Suppose a more portentous case, certainly within the bounds ofpossibility--I would to God I could say not within the bounds ofprobability. You have been, if you are not now, at the very pointof a war with Mexico--a war, I am sorry to say, so far as publicrumour may be credited, stimulated by provocations on our partfrom the very commencement of this administration down to therecent authority given to General Gaines to invade the Mexicanterritory. It is said that one of the earliest acts of thisadministration was a proposal, made at a time when there wasalready much ill-humour in Mexico against the United States, thatshe should cede to the United States a very large portion of herterritory--large enough to constitute nine States equal in extentto Kentucky. It must be confessed that a device better calculatedto produce jealousy, suspicion, ill-will, and hatred, could nothave been contrived. It is further affirmed that this overture,offensive in itself; was made precisely at the time when a swarmof colonists from these United States were covering the Mexicanborder with land-jobbing, and with slaves, introduced in defianceof the Mexican laws, by which slavery had been abolishedthroughout that Republic. The war now raging in Texas is aMexican civil war, and a war for the re-establishment of slaverywhere it was abolished.--It is not a servile war, but a warbetween slavery and emancipation, and every possible effort hasbeen made to drive us into the war, on the side of slavery.
It is, indeed, a circumstance eminently fortunate for us thatthis monster, Santa Ana, has been defeated and taken, though Icannot participate in tbat exquisite joy with which we have beentold that every one having Anglo-Saxon blood in his veins musthave been delighted on hearing that this ruffian has been shot,in cold blood, when a prisoner of war, by the Anglo-Saxon leaderof the victorious Texan army. Sir, I hope there is no member ofthis house, of other than Anglo-Saxon origin, who will deem ituncourteous that I, being myself in part Anglo-Saxon, must, ofcourse, hold that for the best blood that ever circulated inhuman veins. Oh! yes, sir! far be it from me to depreciate theglories of the Anglo-Saxon race; although there have been timeswhen they bowed their necks and submitted to the law of conquest,beneath the ascendancy of the Norman race. But, sir, it hasstruck me as no inconsiderable evidence of the spirit which isspurring us into this war of aggression, of conquest, and ofslave-making, that all the fires of ancient, hereditary nationalhatred are to be kindled, to familiarise us with the ferociousspirit of rejoicing at the massacre of prisoners in cold blood.Sir, is there not yet hatred enough between the races whichcompose your Southern population and the population of Mexico,their next neighbour, but you must go back eight hundred or athousand years, and to another hemisphere, for the fountains ofbitterness between you and them? What is the temper of feelingbetween the component parts of our own Southern population,between your Anglo-Saxon, Norman, French, and Moorish Spanishinhabitants of Louisiana, Mississippi, Arkansas, and Missouri?between them all and the Indian savage, the original possessor ofthe land from which you are scourging him already back to thefoot of the Rocky Mountains? What between them all and the nativeAmerican negro, of African origin, whom they are holding in cruelbondage? Are these elements of harmony, concord, and patriotismbetween the component parts of a nation starting upon a crusadeof conquest? And what are the feelings of all this motleycompound of your Southern population towards the compound equallyheterogeneous of the Mexican population? Do not you, anAnglo-Saxon, slave-holding exterminator of Indians, from thebottom of your soul, hate the Mexican-Spaniard-Indian,emancipator of slaves and abolisher of slavery? And do you thinkthat your hatred is not with equal cordiality returned? Go to thecity of Mexico, ask any of your fellow-citizens who have beenthere for the last three or four years, whether they scarcelydare show their faces, as Anglo-Americans, in the streets. Beassured, sir, that, however heartily you detest the Mexican, hisbosom burns with an equally deep-seated detestation of you.
