Pacific Ocean, and, far from being content with the immense slopes of the Rocky Mountains, and the great Valley of the Mississippi on the east, and that of the Columbia on the west, we have chafed against the boundaries of nature and of our neighbors, and, like Jezebel, have coveted their vineyards. The history of the last few years has yielded a melancholy illustration of the eloquent special pleading of the exhorbitant passions, and the self-deceiving justifications. of ambition. Prompt excuses have been discovered for this boa-constrictor appetite of swallowing states and provinces, in the glory of free institutions, the blessings of civil and religious liberty, and the extension of our industrial and commercial system. Alas! we have thus discovered opiates to lull our consciences when they were uneasy, and tonics to invigorate our ambition when it was halting. Under the dominion of this lust for territory, however acquired, we have pushed onwards in a hot and unjustifiable invasion, and by a compulsory peace, have extorted from our neighbors more than half a million of square miles of land, reaching from the Atlantic to the Pacific, across the breadth of the North American continent.

CHAPTER III.

THE CHIEF MOTIVE OF THE WAR.

"He finds his fellow guilty of a skin

Not colored like his own; and having power

'T'enforce the wrong, for such a worthy cause,

Dooms and devotes him as his lawful prey."- Cowper.

THE motives which actuate public men and political parties, are not always openly avowed. There are secrets of

state in the administration of republican as well as despotic governments, though not of the same number or extent. The causes which determine the line of national policy, can sometimes only be inferred, though the inference may be raised to a high degree of probability. Important documents, which would no doubt throw great light upon international affairs, are buried in the archives of state, and a seal put upon their publication by the plea, more or less valid, that it would embarrass the public service. We are, therefore, left somewhat in the dark in reasoning upon the events of history, though of a very recent date; and we can hope to reach in our conclusions only a reasonable measure of moral probability, not an irresistible mathematical certainty.

The circumstances enumerated in the last chapter, were predisposing causes of war, but, of themselves, they would not have produced that unhappy result. Hence we look for some more positive and potent element. We are ready to concede something to the pacific settlement of the Oregon question, which turned the war spirit into a new channel;something to the desire of giving eclat to a new administration;. something to the vast expansion of civil and military patronage produced by war; something to the interested. clamor of Mexican claimants and their friends; something to the magic -power of Texan scrip; something to a widespread suspicion and a quick jealousy of European interference in the affairs of this continent; but we feel confident that we are stating a solemn and incontrovertible truth, when we say that we discern in slavery the main-spring to the war with Mexico. Had the idea of extending the "peculiar " institutions of the South, and the political power resulting therefrom, been entirely excluded from the question, not a shot would ever have been fired.

We desire to make such a record on this point as will stand justified fifty years hence, when the planners and

actors in present scenes have passed off the stage. For the purpose of confirming our statements, we shall take the liberty of quoting published and authentic documents, without reference to parties. We shall thus be led directly to the conclusion expressed above.

It is unnecessary here to recount the details of the annexation of Texas to the United States, as our aim is not a history, so much as a review, of an important portion of history, recent and well-known. That event, however, was regarded by Mexico as an act of war in itself, and was, no doubt, one of the prominent causes, notwithstanding all disclaimers, that led to the actual commencement of hostilities; for our armies surely never would have advanced either to the Nueces or to the Rio Grande, had it not been for the ostensible purpose of protecting our newly-acquired domains. But the scheme of Annexation was devised, as openly declared by some of its staunchest advocates, to give greater security to the institutions of the South. The clear and direct inference is, that slavery and the war with Mexico have had a cause-and-effect connection. Had slavery not existed in our land, there would have been no annexation; and had there been no annexation, there would have been no strife. Who can dispute these propositions, when he has candidly and truthfully weighed the following declarations of some of the leading politicians of the day? The idea of Southern aggrandizement was early broached and steadily avowed. Let the credible witnesses give their testimony.

Mr. Upshur was a member of the Virginia Convention in 1829, and said in that body: "Nothing is more fluctuating than the value of slaves. A late law of Louisiana reduced their value twenty-five per cent in two hours after its passage was known. If it should be our lot, as I trust it will, to acquire Texas, their price will rise."*

* Debates of that body.

Mr. Doddridge, another member of the same convention, made a similar declaration; "that the acquisition of Texas would greatly enhance the value of the property in question." *

Mr. Gholson said, in the Legislature of Virginia in 1832 ; † "that the price of slaves fell twenty-five per cent within two hours after the news was received of the non-importation act which was passed by the Legislature of Louisiana. Yet he believed the acquisition of Texas would raise their price fifty per cent at least."

Mr. Calhoun avowed his opinions in the Senate of the United States, as early as May 23, 1836; "there were powerful reasons why Texas should be a part of this Union. The Southern States owning a slave population were deeply interested in preventing that country from having the power to annoy them; and the navigating and manufacturing interests of the North, were equally interested in making it a part of the Union." ‡

Meantime, the Cuban slave-trade had fearfully increased, and fresh commissions were constantly arriving at Havana from Texas, to buy the wretched sons of Africa who had been torn from their native soil, and transported across the ocean by fiends in human shape. President Houston said in his annual Message to the Congress of the Republic of Texas, in 1837; "not unconnected with the naval force of the country is the subject of the African slave-trade. It cannot be disbelieved that thousands of Africans have lately been imported to the Island of Cuba, with a design to transfer a large portion of them into this republic." The British commissioners for the suppression of the slave-trade, who resided in Cuba agreeably to the treaty of 1817 with Spain, reported that twenty-seven slave-vessels arrived in Havana in 1833, thirty-three in 1834, fifty in 1836, and in 1835, that

* See note on preceding page.

† Journal of Session, 1832.

29th Congress, 2d Session, Congressional Globe, pp. 495.

more than fifteen thousand negroes must have been landed! Sir T. F. Buxton stated that in 1837 and 1838, no less than "fifteen thousand negroes had been imported from Africa into Texas." Other accounts rate the number still higher. One Taylor, of Barbadoes, was convicted of sending free negroes to this new market, and selling them. The Albany Argus of 1844, mentions the case of one man who sent ten thousand dollars to Cuba for the purchase of human beings. The emigrants from the United States had a palpable motive to expose this infamous traffic, and seek to extinguish it, because it cheapened their own slaves. *

The project of annexation was not suffered to sleep, but from year to year was cherished and developed by its zealous and untiring friends. The great end, too, which it would eventually subserve, was kept distinctly in view.

Mr. Upshur, Secretary of State, wrote to W. S. Murphy, chargé d'affaires of the United States in Texas, in a letter dated Washington, Aug. 8, 1843, as follows; "The establishment, in the very midst of our slave-holding States, of an independent Government, forbidding the existence of slavery, and by a people born for the most part among us, reared up in our habits, and spreading our language, could not fail to produce the most unhappy effects upon both parties. If Texas were in that condition, her territory would afford a ready refuge for the fugitive slaves of Louisiana and Arkansas, and would hold out to them, an encouragement to run away which no municipal regulations of those States could possibly counteract.”

"Few calamities could befal this country more to be deplored than the establishment of a predominant British influence, and the abolition of domestic slavery in Texas.” †

* Moody's Facts for the People, pp. 69, 70.

† 28th Congress, 1st Session, Senate, 341, pp. 21, 22.