Evidence has recently come to light which has a tendency to dispel the once prevalent impression that the South unanimously called for the recognition and annexation of Texas “as soon as the subject was presented.” It is possible, even probable, that a majority of Southerners did favor the annexation of Texas during the whole period when the matter was under discussion; yet it is now clear that the demand was not universal.
It has already been pointed out 214 that “in his message to the South Carolina legislature near the end of the year 1836, the retiring governor, George McDuffie, protested strongly against any action in behalf of Texas. . . .”
Indication of widespread opposition is found in a letter of William H. Wharton, minister of Texas to the United States, written from Kentucky on December 11, 1836, to Stephen F. Austin, Texan secretary of state: 215
. . . In regard to our annexation both friends and foes bitterly oppose it. . . . Our friends by which term I mean those of Louisiana, Mississippi, Kentucky, etc. (for I have seen and conversed with no others as yet) oppose our annexation, on the grounds that a brighter destiny awaits Texas. That she would be more happy and prosperous and glorious as an independent nation than as a portion or tributary of this. That in such a situation she would soon complain of and be oppressed by high Tariffs and other Northern measures. That we would be driven to nullification, secession, etc., and be thus involved in a worse revolution than we are now engaged in. That we should go on as we have commenced conquering and to conquer and never pause until we had annexed all or the best portion of Mexico to Texas, thus establishing an independent government which would rival this in extent, resources, and population. . . .
Arguments based upon supposed national and sectional interests were added by other opponents of annexation. In the papers of President Lamar 216 are found letters of five Southerners who express strong disapprobation of the annexation measure, on the ground that independence would be more advantageous not only to Texas, but to the Southern States, and, one writer adds, to the Union as well. Their arguments turn for the most part upon the fact that Texas was a slave state, the very fact which is popularly supposed to have made the South a unit from the beginning in favor of annexation.
Two of these correspondents of President Lamar, A. B. Longstreet, the well known minister, jurist, author, college president of genial memory, and Mansfield Torrance, a planter, a personal and political friend of Lamar and of Governor George M. Troup, were Georgians; two, Joseph Riddle, a lawyer, who had fought as a volunteer in the Texan revolution, and Alexander Jones, a physician, author, and inventor of some note, were Mississippians; one, James Hamilton, was a South Carolinian. Hamilton was the most prominent of the five; he was a wealthy planter, who had been a member of Congress and had exercised considerable influence with President Jackson until his nullification views had separated him politically from the “Old Chief”; he had been the nullification governor of South Carolina. He had extensive financial connections in America and in England, and had thereby been enabled to negotiate a loan for South Carolina in England.
Longstreet's expression of opinion is contained in an undated draft which seems from internal and circumstantial evidence to fall within the year 1837. It contains, besides advice regarding the Texan constitution, a statement of the writer's views upon the relative advantages and disadvantages of annexation. The advantages, immediate protection, ultimate security against war with Mexico or the United States, from neither of which is any real danger to be apprehended, are far outweighed, he thinks, by the disadvantages.
“The North and Northwest,” he writes,
must in the very nature of things rule the South &Southwest. . . . The North &Northwest must be a commercial and manufacturing people. The South &S. West must be an agricultural people. The former are religiously opposed to slavery—the latter are necessarily slave holders— The former are a sober calculating people—the latter are a high spirit ardent people. The former hold the power—the latter the wealth, of the nation: and it is not to be disguised that there are pretty strong antipathies already engendered between them. Here then are all the elements of the most merciless tantalising despotism on the one hand, that was ever exercised by man to his fellow man; and of the most galling &unmitigated slavery on the other, that was ever endured by man. . . .
Against this state of things the constitution offers the only guarantee; and events have already proved that the constitution is readily broken by the party in power according to its wishes and needs.
“The United States,” he continues, must at no distant day I think break up in revolution—. . . Independent of her growing weight—there is a manifest tendency to insubordination; and she is corrupt from her heart to her extremities. These are some of the fruits of her ready adoption of the filth of the world, as her own offspring. . . . Now from all the anticedent [sic] throes &convulsions, as well as the final catastrophe Texas may escape by keeping herself to herself—to say nothing of the lesser national difficulties, which are forever occurring in so vast a territory as ours. When this catastrophe occurs, what will then be your condition? You close your political career as conquerors or as conquered—most likely the latter; for the south builds ships, and the north mans them—the south pays armies and the north fills &commands them—Keep to yourselves and very likely, you will in time have many distracted states petitioning to be let into your confederacy— At least your chance of long peace, will be greater, the more retired you are, from the jarring interests of our illimitable territory. . . .
