The Southwestern Historical Quarterly, Volume 16, July 1912 - April, 1913 Page: 58
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The Southwestern Historical Quarterly
That open violations of the act occurred it will not be denied;
and in one instance at least the district attorney seems to have
treated the law as a joke as the following extract from a letter of
Carson to Burnet will show:
Seventy men are now ready to leave under Captain Grundy who
is the prosecuting Atly. for the United States for this District,
and has formal orders to arrest and prosecute every man who may
take up, arms in the cause of Texas or in any way Violate the
Neutrality of the U. S. He says he will prosecute any man under
his command who will take up arms here and he will accompany
them to the boundary line of the U. S. to see that they shall not
violate- her Neutrality and when there, if the boys think proper
to step over the line as peaceable emigrants his authority in Gov't
will cease and he thinks it highly probably that he will take a
peepe at Texas himself.1
On the whole, it would seem that Jackson, so far as lay within
his power, complied fully with the formal requirements of the law.
With the sentiment of the South and West what it was, to have
removed delinquent officials and put others in their place would
have accomplished nothing.
We may next glance at Jackson's attitude toward the asserted
violation of our neutrality by General Gaines's crossing the fron-
tier. While there existed no doubt whatever in the mind of the
President and of his Secretary of State Forsyth as to the right of
General Gaines to cross any supposed or imaginary boundary,
they impressed upon him "the duty of the United States to remain
entirely neutral"; yet considering the existing tension between
Mexico and this country, and the eagerness of Gaines to, take a
hand in the struggle across the border, Jackson may perhaps incur
the reproach of having failed to take all reasonable precautions to
prevent General Gaines from exercising with undue haste the dis-
cretion which was necessarily entrusted to him."
1Carson to Burnet, June 1, 1836. Garrison, Dip. Cor. Tex., I, 93.
'Jackson complained of "those who, indifferent to principle themselves
and prone to suspect the want of it in others, charge us with ambitious
designs and perfidious policyy" Richardson, Messages and Papers, III,
237-238. Those who saw in the Texas question only evidences of a dark
plot to wrest a large domain from Mexico for the purpose of adding five
or six more slave States to the Union, charged the "combination" with
sending "volunteers" to the frontier, through the agency and at the ex-
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Texas State Historical Association. The Southwestern Historical Quarterly, Volume 16, July 1912 - April, 1913, periodical, 1913; Austin, Texas. (https://texashistory.unt.edu/ark:/67531/metapth101058/m1/64/?rotate=90: accessed April 17, 2024), University of North Texas Libraries, The Portal to Texas History, https://texashistory.unt.edu; crediting Texas State Historical Association.