for the war; but it was his conduct that enabled this party to act; and this point became one of earnest debate between himself and Mr. Benton the year afterwards; in which he was charged as being the real author of the war; and in which Mr. Benton's speech being entirely historical, becomes a condensed view of the whole Texas annexation question; and as such is presented in the next chapter.

ADMINISTRATION OF JAMES K. POLK.

CHAPTER CXLIX.

THE WAR WITH MEXICO: ITS CAUSE: CHARGED ON THE CONDUCT OF MR. CALHOUN: MR. BENTON'S SPEECH

Mr. Benton: The senator from South Carolina (Mr. Calhoun) has boldly made the issue as to the authorship of this war, and as boldly thrown the blame of it upon the present administration. On the contrary, I believe himself to be the author of it, and will give a part of my reasons for believing so. In saying this, I do not consider the march to the Rio Grande to have been the cause of the war, any more than I consider the British march upon Concord and Lexington to have been the cause of the American Revolution, or the crossing of the Rubicon by Cæsar to have been the cause of the civil war in Rome. In all these cases, I consider the causes of war as pre-existing, and the marches as only the effect of these causes. I consider the march upon the Rio Grande as being unfortunate, and certainly should have advised against it if I had been consulted, and that without the least fear of diminishing my influence in the settlement of the Oregon question – a fear which the senator from South Carolina says prevented him from interposing to prevent the war which he foresaw. My opinion of Mr. Polk – and experience in that very Oregon case has confirmed it – did not authorize me to conjecture that any one would lose influence with him by giving him honest opinions; so I would have advised against the march to the Rio Grande if I had been consulted. Nor do I see how any opinion adverse to the President's was to have the effect of lessening his influence in the settlement of the Oregon question. That question was settled by us, not by the President. Half the democratic senators went contrary to the President's opinion, and none of them lost influence with him on that account; and so I can see no possible connection between the facts of the case and the senator's reason for not interfering to save his country from the war which, he says, he saw. His reason to me is unintelligible, incomprehensible, unconnectable with the facts of the case. But the march on the Rio Grande was not the cause of the war; but the causes of this event, like the causes of our own revolutionary war, were in progress long before hostilities broke out. The causes of this Mexican war were long anterior to this march; and, in fact, every circumstance of war then existed, except the actual collision of arms. Diplomatic intercourse had ceased; commerce was destroyed; fleets and armies confronted each other; treaties were declared to be broken; the contingency had occurred in which Mexico had denounced the existence of war; the incorporation of Texas, with a Mexican war on her hands, had produced, in legal contemplation, the status belli between the two countries: and all this had occurred before the march upon the Rio Grande, and before the commencement of this administration, and had produced a state of things which it was impossible to continue, and which could only receive their solution from arms or negotiation. The march to the Rio Grande brought on the collision of arms; but, so far from being the cause of the war, it was itself the effect of these causes. The senator from South Carolina is the author of those causes, and therefore the author of the war; and this I propose to show, at present, by evidence drawn from himself – from his public official acts – leaving all the evidence derived from other sources, from private and unofficial acts, for future production, if deemed necessary.

The senator from South Carolina, in his effort to throw the blame of the war upon the President, goes no further back in his search for causes than to this march upon the Rio Grande: upon the same principle, if he wrote a history of the American Revolution, he would begin at the march upon Lexington and Concord, leaving out of view the ten years' work of Lord North's administration which caused that march to be made. No, the march upon the Rio Grande was not the cause of the war: had it not been for pre-existing causes, the arrival of the American army on the Mexican frontier would have been saluted with military courtesy, according to the usage of all civilized nations, and with none so much as with the Spaniards. Complimentary visits, dinners, and fandangos, balls – not cannon balls – would have been the salutation. The causes of the war are long anterior; and I begin with the beginning, and show the senator from South Carolina an actor from the first. In doing this, I am acting in defence of the country, for the President represents the country. The senator from South Carolina charges the war upon the President: the whole opposition follow him: the bill under discussion is forgotten: crimination of the President is now the object: and in that crimination, the country is injured by being made to appear the aggressor in the war. This is my justification for defending the President, and showing the truth that the senator, in his manner of acquiring Texas, is the true cause of the war.

