t be surprising to find Mr. De Bocanegra [the secretary
of foreign affairs of Mexico] complaining that for that whole period
citizens of the United States or its Government have been favoring the
rebels of Texas and supplying them with vessels, ammunition, and money,
as if the war for the reduction of the Province of Texas had been
constantly prosecuted by Mexico, and her success prevented by these
influences from abroad.

In the same dispatch the Secretary of State affirms that--

Since 1837 the United States have regarded Texas as an independent
sovereignty as much as Mexico, and that trade and commerce with citizens
of a government at war with Mexico can not on that account be regarded
as an intercourse by which assistance and succor are given to Mexican
rebels. The whole current of Mr. De Bocanegra's remarks runs in the same
direction, as if the independence of Texas had not been acknowledged.
It has been acknowledged; it was acknowledged in 1837 against the
remonstrance and protest of Mexico, and most of the acts of any
importance of which Mr. De Bocanegra complains flow necessarily from
that recognition. He speaks of Texas as still being "an integral part of
the territory of the Mexican Republic," but he can not but understand
that the United States do not so regard it. The real complaint of
Mexico, therefore, is in substance neither more nor less than a
complaint against the recognition of Texan independence. It may be
thought rather late to repeat that complaint, and not quite just to
confine it to the United States to the exemption of England, France, and
Belgium, unless the United States, having been the first to acknowledge
the independence of Mexico herself, are to be blamed for setting an
example for the recognition of that of Texas.

And he added that--

The Constitution, public treaties, and the laws oblige the President to
regard Texas as an independent state, and its territory as no part of
the territory of Mexico.

Texas had been an independent state, with an organized government,
defying the power of Mexico to overthrow or reconquer her, for more than
ten years before Mexico commenced the present war against the United
States. Texas had given such evidence to the world of her ability to
maintain her separate existence as an independent nation that she had
been formally recognized as such not only by the United States, but by
several of