Torrance writes Lamar on April 6, 1840, as follows:
I intended writing you a long letter on your inaugural address, so much was I pleased with it—your people (in my opinion) would be crazy to annex themselves to us. I have met with but one distinguished man in this country who believed with me (or, who believing—had the boldness to express it) that it was the worst thing the Southern States ever did: to enter the Confederacy— This was Langdon Cheves of So. Ca. We have been ever tributary to the Middle &Eastern States—I fear it will be long ere we can shake off the chains— Our government is becoming very corrupt, &our interests will always be sacrificed to promote the ambitious views of some aspiring chief—. . .
Riddle, on April 12, 1838, writes from Woodville, Mississippi, in somewhat the same strain:
. . . I may appear to utter a strange startling opinion, one which some would construe into enmity towards your young Republic, and as implying a destitution of respect for my native land, when I utter the honest conviction of my bosom—that possessing within yourselves all the Essential Ellements of National greatness, the single Star of Texas, may not be eclipsed by being thrown among the 26 of this confederacy, until we return to a rigid adherence to the letter &spirit of our constitution, or the ambition &reckless cupidity and fanaticism of our Northern allies not Brethren in their folly shall have caused a severance of the Union, then and not till will it be to the permanent advantage of Texas to become a part of this Confederacy. . . .
He expresses like sentiments in other letters, especially in one dated Holly Springs, Mississippi, January 10, 1839, in which he expressed his “pride and pleasure” in the course of the Texans in withdrawing the application for annexation, remarking that in former letters he had favored such a policy in anticipation of “the present evil state of affairs here” arising from “the rash madness of fanatics both Religious and monetary. . . .”
Jones presents the most elaborate anti-annexation argument of all. On October 6, 1838, he writes Lamar that in his opinion the maintenance of a separate sovereignty is far better for Texas than annexation to the United States, because its constitution is a distinct improvement upon that of the United States, and because a single commonwealth is far better than a confederation of states.
. . . Although no harm . . . may come of Abolitionism for centuries; yet the constant agitation of the question by the Fanatics of the North, must greatly estrange and embitter one portion of the Union against another, give rise to strong sectional jealousies, and tend to keep alive among the Southern people much irritation, mingled with feelings of apprehension, both for the safety of the Union and their own property. Under such a state of things, I do not conceive it would be to the interest of Texas to enter a union of quarreling sovereignties filled with sectional wrangling. Until, the question of Slavery, or anti-Slavery, is forever put to rest in this Union let Texas with her slave property stand aloof from it.
By staying out of the Union, he argued, Texas will also escape the clashes, inequalities, and injustice arising among the twenty-six sovereign states upon the questions of the regulation of currency and the collection of revenue. A single commonwealth has a far better opportunity to develop a harmonious body of citizens and a uniform, satisfactory, just system of laws than a confederation of twenty-six states, each claiming the right to interpret the law, or to countervail it by opposing legislation. Texas had therefore best stay out of the Union and prepare to fulfill its glorious mission as the nucleus of the “great Republic, based upon different and I trust better principles than ours,” which “must some day spread its branches far &wide over the South &Southwestern portions of this Continent.”
Hamilton's opposition to annexation, disclosed in a letter of 1838, had grown from neutrality in 1836, as expressed in the report of the South Carolina senate committee, of which he was chairman, upon Governor McDuffie's message to the Legislature, cited in the beginning of this article. This report is therefore worthy of notice just here for the light which it throws upon Hamilton's views upon the Texas question in its early stage.