And this is the nation with which, at the instigation of yourExecutive Government, you are now rushing into war--into a war ofconquest; commenced by aggression on your part, and for there-establishment of slavery, where it has been abolished,throughout the Mexican Republic. For your war will be withMexico--with a Republic of twenty-four States, and a populationof eight or nine millions of souls. It seems to be consideredthat this victory over twelve hundred men, with the capture oftheir commander, the President of the Mexican Republic, hasalready achieved the conquest of the whole Republic. That it mayhave achieved the independence of Texas, is not impossible. ButTexas is to the Mexican Republic not more nor so much as theState of Michigan is to yours. That State of Michigan, the peopleof which are in vain claiming of you the performance of thatsacred promise you made them, of admitting her as a State intothe Union; that State of NIichigan, which has greater grievancesand heavier wrongs to allege against you for a declaration of herindependence, if she were disposed to declare it, than the peopleof Texas have for breaking off their union with the Republic ofMexico. Texas is an extreme boundary portion of the Republic ofMexico; a wilderness inhabited only by Indians, till after theRevolution which separated Mexico from Spain; not sufficientlypopulous at the organisation of the Mexican Confederacy to form aState by itself, and therefore united with Coahuila, where thegreatest part of the indigenous part ot the population reside.Sir, the history of all the emancipated Spanish American colonieshas been, ever since their separation fiom Spain, a history ofconvulsionary wars; of revolutions, accomplished by single, andoften very insignificant battles; of chieftains, whose title topower has been the murder of their immediate predecessors. Theyhave all partaken of the character of the first conquest ofMexico by Cortez, and of Peru by Pizarro; and this, sir, makes meshudder at the thought of connecting our destinies indissolublywith theirs. It may be that a new revolution in Mexico willfollow upon this captivity or death of their president andcommanding general; we have rumours, indeed, that such arevolution had happened even before his defeat; but I cannot yetsee my way clear to the conclusion that either the independenceof Texas, or the capture and military execution of Santa Ana,will save you from war with Mexico. Santa Ana was but one of abreed of which Spanish America for the last twenty-five years hasbeen a teeming mother--soldiers of fortune, who, by the sword orthe musket-ball, have risen to supreme power, and by the sword orthe musket-ball have fallen from it. That breed is not extinct;the very last intelligence from Peru tells of one who has fallenthere as Yturbide, and Mina, and Guerrero, and Santa Ana havefallen in Mexico. The same soil which produced them is yetfertile to produce others. They reproduce themselves, withnothing but a change of the name and of the man. Your war, sir,is to be a war of races--the Anglo-Saxon American pitted againstthe Moorish-Spanish-Mexican American; a war between the Nortbernand Southern halves of North America; from Passamaquoddy toPanama. Are you prepared for such a war?
And again I ask, what will be your cause in such a war?Aggression, conquest, and the re-establishment of slavery whereit has been abolished. In that war, sir, the banners of freedomwill be the banners of Mexico; and your banners, I blush tospeak the word, will be the banners of slavery.
Sir, in considering these United States and the United MexicanStates as mere masses of power coming into collision against eachother, I cannot doubt that Mexico will be the greatest suffererby the shock. The conquest of all Mexico would seem to be noimprobable result of the conflict, especially if the war shouldextend no farther than to the two mighty combatants. But will itbe so confined? Mexico is clearly the weakest of the two powers;but she is not the least prepared for action. She has tbe morerecent experience of war. She has the greatest number of veteranwarriors; and although her highest chief has just suffered afatal and ignominious defeat, yet that has happened often beforeto leaders of armies, too confident of success, and contemptuousof their enemy. Even now, Mexico is better prepared for a war ofinvasion upon you, than you are for a war of invasion upon her.There may be found a successor to Santa Ana, inflamed with thedesire, not only of avenging his disaster, but what he and hisnation will consider your perfidious hostility. The nationalspirit may go with him. He may not only turn the tables upon theTexan conquerors, but drive them for refuge within your borders,and pursue them into the heart of your own territories. Are youin a contlition to resist him? Is the success of your whole army,and all your veteran generals, and all your militia-calls, andall your mutinous volunteers, against a miserable band of five orsix hundred invisible Seminole Intlians, in your late campaign,an earnest of the energy and vigour with which you are ready tocarry on that far otherwise formidable and complicatedwar?--Complicated did I say? And how complicated? Your Seminolewar is already spreading to the Creeks; and, in their march ofdesolation, they sweep along with them your negro slaves, and putarms into their hands to make common cause with them against you;and how far will it spread, sir, should a Mexican invader, withthe torch of liberty in his hand, and the standard of freedomfloating over his head, proclaiming emancipation to the slave,and revenge to the native Indian, as he goes, invade your soil?What will be the condition of your States of Louisiana, ofMississippi, of Alabama, of Arkansas, of Missouri, and ofGeorgia? Where will be your negroes? Where will be that combinedand concentrated mass of Indian tribes, whom, by an inconceivablepolicy, you have expelled from their widely-distant habitations,to embody them within a small compass on the very borders ofMexico, as if on purpose to give to that country a nation ofnatural allies in their hostilities against you? Sir, you have aMexican, an Indian, and a negro war upon your hands, and you areplunging yourself into it blindfold; you are talking aboutacknowledging the independence of the Republic of Texas, and youare thirsting to annex Texas, ay, and Coahuila, andTamaulipas, and Santa Fe, from the source to the mouth ofthe Rio Bravo, to your already over-distended dominions. Fivehundred thousand square miles of the territory of Mexico wouldnot even now quench your burning thirst for aggrandisement.
