76. An abolitionist on annexation, 1845 [341] had no agency in bringing about the state of things which has The presidential campaign of 1844 turned wholly on the issue of Texas, the logical candidates in each party January 22, writing letters on the subject which cost the one (Van Buren, Democrat) the nomination, and the other (Henry Clay, Whig) the election.2 When the country seemed to indorse the policy of annexation, by the election of Polk in November, the free-soilers made a desperate but unavailing fight to avert what they considered the greatest calamity that had threatened the nation since its birth. Joshua Giddings, elected to Congress in 1838 as its first abolitionist member, spoke as follows in the House,. January 22, 1845: The President in his message says, that "the annexation of Texas to the United States will give Mexico no just cause of offence.' " We are all conscious that a state of war now exists 1 Van Buren, in his letter on Texas, April 20, 1844, says: "Nothing is either more true or more extensively known than that Texas was wrested from Mexico, and her independence established, through the instrumentality of citizens of the United States." Niles' Register, Vol. LXVI, p. 156. 2 The letters of Clay and Van Buren may be found in Niles' Register, Vol. LXVI, pp. 152-157. 3 In his annual message of December 3, 1844, President Tyler said: "Mexico has no just ground of displeasure against this government or people for the negotiation of the treaty [that is, Calhoun's treaty of April 12, 1844]. What interest of hers was affected by the treaty? She was despoiled of nothing, since Texas was forever lost to her. The between Texas and Mexico. By entering into the proposed union with Texas, we shall become obligated to defend her. And when the armies of Mexico invade Texas, we must of course send our army and navy to repel such invasion. This interference will constitute us the aggressors. We shall thus make the war of Texas our war; and our sons will be liable to march to that country to fight the battles of Texas, to shed their blood, and leave their bones to whiten upon her plains, in order that slavery may continue and the slave-trade flourish.1 . . . ... During the late political campaign, in some of the slavebreeding States these objects were eloquently urged. . . . This same object of maintaining the slave-trade was avowed in the other end of this capitol by a distinguished Senator [Mr. McDuffie, of South Carolina], who, after stating the increase of slaves in the Southern States, remarked: "Now if we shall annex Texas, it will operate as a safety-valve to let off this superabundant slave population from among us." And the same doctrine was advanced on this floor by gentlemen from the slave States who boldly avowed that "slavery must be maintained in Texas, or it must cease to exist in the United States." . . . I will detain the committee for a moment, by calling their attention to the peculiar attitude in which we, as a nation, are now placed before the civilized world. England has abolished slavery in her dominions. France is already moving upon that subject, and Denmark has taken the incipient steps for setting independence of Texas was recognized by several of the leading powers of the earth. She was free to treat, free to adopt her own line of policy, free to take the course she believed was best calculated to secure her happiness." -J. D. Richardson, Messages and Papers of the Presidents, Vol. IV, p. 342. 1 The abolitionists maintained that the sole object of the annexation of Texas was the extension of the slave area. The fact that many proslavery men voted against Calhoun's treaty of annexation disproves this view. James Russell Lowell in his stirring poem, "The Present Crisis," which was inspired by the annexation policy of 1844, expresses the view thus: "Slavery, the earth-born Cyclops, fellest of the giant brood... her slaves free. So palpable are the turpitude and disgrace of holding slaves, that even semi-barbarous nations are, at this day, lustrating themselves from its moral contagion. The Bey of Tripoli, in his decree prohibiting the slave-trade, which our honorable Secretary of State [Calhoun] is so anxious to maintain, declared that he did it "for the honor of man and the glory of God." But while the Bey of Tripoli and the Pacha of Egypt are extending the enjoyment of civil liberty, this government is openly engaged in endeavoring to extend the institution of slavery.... Our representatives in 1776 declared the right of man to the enjoyment of his liberty to be self-evident, while our Executive in 1844 declares the progress of human liberty in a neighboring government to be highly dangerous to our prosperity. Of all the civilized nations of the earth, ours alone now stands as the advocate of negro slavery. The spectacle is humiliating.. Our honorable Secretary of State urges upon Mr. King [United States minister at Paris] and the French government that the abolition of slavery "has diminished the exports of the British West India Islands"; and he infers that it would have the same effect in this country, if our States were to follow their example in respect to emancipation. Now, Sir, the argument is not legitimate. It places pecuniary profit in the scale against the natural rights of man, and gives preponderance to the former. Go to the thief who lives and thrives by his midnight larcenies; remonstrate