The cession of Texas to Spain in 1819 is the beginning point in the chain of causes which have led to this war; for unless the country had been ceded away, there could have been no quarrel with any power in getting it back. For a long time the negotiator of that treaty of cession (Mr. J. Q. Adams) bore all the blame of the loss of Texas; and his motives for giving it away were set down to hostility to the South and West, and a desire to clip the wings of the slaveholding States. At last the truth of history has vindicated itself, and has shown who was the true author of that mischief to the South and West. Mr. Adams has made a public declaration, which no one controverts, that that cession was made in conformity to the decision of Mr. Monroe's cabinet, a majority of which was slaveholding, and among them the present senator from South Carolina, and now the only survivor of that majority. He does not contradict the statement of Mr. Adams: he, therefore, stands admitted the co-author of that mischief to the South and West which the cession of Texas involved, and to escape from which it became necessary, in the opinion of the senator from South Carolina, to get back Texas at the expense of war with Mexico. This conduct of the senator in giving away Texas when we had her, and then making war to get her back, is an enigma which he has never yet condescended to explain, and which, until explained, leaves him in a state of self-contradiction, which, whether it impairs his own confidence in himself or not, must have the effect of destroying the confidence of others in him, and wholly disqualifies him for the office of champion of the slaveholding States. It was the heaviest blow they had ever received, and put an end, in conjunction with the Missouri compromise, and the permanent location of the Indians west of the Mississippi, to their future growth or extension as slave States beyond the Mississippi. The compromise, which was then in full progress, and established at the next session of Congress, cut off the slave States from all territory north and west of Missouri, and south of thirty-six and a half degrees of north latitude: the treaty of 1819 ceded nearly all south of that degree, comprehending not only all Texas, but a large part of the valley of the Mississippi on the Red River and the Arkansas, to a foreign power, and brought a non-slaveholding empire to the confines of Louisiana and Arkansas: the permanent appropriation of the rest of the territory for the abode of civilized Indians swept the little slaveholding territory west of Arkansas and lying between the compromise line and the cession line; and left the slave States without one inch of ground for their future growth. Nothing was left. Even the then territory of Arkansas was encroached upon. A breadth of forty miles wide, and three hundred long was cut off from her, and given to the Cherokees; and there was not as much slave territory left west of the Mississippi as a dove could have rested the sole of her foot upon. It was not merely a curtailment, but a total extinction of slaveholding territory; and done at a time when the Missouri controversy was raging, and every effort made by Northern abolitionists to stop the growth of slave States.8

I come now to the direct proofs of the senator's authorship of the war; and begin with the year 1836, and with the month of May of that year, and with the 27th day of that month, and with the first rumors of the victory of San Jacinto. The Congress of the United States was then in session: the senator from South Carolina was then a member of this body; and, without even waiting for the official confirmation of that great event, he proposed at once the immediate recognition of the independence of Texas, and her immediate admission into this Union. He put the two propositions together – recognition and admission: and allowed us no further time for the double vote than the few days which were to intervene before the official intelligence of the victory should arrive. Here are some extracts from his speech on that occasion, and which verify what I say, and show that he was then ready to plunge the country into the Texian war with Mexico, without the slightest regard to its treaties, its commerce, its duties, or its character.

(The extracts.)

Here, then, is the proof of the fact that, ten years ago, and without a word of explanation with Mexico, or any request from Texas – without the least notice to the American people, or time for deliberation among ourselves, or any regard to existing commerce – he was for plunging us into instant war with Mexico. I say, instant war; for Mexico and Texas were then in open war; and to incorporate Texas, was to incorporate the war at the same time. All this the senator was then for, immediately after his own gratuitous cession of Texas, and long before the invention of the London abolition plot came so opportunely to his aid. Promptness and unanimity were then his watchwords. Immediate action – action before Congress adjourned – was his demand. No delay. Delays were dangerous. We must vote, and vote unanimously, and promptly. I well remember the senator's look and attitude on that occasion – the fixedness of his look, and the magisteriality of his attitude. It was such as he often favors us with, especially when he is in a "crisis," and brings forward something which ought to be instantly and unanimously rejected – as when he brought in his string of abstractions on Thursday last. So it was in 1836 – prompt and unanimous action, and a look to put down opposition. But the Senate was not looked down in 1836. They promptly and unanimously refused the senator's motion! and the crisis and the danger – good-natured souls! – immediately postponed themselves until wanted for another occasion.