The Quarterly of the Texas State Historical Association, Volume 5, July 1901 - April, 1902 Page: 40

40 'exas Historical Association Quarterly.
ber Paredes deposed IHerrera, and after some ineffectual attempts
at negotiation, Slidell returned to the United States.1
Advised of these events General Taylor was adding to his forces
at Corpus Christi, and getting things ready to resist the threatened
invasion of Texas. In October the people of Texas ratified the
new State Constitution, and the terms of annexation. In Decem-
ber Congress passed the act extending the United States laws over
Texas, and on the 19th of February following the last formal act
was performed which made Texas a State of the Union. Nego-
tiations were at an end, and on the 12th of March General Taylor
broke camp and started his army for the Rio Grande. This was
the line chosen by Mexico as her front, rather than the Nueces.
In his instructions to General Taylor, the President took the extra
precaution to order him to act strictly on the defensive, and if he
should find any occupied garrisons on the left branch of the Rio
Grande to take all needful precautions against a hostile collision.
He arrived opposite Matamoras in April, and immediately dis-
patched General Worth across the river with a courteous note
addressed to the Mexican commander at Matamoras expressing the
desire that the two. armies maintain peaceable relations pending
the settlement, by their respective civil authorities, of all matters
in controversy between the two governments. The only reply to
this was a curt note to the effect that his movements were consid-
ered as acts of war.
On the 12th of April, General Ampudia sent him a note per-
emptorily ordering him to move back across the Nueces, under
penalty of immediate hostilities."
On the 26th of April a squadron of cavalry was ambushed and
captured by some Mexican troops that had crossed the river, and
with this and the siege of Fort Brown and the battle of Palo
Alto on the 8th of May, the Mexican war was launched, the war
which the historians before mentioned are handing down to us as
the war of "Polk the Mendacious."
According to the Mexican, New England, and whig theory, the
boundary between the United States and Mexico was the Sabine,
and therefore, the moment a United States soldier crossed the
-Bancroft, Hist. Mew., loc. cit.

2Ibid.