ereignty over the thirteen States. By the treaty of 1783 this sovereignty passed to the original States, including North Carolina and Georgia, within whose limits your nation was then living. If you have since been suffered to dwell there, enjoying the use of the soil and the privileges to hunt, it has been because of compacts with your people, and affords no ground for a denial of the right of those States to exercise their original sovereignty. One of these compacts was made in 1785, and another in 1791. By them no right whatever was secured to you, save a mere possessory one; the soil and the use of it were conceded to you while the sovereignty abided, just as it did before, with the States within whose limits you resided. Later still, in 1802, when Georgia assumed her present limits and ceded all her western territory, the United States bound herself to extinguish your title to all lands within the bounds of Georgia as soon as it could be done peaceably and on reasonable terms. She did not ask that the military force of the Union be employed to drive you away, but that the soil be acquired by peaceable means. The course you have taken of establishing an independent government within her boundary, against her will and without her consent, has put an end to forbearance, and forced her as a sovereign, free, and independent State to extend her laws over your country, which she has a right to do without the authority of the General Government. But suppose that Georgia ought not to exercise such power. What then? You ask that the Government step forward and stop the operation of constitutional acts of an independent State within her limits. Should this be done, and Georgia persist in the maintenance of her rights, an appeal might be made to the sword. But this can never be done. The President will not beguile you with such an expectation. The arms of this country can never be used to stay any State of this Union in the exercise of those powers which belong to her as a sovereign. Such interference is not within the range of powers granted by the State to the General Government, and cannot be undertaken. 1829. THE INDIAN POLICY. 539 There was, the Secretary continued, but one remedy: remove beyond the Mississippi river. So long, said he, as you remain where you are the President can promise you nothing but interruption and disquiet. But once across the Great River there will be no conflicting interests. The United States, uncontrolled by the high authority of State jurisdiction, will be able to say to you, in the language of your own people, the soil shall be yours while the trees grow or the streams run. There is, then, but one alternative: yield to the laws Georgia has a right to extend throughout her own limit, or remove, and, joining your brothers beyond the Mississippi, become again a nation enjoying the protection the Government will then have power to afford.* Much the same advice was given to the Creeks in a "talk" read to their chiefs by order of the President. "Friends and brothers," said he, "listen: Where you now are, you and my white children are too near to each other to live in harmony and peace. Your game is gone, and many of your people will not work and till the earth. Beyond the great river Mississippi, where a part of your nation has gone, your father has provided a country large enough for all of you, and he advises you to remove to it. There your white brothers will not trouble you; they will have no claim to the land, and you can live upon it, and all your children, as long as the grass grows or the water runs, in peace and plenty. The land beyond the Mississippi belongs to the President and to none else, and he will give it to you forever. "My children, listen: My white children in Alabama have extended their law over your country. If you remain in it you must be subject to that law. If you remove across the Mississippi you will be subject to your own laws and the care of your father the President." + The meaning of these communications was plain. The policy of the Administration was removal of the Indians * Niles's Weekly Register, June 13, 1829, vol. xxxvi, pp. 258, 259. Secretary of War to the Cherokee Delegation, April 18, 1829. Jackson to the Creek Indians, March 23, 1829. Niles's Weekly Register, June 13, 1829, vol. xxxvi, pp. 257, 258. into the far West, and abandonment of them, meantime, to the control of the States in which they dwelt. But there were other issues now before the people, with regard to which the policy of the President was more cautious, and such a one was that of acquiring Texas. At last the time seemed at hand when the province could not only be secured, but bought for a trifle. Mexico was again torn by internal quarrels. Her treasury was almost bankrupt. A foreign invader was on her soil, her citizens were in open rebellion, and the permanence of the Republic so seriously threatened that hopes were entertained that she might be willing to sell Texas for a sum large to her, but small to us. Many years before, while Spain still ruled the country, Freemasonry had been introduced into Mexico under a charter obtained from Scotland. During the struggle for independence the network of lodges scattered far and wide over the provinces acted as a bond of union, and afforded an easy means of spreading news of the plans and purposes of the leaders secretly and with great rapidity. But the contest over and