The Southwestern Historical Quarterly, Volume 17, July 1913 - April, 1914 Page: 218

The Southwestern Historical Quarterly

the southwestern boundary. In the meantime much had been said
concerning the treaty and the claim to Texas which many asserted
the United States had acquired in purchasing Louisiana from
France. There was a strong disposition on the part of many
people, some having considerable influence with the government,
to. take advantage of the change of sovereignty to regain the terri-
tory which they insisted had thus been bartered away.2 This sen-
timent in the United States was strengthened by a statement of
Onis, the Spanish negotiator of the treaty, to the effect that "it is
improperly called a treaty of cession, as it is in reality one of
exchange or permutation of one small province for another of
double the extent, richer and more fertile."3
The language of Onis also strengthened the suspicious fears of
the Mexican government concerning the intentions of the United
States. Elsewhere he says, "The Americans at present think
themselves superior to all the nations of Europe; and believe that
their dominion is destined to extend now to the Isthmus of Panama
and hereafter over all the regions of the new world. Their govern-
ment entertains the same ideas, and the whole course of its policy
calculates upon the illusions of these flattering expectations."4
The ephemeral republic proclaimed by Long in 1819 and the col-
onization enterprises of the Austins and others in the following
years confirmed the suspicions of the Mexicans. Less than a
month after Minister Zozaya had landed at Baltimore, less than
two weeks after his formal reception at Washington, and only two
days after the banquet which President Monroe gave in his honor,
he wrote his government on December 26, 1822, that he had dis-
covered ambitious views with reference to, the province of Texas.
In the national Congress and in the state legislatures, he said,
there was talk of enlarging the army and militia, which movement
he believed had no other object than that arising out of their am-
2The discussion of the basis for, the character of, and the justice of
this claim is not in place here. See Rives, United States and Mexico,
I, 1-26; Smith, Annexation of Texas, 5-8; Babcock, Rise of American
Nationality, 285-289; Cox, "Louisiana-Texas Frontier," THE QUARTERLY,
X, 1-75; Bancroft, North Mexican States and Texas, II, 46-53; and
footnotes in each.
8Onis, Memoir, 146. Onis's Memoria was printed in Madrid in 1820;
and this translation was printed in Baltimore the following year.
'Ibid., 23.

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