But will your foreign war for this be with Mexico alone? No,sir. As the weaker party, Mexico, when the contest shall haveonce begun, will look abroad, as well as among your negroes andyour Indians, for assistance. Neither Great Britain nor Francewill suffer you to make such a conquest from Mexico; no, nor evento annex the independent State of Texas to your Confederation,without their interposition. You will have an Anglo-Saxonintertwined with a Mexican war to wage. Great Britain may have noserious objection to the independence of Texas, and may bewilling enough to take her under her protection, as a barrierboth against Mexico and against you. But, as an aggrandisement toyou, she will not readily suffer it; and, above all, she will notsuffer you to acquire it by conquest, and the re-establishment ofslavery. Urged on by the irresistible, overwhelming torrent ofpublic opinion, Great Britain has recently, at a cost of onehundred million of dollars, which her people have joyfully paid,abolished slavery, throughout all her colonies in the WestIndies. After setting such an example, she will not--it isimpossible that she should--stand by and witness a war for there-establisltment of slavery, where it had been for yearsabolished, and situated thus in the immediate neighbourhood ofher islands. She will tell you, that if you must have Texas as amember of your Confederacy, it must be without the taint or thetrammels of slavery; and if you will wage a war to handcuff andfetter your fellow-man, she will wage the war against you tobreak his chains. Sir, what a figure, in the eyes of mankind,would you make, in deadly conflict with Great Britain: shefighting the battles of emancipation, and you the battles ofslavery; she the benefactress, and you tbe oppressor, of humankind! In such a war, the enthusiasm of emancipation, too, wouldunite vast numbers of her people in aid of the national rivalry,and all her natural jealousy against our aggrandisement. No warwas ever so popular in England as that war would be againstslavery, the slave-trade, and the Anglo-Saxon descendant from herown loins.
As to tbe annexation of Texas to your Confederation, for whatdo you want it? Are you not large and unwieldy enough already? Donot two millions of square miles cover surface enough for theinsatiate rapacity of your land-jobbers? I hope there are none ofthem within the sound of my voice. Have you not Indians enough toexpel from the land of their fathers' sepulchres, and toexterminate? What, in a prudential and military point of view,would be the addition of Texas to your domain? It would beweakness, and not power. Is your southern and south-westernfrontier not sufficiently extensive? not sufficiently feeble? notsufficiently defenceless? Why are you adding regiment afterregiment of dragoons to your standing army? Why are youstruggling, by direction and by in direction, to raise persaltum that army from less than six to more than twentythousand men? Your commanding general, now returning from hisexcursion to Florida, openly recommends the increase of your armyto that number. Sir, the extension of your sea-coast frontierfrom the Sabine to the Rio Bravo, would add to your weaknesstenfold; for it is now only weakness with reference to Mexico. Itwould then be weakness with reference to Great Britain, toFrance, even perhaps to Russia, to every naval European power,which might make a quarrel with us for the sake of settling acolony; but, above all, to Great Britain. She, by her navalpower, and by her American colonies, holds the keys of the Gulfof Mexico. What would be the condition of your frontier from themouth of the Mississippi to that of the Rio del Norte, in theevent of a war with Great Britain? Sir, the reasons of Mr. Monroefor accepting the Sabine as the boundary were three. First, hehad no confidence in the strength of our clahn as far as the RioBravo; secondly, he thought it would make our union so heavy,that it would break into fragments by its own weight; thirdly, hethought it would protrude a long line of sea-coast, which, in ourfirst war with Great Britain, she might take into her ownpossession, and which we should be able neither to defend nor torecover. At that time there was no question of slavery or ofabolition in the controversy. The country belonged to Spain; itwas a wilderness, and slavery was the established law of theland. There was then no project for carving out nine slaveStates, to hold eighteen seats in the other wing of this capitol,in the triangle between the mouths and the sources of theMississippi and Bravo rivers. But what was our claim? Why it wasthat La Salle, having discovered the mouth of the Mississippi,and France having made a settlement at New Orleans, France had aright to one half the sea-coast from the mouth of the Mississippito the next Spanish