independence secured, it appeared that the leaders had been in rebellion against Spain, not against monarchy, and would willingly see a royal government of their own make set up, with a Spanish prince on the throne. Then was it that they seized on Masonry and sought to make it do for them as monarchists what it had done for them as Mexicans. Such was the state of affairs when Mr. Joel Roberts Poinsett reached Mexico, early in 1825, in the capacity of Minister from the United States. As a republican, and the representative of a Republic, his advice and company was eagerly sought by the leaders of the anti-royalist party, who, finding him to be a member of a York lodge of Masons, persuaded him to obtain a charter for the establishment of such a lodge, the first of its kind in Mexico. A charter was quickly secured through De Witt Clinton, and late in 1825 a grand lodge was duly installed in the City of Mexico by Mr. Poinsett. Thence the new order spread with great rapidity, but from it were carefully shut out all men known to be in favor of a royal or centralized government. Masonry 1828. INSURRECTION IN MEXICO. 541 thus became the basis of the two political parties to which were given the names Escoces and Yorkinos, taken from their respective lodges. At the head of the Escoces were Vice-President Bravo, Gomez, Pedraza, and José Montanyo. Chief among the Yorkinos were President Victoria, Santa Anna, Guerrero, and Bustamente. With the two parties thus organized and led it was merely a question of time when one or the other should begin a struggle for the entire possession of the Government, and this came when the official term of President Victoria began to draw to a close. A successor was to be elected in 1828; but that there might be no other president, José Montanyo raised the standard of revolt in 1827, and announced a plan for a consolidated government. Bravo thereupon denounced Victoria as a Yorkino and joined the rebels; the priests began to excite the people; the Escoces in the City of Mexico made ready to rise the moment Montanyo appeared before the capital, and all seemed to be going well when Guerrero took the field, and without the smallest show of resistance the rebel army melted away and Bravo was banished. At the election which followed in September, Pedraza, the candidate of the Escoces, was elected over Guerrero, the Yorkino, by two votes. It now became the duty of the Yorkinos to rebel, and Santa Anna, declaring the election to have been tainted with fraud, gathered his soldiers about him and seized Perote. Guerrero soon followed, and on the last night of November his partisans in Mexico rose in insurrection. During four days fierce fighting raged in the suburbs of the city, from street to street and from the tops of convents and houses. At last one of the convents was captured by means of a forged order from the President, and, the bells beginning to ring, the troops of the Government fled in panic, the city fell, Pedraza escaped, and the mob sacked the stores. On the fifth day Guerrero arrived with more troops, the semblance of order was restored, and the following day the Congress elected Guerrero President, Anastasio Bustamente Vice-President, and Santa Anna Secretary of War. Defeated at home, the Escoces turned to old Spain, opened a correspondence with the authorities at Havana, and in July a Spanish army four thousand five hundred strong sailed from Havana under the command of Isidore Barradas. A landing near Tampico de Tamaulipas was easily effected, but no re-enforcements came, and six weeks later Barradas and his men were prisoners of war. That now, if ever, Mexico might be persuaded to part with Texas seemed likely. At all events, the attempt was worth making, and in August Poinsett was bidden to open negotiations for the purchase of as much of Texas as he could get, for any one of four pieces would be acceptable. The present boundary, Van Buren said, was far from satisfactory. The Sabine was too petty a stream to be a highway of commerce, but, from the character of the country to the eastward, was well fitted to encourage extensive smuggling. So long as the river remained the line of separation the frontier must continue to be what it was and had been-the home of outlaws and smugglers. The presence of such people near the boundary was well calculated to lead to incessant broils and difficulties, to which our neighbors across the line were only too much inclined. The want of attachment between Mexico and the Texans giving rise to four revolts in five years, the presence on her soil of the warlike Shawnee, Cherokee, and Kickapoo Indians, invited there to defend the Mexicans against the Comanches, and now announcing their determination to stay; the removal to that neighborhood of the great body of our own Indians; the comparatively small value to Mexico of the territory in question; its remote and disconnected situation; the unsettled condition of her affairs; the ruinous condition of her finances, and the threatening attitude of Spain-all combine to point out the wisdom of parting with Texas.* For so much as lies east of a line starting at a point on the shore of the Gulf midway on the great plain between the Nueces and the Rio Grande, and thence running westward and northward along the middle of the plain * Van Buren to Poinsett, August 25, 1829. Register of Debates in Congress, vol. xiv, part ii; Appendix, pp. 127–130. |