EXAS

TEXAS

CHAPTER XXIII.

WAR WITH MEXICO.

AS was a free and independent government. The Americans who had settled there wished to be annexed to the United States. The slave-holders in the United States ardently desired its annexation, because it would increase their political power.

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Slavery should pour

itself abroad without restraint, and find no limit but the Southern Ocean," said Mr. Wise of Virginia, in Congress.

He was looking into the future, and saw that there was very little territory south of the southern boundary of Missouri that could be made into slave States. The slave-holders wanted not only to annex Texas, but to obtain all the country between Texas and the Pacific Ocean. In March, 1845, Texas was annexed by act of Congress. What was its western boundary? President Polk claimed that it was the Rio Grande; Mexico that it was the river Nueces. The strip of country between the two streams was nearly two hundred miles wide. The flag of Texas never had waved over it. President Polk ordered General Zachary Taylor, who was at the mouth of the Nueces, to take possession of the disputed territory. He marched across the country, and reached the Rio Grande. The people of Matamoras, on the western bank, beheld with astonishment the planting of cannon opposite the town. The river is narrow, and the Americans were so near that they could lift their caps to the Mexican ladies and salute them with "Buena Senoritas."

ZACHARY TAYLOR.

General Taylor stationed two vessels at the mouth of the Rio Grande to blockade the river. A Mexican vessel loaded with flour attempted to enter, but was stopped; and flour became so scarce in Matamoras that a barrel was worth forty dollars.

General Taylor sent Lieutenant Thornton with a party of dragoons to scour the country.

"You are to capture and destroy any parties of the enemy you may meet," read his orders.

Lieutenant Thornton discovered a party of Mexicans and charged upon them. There was a fight, in which sixteen Americans were killed and wounded.

There had been no declaration of war, but it had begun through the aggressive acts of the United States. Mexico was in a state of anarchy. In 1844 Santa Anna was President, but had been deposed and banished.

General Canaliza succeeded him; but General Herrera brought about another revolution and became President. He was soon deposed by General Paredes, who wished to be supreme dictator-these the changes of eighteen months.

There were four distinct classes of people in Mexico: the Indians; the Mestizas, descendants of the early Spanish settlers and Indians; the Creoles, pure-blooded descendants of the first settlers from Spain; and the Spanish who had been born in Spain, but who had enigrated to Mexico. The Creoles hated the Spaniards, and called them Gauchapins-a con

temptuous epithet. The Mestizas outnumbered all the others. They loved display, to wear uniforms, to be called general or colonel.

They had made themselves independent of Spain, and had established a republic, but had little conception of what constitutes a republic-that there must be intelligence, virtue, morality. There were frequent revolutions-each general aspiring to be President, and attempting, by using the army, to accomplish his purpose.

The people were ignorant, the country poor. The priests owned more than half the land. The Mexicans knew very little of the power of the United States. They held the Americans in contempt. The Mexican Government paid no attention to the claims of the United States for property of American citizens taken and destroyed. The men who one after another became Presidents were looking after their own aggrandizement, and gave little heed to the welfare of the country or its relations to other countries. When General Taylor marched to the Rio Grande and

occupied the country the Mexicans regarded it as an invasion. They were proud, and determined to fight.

General Taylor, with twenty-three hundred men, was marching north from Point Isabel, on the sea-coast, toward Fort Brown, opposite Matamoras. He had twelve cannon, two of them eighteen-pounders. General Arista, with six thousand men and twelve cannon, crossed the Rio Grande, and chose a spot between two thickets, where he would give battle. The Mexican troops were brave; but the artillery was no match for Major Ringgold's and Duncan's batteries of flying artillery.

General Arista placed his cavalry on his left wing, then two cannor, then a line of infantry, then four more cannon-so extending his line from thicket to thicket.