The Southwestern Historical Quarterly, Volume 69, July 1965 - April, 1966 Page: 188

                                
Southwestern Historical Quarterly

remain unmolested there with the Mexican government still op-
posed to it. A new law, with effective enforcement, might be
passed at any time, and cotton growers were not eager to move
to an area where their slaves might be freed.
The only colonists who were admitted and settled by Milam,
acting as Wavell's agent, were persons who had lived in the
United States. There might have been many more coming, prior
to the law which excluded United States citizens, if Mexico's
attitude toward slavery and the fear of its abolition had not held
them back.
It was not, however, the somewhat doubtful future of slavery
in Texas that dealt the most severe blow to the colonization plans
of Wavell and Milam. Two serious obstacles arose which halted de-
velopments in the Wavell grant: the dispute over the southwest-
ern boundary line of Arkansas, and the effects of the law of April
6, 1830.
In surveying the land in Wavell's grant, Milam became in-
volved in what has been called a "clash of authority" that oc-
curred on the Arkansas frontier.91 To understand the nature of
that dispute, one must trace the steps in the establishment of the
international boundary between the United States and Mexico.
In 1819, the United States and Spain concluded a treaty which
determined the international boundary between their territories
in North America. Article 3 of the treaty called for the boundary:
To begin on the Gulph of Mexico, at the mouth of the River
Sabine in the Sea, continuing North along the Western Bank of the
River, in the 32nd degree of Latitude, thence by a Line due North
to the degree of Latitude, where it strikes the Rio Roxo of Natchi-
toches or Red River,    all the Islands in the Sabine  to belong
to the United States.02
With the independence of Mexico came the necessity of a new
treaty. After considerable delay, President Adams appointed Joel
R. Poinsett to be United States Minister to Mexico,9" and after
recognition of its independence and an exchange of diplomatic
"Thomas Maitland Marshall, A History of the Western Boundary of the
Louisiana Purchase (Berkeley, 1914), 93.
9"W. M. Malloy (ed.), Treaties, Conventions, International Acts, Protocols, and
Agreements between the United States of America and Other Powers, 1776-1909
(2 vols.; Washington, 1910), II, 1652-1653.
"Marshall, Western Boundary of the Louisiana Purchase, 73.

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