McDuffie's opposition to recognition and annexation turns upon the doctrine of non-interference, a corollary of the state-rights views of most Southern statesmen. “The doctrine of non-interference,” he says in the course of the message, “is one of the most important in the code of international law, and there are no communities on earth who should hold it so sacred as the slave-holding states of this union . . .”; he therefore trusts “that the state of South Carolina will give no countenance . . . to any acts which may compromit the neutrality of the United States . . .”; he thinks “it may be proper” that the legislature “express opinion” regarding the application for admission into the Union likely soon to be made to Congress, which should not be entertained. “If we admit Texas into our union, while Mexico is still waging war against that province, with a view to reestablish her supremacy over it, we shall, by the very act itself, make outselves a party to the war. Nor can we take this step, without incurring this heavy responsibility, until Mexico shall recognize the independence of her revolted province.” 217
As Dr. Garrison further points out, the committee on federal relations of the house of representatives reported favorably upon the portion of the governor's message referring to Texas and Mexico; the senate committee, however, reported unfavorably, through its chairman, James Hamilton; and the committee report was adopted by the senate. The committee agrees with the governor regarding the policy of neutrality, but differs upon the “declaration that both Mexico and Texas are equally entitled to our sympathy, which is precisely tantamount to saying that neither can invoke any such feeling, for it will scarcely be pretended that Mexico . . . can put in any such claim. . . . The cause of Texas is identical with the cause which severed the colonies of North America . . .” The colonization of Texas and the causes of the Revolution are reviewed; the action of Americans in volunteering for the Revolution is excused. Although the governor's policy of neutrality is a wise one, yet the interest which our people feel in her future destiny is in no small degree augmented by her having not only domestic institutions analogous to our own, but from the fact that she has already been threatened with the hostility of Great Britain and the opposition of some of the free states of our union, by reason of these very institutions. . . . These events . . . teach us . . . the important duty of looking well to our own interests: of husbanding the good will and nourishing the sympathy of those who may be in alliance with us on the vast and momentous relations of property, and social organization, which may be destined to be touched by the hand of ruthless ambition, . . . guided by the madness of a blind and pernicious fanaticism. 218 . . .
A commentary upon the meaning of this report is found in an after-dinner speech by Hamilton at a public dinner given in his honor at Houston, March 21, 1839, upon the occasion of his first visit to Texas. 219 “Gentlemen,” he says in response to a toast in his honor, you do me no more than justice in affirming that I was your early and zealous friend. The circumstances of patriarchal colonization which attended the first settlement of those mighty and magnificent solitudes . . . the ferocious invasion of Mexico, the almost unexampled gallantry with which against fearful odds, that invasion was met, enlisted my sympathy, and I know not whether I stopped in the warm pulsations of my heart to enquire as a mere sum in political arithmetic, what might be the future relations your Republic would bear to our own. I felt that the men who had won the battle of San Jacinto were entitled to the renown they had so gloriously acquired. If a sympathy for the sufferings and an admiration for the fearless valor of your people, made my first impressions in favor of your country more a matter of impulse and feeling than anything else, a little reflection brought me to the conclusion, that a successful issue of your struggle was about to subserve not only the cause of civilization and liberty, but would strengthen my own country, by placing on the western side of the Mississippi a population intelligent, civilized, enterprising, possessing institutions entirely in sympathy with our own. . . .
This growing interest of Hamilton in the affairs of Texas early took an active form. Henry Thompson, in his Texas, published under the pseudonym “Milam” in 1839, says that his aid and influence were secured through Barnard E. Bee. 220 Bee came to Texas with a letter of introduction from Hamilton to Lamar, dated June 21, 1836, 221 Hamilton and Lamar not being personally acquainted, but having common acquaintances, and being united by their nullification views. At the close of 1836, Hamilton was offered the post of commander-in-chief of the Texan army, which he declined. He soon afterward began to interest himself in securing loans for Texas, and in otherwise helping to strengthen the Republic.
