36 THE WAR IN TEXAS.
your whole army, and all your veteran generals, and ,slavery, the slave-trade, and the Anglo-Saxon deall
your militia calls, and all your mutinous volun- scendant from her own loins.
teers against a miserabla band of five or six hundred As to the annexation of Texas to your Confederainvisible
Seminole Indians, in your late campaign, t.on, for what dlo you want it ? Are you not large
an earnest of the energy and vigor with which you and unwieldly enough already? Do not two millions
are ready to carry on that far otherwise formidable of square miles cover surface enough for the insatiate
and complicated war?-complicated,did I say ? And rapacity ofvour land jobbers ? I hope there are none
how complicated? Your Seninole war is already of them within the sound of my voice. Have you
spreading to the Creeks, and, in their march of not Indians enough to expel from the land of their
desolation, they sweep along with them your negro fathers' sepulchres, and to extertminate ? 'What, in a
slaves, and put arms into their hands to mike corn- prudential and military point of viexw, would be the
rmon cause with thenm agairst you, and how far will addition of Texas to your domain ? It would be
it spread, sir, should a Mexican invader, with the weakness, and not power. Is your southern and
torch of liberty in his hand, and the standard of free- so:trh-western frontier riot sufficiently extensive ? not
domn floating over his head, proclaiming emancipation i sufficiently feeble? not sufficiently defenceless?
to the slave and revenge to the native Indian, as he Why are you adding regiment after regiment of
goes, invade your soil? What will be the condition dragoons to your standing army? Why are you
of your States of Louisiana, of Mississippi, of Ala- struggling, by direction and by indirection, to raise
bama, of Arkansas, of 1Missouri, and of Georgia? per saltutm that army from less than six to more than
Where wi!l be your negroes? XVhere will be that twenty thousand nien? Your comm-nding General,
combined and concentrated mass of Indian tribes, j now returning from his excursion to Florida, openly
whom, by an inconsiderate policy, you have expel- rePomrmen(s the increase of your Army to that numled
from their widely distant habitations, to embody b her. Sir, the ex,ension of your sea coa-t frontier
them within a small compass on the very borders of from the Sabine to the Rio Bravo would add to your
Mexico, as if on purpose to give the country a nation weakness tenfold; for now it is only weakness with
ot natua alallies in their hostilities against you? Sir, reference to Mexico. It would then be weakness
you have a Mexican, an Indian, and a negro war with reference to Great Britain, to France, even
upon your hands, and you are plunging yourself! perhaps to Russia, to every naval European Power,
into it blindfold; you are talking about acknowledg- which might make a quarrel with us for the sake of
ing the independence of the Republic of Texas, and settling a colony; but above all, to Great Britain.
you are thirsting to annex Texas, aye, Coahuila, and She, by her naval power, and bv her American coTamaulipas,
and Santa Fe, from the source to the lonies, holds the kevs of the gulf of Mexico. What
mouth of the Rio Bravo, to your already over-dis- would be the condition of your frontier from the
tended d(ominions. Five hindred thousand square mouth of the 3Mississippi to the mouth of the Rio del
mil ts of the territory of ",exico would not even now Norte, in the event ofo war with Great Britain? Sir,
quench your burning thirst for aggrandizement. the reasons of Mr iMonroe for accepting the Sabine
But will your foreign war for this be with Mexico as the botindary were three.-First, he had no confialone?
No, sir. As the weaker party, Mlexico, when dence in tle strength of our claim as far as the Rio
the contest shall have once begun, will look abroad, Pravo; secondly, he thought it would make our union
as well as among your negroes and your Indians, for so heavy that it would break into fragments by its
assistance. Neither Great Britain nor France will own weight; thirdly, he thought it would protrude a
suffer you to make such a conquest from Mexico; no, long line of sea coast, which, in our first war with
nor Oven to annex the independent State of Texas Great Britain, she might take into her own possesto
your Confedseration, without their interpositon. sion, and which we should be able neither to defend
You will have arn Anglo-Saxon intertwined with a nor recover. At that time there was no question of
Mexican war to wage. Great Britain may have no slavery or of abolition involved in the controversy.
serious objection to the independence of Texas, and The counntry belonged to Spain; it was a wilderness,
may be willing enough to take her under her protec- and slavery was the established law of the land.
tion, as a banrier both against Mexico and ag.iinst There was then no project for carving out nine
you. But, as aggrandizement to your, she will not States, to hold eighteen seats in the other wing of
readily stuffer it; and, above al', she will not suffer this capitol, in the triangle between the mouths and
you to acquire it by conquest anid the re-establish- the sou,ces of the 3lississiplpi and Bravo riveis.ment
of slavery. Urged on by the irresistible, over- But,t what was our claim ? Why it was that La
whelming torrent of opinion, Great Britain has Salle, having discovered the mouth of the Mississiprecently,
at a cost of one hundred millions of dollars, pi, and France having made a settlement at New
which her People have joylully paid, abolished Orleans, France had a right to one-half the sea coast
slavery throughout all her colonies in the West In- from the mouth of the Mississippi to the next Spanish
dies. After setting such an example, she will not- settlement, which was Vera Cruz. The mouth of the
it is impossible thatshe should-stand by and witness Rio Bravo was about half way from the Balize to
a war for the re-establishment of slavery where it had Vera Croz; and so as grantees, from France of Loubeen
for years abolished, and situated thus in the im- isiana, we claimed the Rio del Norte, though the
mediate neighborhood of her islands. She will tell Spanish settlement of Santa Fe was at the head of
you, that it you must have Texas as a member of that river. France, from whom we had received
your Confederacy, it tmlust be without the trammels Louisiana, utterly disclaimed ever having even raised
of slavery, and if you will wage a war to handcuff such a pretension. Still we made the best of the
and fetter your fellow-ran, she will wage the war claim that we could, and finally yielded it for the
against you to b eak hiis chains. Sir, what a figure, Floridas, and for the litne of the 42d degree of latiin
the eyes of mankind, would 0ou make, in deadly tude from the source of the Arkansas river to the
conflict with Great Britain: she fighting the battles South sea. Such was our claim, and you may judge
of emancipation, and you the battles of slavery; she how much confidence Mr. Monroe could have in its
the benefactress, and you the oppressor, of human validity. The great object and desire of the country
kind ! In such a war, the enthusiasm of emancipa- then was to obtain the Floridas. It was Gen. Jacktior,
too, would unite vast numbers of her People in son's desire, and in that conference with me to which
aid of the national rivalry, and all her natural jealousy I have heretofore alluded, and which it is said he
against our aggrandizemrent. No war was ever so does not recollect, he said to me that so long as the
popular in England as that war would be against Florida rivers were not in our possession, there could
be no safety for our whole Southern country.