settlement, which was Vera Cruz. The mouth ofthe Rio Bravo was about half way from the Balize to Vera Cruz;and so as grantees, from France of Louisiana, we claimed to theRio del Norte, though the Spanish settlement of Santa Fe was atthe head of that river. France, from whom we had receivedLouisiana, utterly disclaimed ever having even raised sucha pretension. Still we made the best of the claim that we could,and finally yielded it for the Floridas, and for the line of the42d degree of latitude from the source of the Arkansas river tothe South Sea. Such was our claim; and you may judge how muchconfidence Mr. Monroe could have in its validity. The greatobject and desire of the country then was to obtain the Floridas.It was General Jackson's desire; and in that conference with meto which I have heretofore alluded, and which it is said he doesnot recollect, he said to me that so long as the Florida riverswere not in our possession, there could be no safety for ourwhole Southern country.
But, sir, suppose you should annex Texas to these UnitedStates; another year would not pass before you would have toengage in a war for the conquest of the Island of Cuba. What isnow the condition of that island? Still under the nominalprotection of Spain. And what is the condition of Spain herself?Consuming her own vitals in a civil war for the successionto the crown. Do you expect, that whatever may be the issue ofthat war, she can retain even the nominal possession of Cuba?After having lost all her continental colonies in Northand South America, Cuba will stand in need of more efficientprotection; and above all, the protection of a naval power.Suppose that naval power should be Great Britain. There is Cubaat your very door; and if you spread yourself along a nakedcoast, from the Sabine to the Rio Bravo, what will be yourrelative position towards Great Britain, with not only Jamaica,but Cuha, and Porto Rico in her hands, and abolition for themotto to her union cross of St. George and St. Andrew? Mr.Chairman, do you think I am treading on fantastic grounds? Let metell you a piece of history, not far remote. Sir, many years havenot passed away since an internal revolution in Spain subjectedthat country and her king for a short time to the momentarygovernment of the Cortes. That revolution was followed byanother, by which, under the auspices of a French army with theDuke d'Angouleme at their head, Ferdinand the Seventh wasrestored to a despotic throne; Cuba had followed the fortunes ofthe Cortes when they were crowned with victory; and when thecounter-revolution came, the inhabitants of the island, uncertainwhat was to be their destination, were for some time in greatperplexity what to do for themselves. Two considerable partiesarose in the island, one of which was for placing it under theprotection of Great Britain, and another was for annexing it tothe confederation of these United States. By one of these partiesI have reason to believe that overtures were made to theGovernment of Great Britain. By the other I know thatovertures were made to the government of the United States. And Ifurther know that secret, though irresponsible assurances werecommunicated to the then President of the United States, ascoming from the French Government, that they weresecretly informed that the British Government had determined totake possession of Cuba. Whether similar overtures were made toFrance herself, I do not undertake to say: but that Mr. GeorgeCanning, then the British Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs,was under no inconsiderable alarm, lest, under the pupilage ofthe Duke d'Angouleme, Ferdinand the Seventh might commit to thecommander of a French naval squadron the custody of the MoroCastle, is a circumstance also well known to me. It happened thatjust about that time a French squadron of considerable force wasfitted out and received sailing orders for the West Indies,without formal communication of the fact to the BritishGovernment; and that as soon as it was made known to him, he gaveorders to the British Ambassador at Paris to demand, in the mostperemptory tone, what was the destination of that squadron, and aspecial and positive disclaimer that it was intended even tovisit the Havana; and this was made the occasion of mutualexplanations, by which Great Britain, France, and the UnitedStates, not by the formal solemnity of a treaty, but by theimplied engagement of mutual assurances of intention, gavepledges of honour to each other, that neither of them should inthe then condition of the island take it, or the Moro Castle, asits citadel, from the possession of Spain. This engagement was onall sides faithfully performed; but, without it, who doubts thatfrom that day to this either of the three powers might have takenthe island and held it in undisputed possession ?