These activities soon forced him out of his first attitude of friendly neutrality into definite opposition to annexation. On October 11, 1838, he writes Lamar that the application for annexation should be formally withdrawn, since its pendency seriously hampers his negotiations for a loan to the Republic. On November 3, he again urges the withdrawal of the application:
I deem it of the utmost importance for the success of your foreign negociations national and financial—That your application for annexation to the U. S. should be formally withdrawn— This however should be done with the utmost dignity and with the best temper and in the best tone of feeling towards the people of the U. S. It should be done on the ground that your own interests are to be promoted by your own separate integrity—On such an annunciation on the part of your Minister Mr. Van Buren will I am sure send a highly complimentary message to your Republic to our Congress in which all parties will unite in public manifestations of anticipations of your future growth &power and respect for the independent stand which your Republic has taken which will greatly benefit your foreign relations with the European Powers and lead at once to recognition.—
Indeed what have you to expect or hope from us by Union but a marriage to the Fanaticism of abolition and the huge monopoly of an oppressive tariff strangling your infant industry in the Cradle?— Whereas if you stand by yourselves, with duties of 15 per Cent ad valorem you will supply the best part of the valley of the Mississippi with goods and will soon be the most prosperous country on this Continent.— Instead of weakening yourselves and the Southern States by agitating the same question which our adversaries will involve in the discussion of the question of annexation,—you will be silently building up a rock of salvation a pillar of strength for the South on which we may stand &take refuge when driven to separation by the abolitionism of the North.— An event which seems to be inevitable. . . .
In the after-dinner speech noted above, Hamilton comments favorably upon the withdrawal of the application, which had been effected by the Texan minister on October 12, 1838:
“You were right to come to the manly decision to stand by yourselves. . . . By disdaining to be a suppliant at Washington any longer from a consideration of weakness, you have waxed into one of bone and strength—and spared our union the agitation of a question which never comes but like the earthquake, to convulse and to shake . . .”
The principal arguments of these anti-annexationists may be stated briefly as follows: The best interests of Texas would be subserved by remaining independent, because Texas would thus escape the evils incident to membership in a confederation of sovereign states with dissimilar interests and institutions, and might in time become the nucleus of a great southwestern republic; the best interests of the American Union would be conserved, because the admission of Texas would hasten the inevitable disintegration; the best interest of the Southern states would be conserved, because a strong western power with similar interests and institutions would thus be ready to combine with them when they should be forced into secession.
It is interesting to note, in connection with the third argument an extract from a letter written by Ramón Musquiz, the political chief of Texas, on March 11, 1833. 222 Musquiz, after speaking of the desire of the United States to acquire Texas, adds:
It is also well known that the southern States of our neighboring republic have a tendency to secede from their northern sisters and organize themselves into a separate nation; in which direction one effort has already been made this year by South Carolina. To such new national organization the acquisition of Texas would be a boon of transcendent value, adding, as it would, so extensively to its territorial area and multiplying so largely its sources of wealth.
A letter of Memucan Hunt, minister of Texas to the United States, written on April 15, 1837, to the Texan department of state, 223 is also of interest in this connection, because of its suggestion that the possibility of the confederation of seceded Southern states and an independent Texas as the alternative of annexation be held as a whip over the heads of anti-annexationists, in view of the great danger to the North and the great advantage to the South of a disruption of the Union.
The lack of influence of these arguments and speculations upon the ultimate outcome of the matter, the fact that their promulgators in several instances became later the warmest advocates of annexation, do not lessen their interest in view of the insight which they give into the working of men's minds at a momentous period of our history; moreover, in the fact that they were advanced by extreme nullification and pro-slavery men lies a contemporary refutation of the contemporary and later view of the entire course of Texan colonization and revolution as a proslavery conspiracy.
215. Garrison, Diplomatic Correspondence of the Republic of Texas . . ., I, 152, in American Historical Association Report, 1907, II.
216. State Library, Austin, Texas.
217. Niles' Register, LI, 229-30.
218. Ibid., LI, 277.
219. Telegraph and Texas Register, —?
220. Page 59. For a note on this book see The Quarterly, XVI, 107.
221. Lamar papers, State Library.
222. Translation in Brown, History of Texas, I, 225-226, and by Dr. Ethel Zivley Rather in The Quarterly, VIII, 138-139.
223. Garrison, Dip. Cor. Texas, I, 208.
How to cite:
West, Elizabeth Howard, "SOUTHERN OPPOSITION TO THE ANNEXATION OF TEXAS ", Volume 018, Number 1, Southwestern Historical Quarterly Online, Page 74 - 82. http://www.tsha.utexas.edu/publications/journals/shq/online/v018/n1/article_6.html
[Accessed Sun Nov 23 3:31:09 CST 2008]
