Mississippi, who rebuked Massachusetts for her "great outcry of unconstitutional injustice." Mr. Berrien of Georgia also defended them, and even avowed his readiness to cut all party bonds if necessary to defend Southern rights. On the other hand, Mr. Choate of Massachusetts not only condemned them, but also the Southern laws concerning colored seamen, as unconstitutional, giving, at the same time, his unqualified support to the proposition of Mr. Evans. After much debate a vote was reached, and only twelve senators, all Northern Whigs, were found ready to support the amendment. The bill was then passed with only nine dissenting votes; and Florida, with these inhuman, oppressive, and admitted unconstitutional provisions in her organic law, became, on the 3d of March, 1845, a member of the Union. All opposition had been unavailing. All scruples, either constitutional or moral, made little impression on a Power that recognized its ability as the only limit of its endeavor, and with which might was ever tantamount to right.

Indeed, this very debate revealed the insincerity of the leading advocates of slavery and of its demands, their lack of fealty, not only to party, but to the nation itself. Doctrines not only fatal to party control and success, but revolutionary and premonitory of rebellion and treason, were openly and vauntingly proclaimed. Thus the very men who had clamored so strenuously and unceasingly for an "equilibrium" in the Senate, as a national necessity, and who now insisted on linking the destiny of the fresh and youthful Iowa, instinct with life and energy, with that of Florida, old, effete, already bearing the marks of decay, and with none of the conditions of a republican State, either in the number and character of its population or in the form of its constitution, found in the very next session no scruples in the way of a policy exactly the reverse. Then they saw no insuperable obstacle to the admission of Texas as a slave State, coupled though it was with the singular and unprecedented provision for making four additional States, probably slave, and no counterbalancing consideration against any slaveholding preponderance that would result therefrom.

But the speeches on the occasion were more significant and suggestive than their acts, especially those of Archer and Berrien, Southern Whigs, and generally noted for their moderate and conservative views. When such men appealed, in vindication of measures and usages clearly unconstitutional and violative of good faith, to "the law of self-preservation," which "overrides all forms of political institutions or constitution," and when they avowed their "readiness to cut all party bonds, if necessary to defend Southern rights," is there wonder that the Whig party melted away under such influences? Even then the Rebellion was but a question of time.

Protest of the Mexican minister.

American government refused intercourse with the Mexican government. General Taylor ordered to advance to the Rio Grande. Ampudia requests General Taylor to return to the Nueces. General Taylor attacked by General Arista. Mexicans defeated. - President's message. Views of Mr. Calhoun. Remarks of Clayton, Crittenden, and Cass. -The House declares that war exists by act of Mexico. - Passage of the war bill in the House; in the Senate. — Debates in Congress. — The President asks for two millions for the settlement of boundaries. - Two-million bill reported. -Mr. Wilmot's motion to exclude slavery from territory to be acquired of Mexico. Amendment agreed to. - Fails in the Senate.

HAVING consummated the work of annexation, the government was forced to accept the logical sequences of its action. Among them, in spite of all hopes and assurances to the contrary, was a war with Mexico. Thrice had she notified the United States that annexation would be deemed by her just cause for war. Nor was there reasonable ground of expectation that she would not be true to her word. On the 6th of March, therefore, four days after the joint resolution was signed, the Mexican minister made a formal protest and demanded his passports, while the minister of the United States at Mexico was refused all official intercourse.

By annexation, therefore, the government had placed itself in a position requiring extreme delicacy, tact, and skill to prevent actual hostilities. That delicacy, tact, and skill seemed to be wholly wanting in President Polk and Secretary Buchanan. This, with the same reckless disregard of the rights of Mexico and amenities of good neighborhood, which had been displayed in the act of annexation, appeared more glaringly in the matter of boundaries; so that, if Mexican forbearance had swallowed the affront put upon her by the former, she could not, with any show of self-respect, have submitted without an appeal to arms to the latter. By the joint resolu

tion of annexation, the adjustment of all questions of boundary was assumed by this government. Ordinary prudence would have suggested that, in settling them, something was due to the wounded feelings and sense of outraged justice of the Mexican people. And yet nothing seemed further from the policy pursued.

Texas had claimed the Rio Grande as her western limit, though she had never exercised actual control over either New Mexico or the country lying between the Nucces and the Rio Grande. The groundless character of the claims of Texas to the Rio Grande as its western boundary was even admitted by some friends of the measure. While the Tyler treaty was pending in the Senate, Mr. Woodbury of New Hampshire said, in his speech in favor of its ratification, that Texas could," by a mere law, acquire no title to more than she had conquered from Mexico and actually governed. Hence, though her law included more than ancient Texas, she could hold and convey only that, or, at the uttermost, what she holds jurisdiction over." Silas Wright, also of the same party, referring to the boundaries of Texas, declared that “they embraced a country to which Texas had no claims, over which she had never asserted jurisdiction, and which she had no right to cede." Mr. Benton denounced the treaty as an attempt to seize two thousand square miles of Mexican territory by the incorporation of the left bank of the Rio del Norte, which would be an act of direct aggression for the consequences of which the United States must stand responsible. In his speech in support of the joint resolution, Mr. Ingersoll, chairman of the Committee on Foreign Relations, asserted that the stupendous deserts between the river Nueces and the Rio Grande were "the natural boundary between the Anglo-Saxon and the Mauritanlan races. There ends the Valley of the West, there Mexico begins"; and he affirmed that that gigantic boundary would be sacred while peace remained, " or until the spirit of conquest rages." Indeed, Mr. Ashley of Arkansas, a zealous supporter of annexation, boldly avowed in the Senate that Judge Ellis of Texas, a member of the convention which framed the constitution, said to him that Texas extended

its boundaries to the Rio Grande "solely and professedly with a view of having a large margin in her negotiations with Mexico, and not with the expectation of retaining them as they now exist on their statute-book." This device, though unworthy of a great nation, eminently befitted the men and their purpose who employed it.

In ordering, therefore, General Taylor to pass a portion of his forces westward of the river Nueces, which was done before annexation was accomplished, President Polk put in peril the peace and the good name of the country. In his Annual Message of December of that year he stated that American troops were in position on the Nueces, "to defend our own and the rights of Texas." But, not content with occupying ground on and westward of the Nueces, he issued, on the 13th of January, 1846, the fatal order to General Taylor to advance and "occupy positions on or near the left bank of the Rio del Norte." That movement of the army from Corpus Christi to the Rio Grande, a distance of more than one hundred miles, was an invasion of Mexican territory, an act of war for which the President was and must ever be held responsible by the general judgment of mankind.

Nor can there be reasonable doubt that that order plunged the two countries into actual hostilities. True, Mr. Van Buren had said that annexation "would draw after it a war with Mexico," and Mr. Clay had expressed the opinion that "annexation and war with Mexico are identical"; but whatever might have been the legal status of the two countries, actual hostilities did not exist. The facts render it apparent that peace could have been preserved by a wise, prudent, and moderate policy. But that march into territory inhabited by Mexicans, who hastily fled before the advancing forces, the erection of batteries on the left bank of the Rio Grande, commanding the public square of Matamoras, meant more than "to defend our own and the rights of Texas." It could only mean, it did mean, the acquisition of more territory in which to establish slavery, and by which the further expansion and development of slaveholding institutions. could be promoted.