with him; tell him that the property of his neighbors of right belongs to them, and that he ought not feloniously to take it, he may turn round, and, in the language of our honorable Secretary, say to you, that were he to adopt your ideas of justice, and cease his thefts, his exports would be diminished.” . . . His excuse would not mitigate his crimes; nay, it would aggravate his guilt. So with our Secretary's argument. If slavery be opposed to the natural rights of men; if it be a self-evident truth that "man is born free," . . . then it is a crime for us to rob him of his God-given rights, although it may thereby "increase our exports." . . . General Jackson and others say that it is necessary that we should have Texas as a means of national defence. I reply that every addition of Slave territory renders us weaker, and places a heavier burden on the free States. This extending slavery at the expense of our free States, is what the honorable Secretary regards as economy. If Southern gentlemen regard it in that light, I may be permitted to assure them that we of the North look upon its economical bearings as altogether unfavorable to our interests. We are bound by the Constitution to defend the Southern States in case of invasion, or of domestic violence. That stipulation we will perform to the letter; but there we stop- we go no further. We will not take upon ourselves any obligation to protect the slaveholders of Texas. . . . ... The pecuniary bearings of slavery were well illustrated in the Florida War, which was commenced and prosecuted in order to recapture the fugitive slaves who had sought an asylum in that territory.1 It was carried on for seven years, at an expenditure of forty million dollars, and some hundreds of lives, in order to capture and return to their owners some five hundred slaves; making each slave cost the nation about eighty thousand dollars, mostly taken from the pockets of Northern freemen. This is the economy of slavery. Sir, I object to placing ourselves in a situation to be called upon to catch the runaway slaves of Texas. If this be economy, may Heaven save us from its extension. . . . Gentlemen here become pathetic upon the sufferings to which the people of Texas have been subjected during their war with Mexico. They speak in melting terms of the predatory warfare heretofore carried on against Texas, and they ask the people of our free States to relieve them from Mexican barbarity. Why, Sir, there is more human suffering in this city every year by reason of the slave-trade, than has been endured by the whole people of Texas during their entire revolution of eight years. The consumption of human life attendant and consequent upon the slave-trade in this district, is greater every year than it has been in Texas during any period of their war with Mexico. It should be borne in mind that this slave trade is authorized and maintained by act of Congress, which the advocates of annexation 1 This was but one of several causes of the Florida War. See Muzzey, An American History, pp. 237-239. refuse to repeal. . . . Gentlemen on this floor, whose hearts are unmoved by all the suffering of the slave population here, and by all the blood that is annually shed in this district, become eloquent upon the sufferings endured by the people of Texas. They are willing to spend the national treasure, and pour out American blood to protect the Texans, while they will authorize by law all those crimes and outrages and all the violence and bloodshed attendant upon the slave-trade in this district. Indeed, they are striving to extend and perpetuate those crimes in Texas, under the plea of "extending the area of freedom." . . . The momentous questions of Liberty and Slavery are now before the people of this nation. They have been forced upon us by the slave-holders of the South. Northern men cannot, will not, shrink from the discussion. They have become the great absorbing topics in this hall, in most of our State legislatures, and by the people of the United States generally. Public indignation at these attempts to involve us in the crimes and disgrace of slavery, is already awakened. It is rolling forward with an irresistible force; which, ere long, will redeem and purify the people of the North from the crimes and the corroding influence of that blood-stained institution. The car of universal liberty is moving; it has acquired a momentum that cannot be stopped; and those who throw themselves before it, in order to obstruct its progress, will be crushed beneath its resistless power. Probably no other claim of our government was ever based on a weaker foundation, urged with more vociferous pretensions, or abandoned with more complacent haste, than the claim of the Democratic platform of 1844 to "the whole of Oregon" up to parallel 54° 40'.1 Thomas H. 1 The plain facts of the case were these: by the treaty of 1819 Spain's claims to the north on the Pacific coast were limited to 42°; by treaties of 1824 and 1825 Russia's claims to the south on the Pacific coast were limited to 54° 40'. The region between 42° and 54° 40' was occupied jointly by Great Britain and the United States, first for ten years, by treaty of 1818, then for an indefinite period, by treaty of 1827. The latter treaty might be broken after 1828, by either nation's giving the other twelve months' notice. Although there were occasional proposals |