157 How Annexation was Secured (1845)

I come now to the direct proofs of the Senator’s authorship of the war and begin with the year 1836 and with the month of May of that year and with the 27th day of that month and with the first rumors of the victory of San Jacinto. The Congress of the United States was then in session. The Senator from South Carolina [John C. Calhoun] was then a member of this body and without even waiting for the official confirmation of that great event, he proposed at once the immediate recognition of the independence of Texas and her immediate admission into this Union. He was for plunging us into instant war with Mexico. I say instant war, for Mexico and Texas were then in open war and to incorporate Texas was to incorporate the war at the same time. All this the Senator was then for, immediately after his own gratuitous cession of Texas and long before the invention of the London abolition plot came so opportunely to his aid.

The Congress of 1836 would not admit Texas. The Senator from South Carolina became patient, the Texas question went to sleep and for seven good years it made no disturbance. It then woke up and with a suddenness and violence proportioned to its long repose. Mr. Tyler was then President, the Senator from South Carolina was potent under his administration and soon became his Secretary of State. I come at once to the letter of the 17th of January from the Texian Minister to Mr. Upshur, the American Secretary of State and the answer to that letter by Mr. Calhoun, of April 11th of the same year. They are both vital in this case and the first is in these words :

Sir: It is known to you that an armistice has been proclaimed between Mexico and Texas, that that armistice has been obtained through the intervention of several great Powers mutually friendly, and that negotiations are now pending, having for their object a settlement of the difficulties heretofore existing between the two countries. A proposition likewise having been submitted by the President of the United States through you for the annexation of Texas to this country therefore (without indicating the nature of the reply which the President of Texas may direct to be made to this proposition) I beg leave to suggest that it may be apprehended, should a treaty of annexation be concluded, Mexico may think proper to at once terminate the armistice, break off all negotiations for peace, and again threaten or commence hostilities against Texas. And that some of the other governments who have been instrumental in obtaining their cession, if they do not throw their influence into the Mexican scale, may altogether withdraw their good offices of mediation, thus losing to Texas their friendship and exposing her to the unrestrained menaces of Mexico. In view then of these things, I desire to submit through you to his excellency the President of the United States this inquiry: Should the President of Texas accede to the proposition of annexation, would the President of the United States after the signing of the treaty and before it shall be ratified and receive the final action of the other branches of both Governments, in case Texas should desire it or with her consent, order such number of the military and naval forces of the United States to such necessary points or places upon the territory or borders of Texas or the Gulf of Mexico as shall be sufficient to protect her against foreign aggression? 

At last and after long delay, the Secretary wrote and signed the pledge which Murphy had given, and in all the amplitude of his original promise. That letter was dated on the 11th day of April, 1844 and was in these words:

Gentlemen: The letter addressed by Mr. Van Zandt to the late Secretary of State, Mr. Upshur, to which you have called my attention, dated Washington, 17th January, 1844, has been laid before the President of the United States.

In reply to it, I am directed by the President to say that the Secretary of the Navy has been instructed to order a strong naval force to concentrate in the Gulf of Mexico to meet any emergency and that similar orders have been issued by the Secretary of War to move the disposable military forces on our southwestern frontier for the same purpose. Should the exigency arise to which you refer in your note to Mr. Upshur, I am further directed by the President to say that during the pendency of the treaty of annexation he would deem it his duty to use all the means placed within his power by the Constitution to protect Texas from all foreign invasion. 

The pledge of the 11th of April being signed, the treaty was signed and being communicated to the Senate it was rejected. And the great reason for the rejection was that the ratification of the treaty would have been WAR with Mexico! An act which the President and Senate together, no more than President Tyler and his Secretary of State together, had the power to make.

I now come to the last act in this tragedy of errors — the alternative resolutions adopted by Congress in the last days of the session of 1844-45 and in the last moments of Mr. Tyler’s Administration. A resolve, single and absolute, for the admission of Texas as a state of this Union had been made by the House of Representatives. It came to this body and an alternative resolution was added, subject to the choice of the President, authorizing negotiations for the admission and appropriating $100,000 to defray the expenses of these negotiations. It was considered by everybody that the choice between these resolutions belonged to the new President, who had been elected with a special view to the admission of Texas and who was already in the city awaiting the morning of the 4th of March to enter upon the execution of his duties and upon whose Administration all the evils of a mistake in the choice of these resolutions were to fall. We all expected the question to be left open to the new President and so strong was that expectation and so strong the feeling against the decency or propriety of interference on the part of the expiring Administration to snatch this choice out of the hands of Mr. Polk that on a mere suggestion of the possibility of such a proceeding, in a debate on this floor, a Senator standing in the relation personally and politically and locally to feel for the honor of the then Secretary of State, declared they would not have the audacity to do it.

They did have the audacity! They did do it, or rather HE did it. For it is incontestable that Mr. Tyler was nothing, in anything that related to the Texas question, from the time of the arrival of his Secretary of State. On Sunday, the second day of March — that day which preceded the last day of his authority — the council sat that acted on the resolutions. And in the darkness of a night howling with the storm and battling with the elements as if Heaven warred upon the audacious act, the fatal messenger was sent off which carried the selected resolution to Texas. The exit of the Secretary from office and the start of the messenger from Washington were coetaneous [concurrent] — twin acts — which come together and will be remembered together. The act was then done. Texas was admitted. All the consequences of admission were incurred.

Source: Thomas Hart Benton, Congressional Globe, 29th Congress, 2nd session (1847), 494-497. https://archive.org/details/toldcontemporari03hartrich/page/652/mode/2up