At this time circumstances have changed--popular revolutionsboth in France and Great Britain have perhaps curbed the spiritof conquest in Great Britain, and France may have enough to do togovern her kingdom of Algiers. But Spain is again convulsed witha civil war for the succession to her crown; she hasirretrievably lost all her colonies on both continents ofAmerica. It is impossible that she should hold much longer ashadow of dominion over the islands of Cuba and Porto Rico; norcan those islands, in their present condition, form independentnations, capable of protecting themselves. They must for agesremain at the mercy of Great Britain or of these United States,or of both; Great Britain is even now about to interfere in thiswar for the Spanish succession. If by the utter imbecility of theMexican confederacy this revolt of Texas should lead immediatelyto its separation from that Republic, and its annexation to theUnited States, I believe it impossible that Great Britain shouldlook on while this operation is performing with indifference. Shewill see that it must shake her own whole colonial power on thiscontinent, in the Gulf of Mexico, and in the Caribbean Seas, likean earthquake; she will see, too, that it endangers her ownabolition of slavery in her own colonies. A war for therestoration of slavery where it has been abolished, if successfulin Texas, must extend over all Mexico; and the example willthreaten her with imminent danger of a war of colours in her ownislands. She will take possession of Cuba and of Porto Rico, bycession from Spain or by the batteries from her wooden walls; andif you ask her by what authority she has done it, she will askyou, in return, by what authority you have extended yoursea-coast from the Sabine to the Rio Bravo. She will ask you aquestion more perplexing, namely--by what authority you, withfreedom, independence, and democracy upon your lips, are waging awar of extermination to forge new manacles and fetters, insteadof those which are falling from the hands and feet of man. Shewill carry emancipation and abolition with her in every fold ofher flag; while your stars, as they increase in numbers, will beovercast with the murky vapours of oppression, and the onlyportion of your banners visible to the eye will be theblood-stained stripes of the task-master.
Mr. Chairman, are you ready for all these wars? A Mexican war?a war with Great Britain, if not with France? a general Indianwar? a servile war? and, as an inevitable consequence of themall, a civil war? For it must ultimately terminate in a war ofcolours as well as of races. And do you imagine that while withyour eyes open you are wilfully kindling, and then closing youreyes and blindly rushing into them; do you imagine that while, inthe very nature of things, your own Southern and SouthwesternStates must be the Flanders of these complicated wars, thebattle-field upon which the last great conflict must be foughtbetween slavery and emancipation; do you imagine that yourCongress will have no constitutional authority to interfere withthe institution of slavery in any way in the States ofthis Confederacy? Sir, they must and will interfere withit--perhaps to sustain it by war; perhaps to abolish it bytreaties of peace; and they will not only possess theconstitutional power so to interfere, but they will be bound induty to do it by the express provisions of the Constitutionitself. For the instant that your slaveholding States become thetheatre of war, civil, servile, or foreign, from that instant thewar powers of Congress extend to interference with theinstitution of slavery in every way by which it can be interferedwith, from a claim of indemnity for slaves taken or destroyed, tothe cession of the State burdened with slavery to a foreignpower.
From Harriet Martineau, Society in America, AppendixA - "Mr. Adams's Speech on Texas." London: Saunders andOtley, 1837, pp. 305-320.
Forward to Society in America, Appendix B- "General and State Finances."
Back to Society in America, Volume III,Part IV, "Conclusion."
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