there were some high-sounding phrases before our claims were satisfied. A treaty with the government of Louis Philippe fixed the amount at about five millions; but the Chamber of Deputies refused to provide the money, and the draft of the United States government for the first instalment was protested, (1834.) The president proposed to Congress to authorize reprisals upon French property; whereupon the French minister at Washington was recalled, and the American minister at Paris was offered his passports. More phrases followed. Great Britain offered mediation, and it was accepted; but, without waiting for it, the French government paid the five millions, (1836.) Not long after this, we were in trouble with Great Great Britain. Britain. On the outbreak of an insurrection in Canada, (1837,) some of our people undertook to join it, and encamped on Navy Island, a British possession in the Niagara River, to which they transported arms and stores in a steamer called the Caroline. This steamer, though at the time on the American bank of the river, was destroyed by a British detachment accompanied by Alexander McLeod, sheriff of Niagara; and an American citizen lost his life in the fray. Three years afterwards, McLeod, being in New York, was arrested on a charge of murder by the state authorities. The British government demanded his release, and were sustained by the United States administration, on the ground that he had acted as an agent or soldier of Great Britain. But the authorities of New York held fast to their prisoner, and brought him to trial. Had harm come to him, his government stood pledged to declare war; but he was acquitted for want of proof, (1841.) Congress subsequently passed an act requiring that similar cases should be tried only before United States courts. The release of McLeod did not settle the burning of the Caroline on the American shore; this still remained. There had been other difficulties with Great Britain upon the Maine frontier, where the boundary line was undetermined. Collisions took place, and the Maine militia and the British troops had been but just prevented from fighting, (1839.) Nor was this all. Far away, upon the African coast, British cruisers were claiming a right to visit American vessels, in carrying out the provisions for the suppression of the slave trade. The right was asserted in a quintuple treaty, to which Great Britain, France, Austria, Prussia, and Russia were parties, (October, 1841 ;) but the United States denied it altogether. Treaty Meanwhile William Henry Harrison, the choice of Wash- of the whig party, had succeeded to the presidency, ington. (March 1841.) On his death, a month after, John Tyler, vice president, became president. His secretary of state, Daniel Webster, proposed to the British minister at Washington to take up the question of the north-eastern boundary. The offer led to the appointment by the British government of a special envoy in the person of Lord Ashburton, (1842.) Conferences between him and the American secretary were shared by commissioners from Maine and Massachusetts upon all subjects pertaining to the boundary, but other points in controversy were separately considered. The treaty of Washington, ratified by the Senate four months afterwards, (August 20,) settled the north-eastern boundary; put down the claim to a right of visit, and in such a way as to lead to the denial of the claim by European powers who had previously admitted it; provided for the mutual surrender of fugitives from justice; and as to the affair of the Caroline, the British envoy made an apology, or what amounted to one. Even the old quarrel about impressment was put to rest, not by the treaty, but by a letter from Webster to Ashburton, repeating the rule originally laid down by Jefferson, "that the vessel being American shall be evidence that the seamen on board are such," adding, as the present and future principle of the American government, that "in every regularly documented American merchant vessel, the crew who navigate it will find their protection in the flag which is over them." In short, every difficulty was settled by the treaty, or by the accompanying negotiations, except the boundary of Oregon, on which no serious difference had as yet appeared. "I am willing," said Webster in the Senate, nearly four years subsequently, "to appeal to the public men of the age, whether, in 1842, and in the city of Washington, something was not done for the suppression of crime, for the true exposition of the principles of public law, for the freedom and security of commerce on the ocean, and for the peace of the world." one, 66 Republic The field was now clear for renewing the agitaof Texas. tion of a measure that had been planned for many years. On the south-western frontier, there lay a province of Mexico, unoccupied until emigrants from the United States began to settle there under Mexican authority, (1821.) Time and prosperity increased their numbers, and they formed a constitution, with which they sought admission, as a federal state, into the republic of Mexico, (1833.) The Mexican government refused, and sent a force to arrest the officers who had been elected under the constitution, and to disarm the people. War, or revolution, or both, ensued. The Texan Lexington was Gonzales, where the first resistance was made, (September 28, 1835.) The Texan Philadelphia was a place called Washington, where a convention declared the independence of the state, (March 2, 1836,) and adopted a constitution, (March 17.) The Texan Saratoga and Yorktown, two in one, was on the shores of the San Jacinto, where General Houston, commander-in-chief of the insurgents, gained a decisive victory over the Mexican president, Santa Anna, (April 21.) Six months afterwards, Houston was chosen President of the republic of Texas, (October.) Project In his inaugural speech, he expressed the desire of of annex- the people to join the United States. Nothing could ation. be more natural. With few exceptions, they came from the land to which they wished to be reunited. It was but natural, for the same reason, that a large number of those whom they had left behind them should wish their return. There were other motives. Though the Florida treaty of 1819 acknowledged the Spanish claim to Texas, the United States government did not lose its desire to possess the region, and twice attempted to buy it from Mexico, into whose possession it had passed. It could now be had without buying. Above all, Texas had established slavery where Mexico had abolished it, and where the interest of the American slave states, as they thought, required it to exist. It was more certain, they reasoned, to exist if Texas became one of them. But though these impulses were strong, others were stronger for a time. That portion of the American people which was set against the extension of slavery was, therefore, set against annexing Texas. That larger portion which adhered to public principle, and knew that to annex Texas was to despoil Mexico, also stood out against annexation. The independence of Texas was recognized by the United States, (1837.) But the same year its application for admission to the Union was rejected and withdrawn. Revived. It was frequently revived. As the anti-slavery movement deepened, nothing seemed more fit to stem it than the increase of slaveholding territory; and this lay close at hand in Texas. If it were not taken, it might cease to be slaveholding; for Great Britain, as the great abolitionist power, was supposed to entertain the design of getting Texas under her control, and abolishing slavery there. "Few calamities," wrote our secretary of state, Upshur, in 1843, "could befall this country more to be deplored than the abolition of domestic slavery in Texas." "To this continent," wrote Upshur's successor, Calhoun, in 1844," the blow would be calamitous beyond description." It thus became more and more of a settled purpose with the south to force Texas upon the north, or, as one of the South Carolina districts presented the alternative, "either to admit Texas into the Union, or to proceed peaceably and calmly to arrange the terms of a dissolution of the Union." But to this there was something to be said on the northern side; and it was said earnestly, that the character of the Union as a republic, founded for freedom and for free institutions, would be lost by acquiring territory expressly for slavery. A fresh conflict for and against slavery ensued, in which the numbers against it were evidently on the increase. What the abolitionists could not do, the slaveholders and their adherents did, by opening the eyes of the people and showing them how near they were to the brink of the precipice. The majority went forward blindly. A treaty Effected. of annexation, concluded by Calhoun as secretary of state, was rejected by the Senate in June, 1844. Its supporters instantly carried the measure into the presidential election of that year, casting aside Van Buren, who was a candidate for renomination by the democratic party, and nominating James K. Polk, chiefly because he was committed to immediate annexation. The whigs nominated Clay because he had opposed annexation, and when he wrote a letter showing himself to be halting between two opinions, the life was taken out of his party, and they lost the election. As soon as Congress met, resolutions |