ntrol of the central Government has
heretofore manifested itself in some of those Provinces, and it is
fair to infer that they would be inclined to take the first favorable
opportunity to proclaim their independence and to form close alliances
with Texas. The war would thus be endless, or if cessations of
hostilities should occur they would only endure for a season. The
interests of Mexico, therefore, could in nothing be better consulted
than in a peace with her neighbors which would result in the
establishment of a permanent boundary. Upon the ratification of the
treaty the Executive was prepared to treat with her on the most liberal
basis. Hence the boundaries of Texas were left undefined by the treaty.
The Executive proposed to settle these upon terms that all the world
should have pronounced just and reasonable. No negotiation upon that
point could have been undertaken between the United States and Mexico in
advance of the ratification of the treaty. We should have had no right,
no power, no authority, to have conducted such a negotiation, and to
have undertaken it would have been an assumption equally revolting
to the pride of Mexico and Texas and subjecting us to the charge of
arrogance, while to have proposed in advance of annexation to satisfy
Mexico for any contingent interest she might have in Texas would have
been to have treated Texas not as an independent power, but as a mere
dependency of Mexico. This assumption could not have been acted on by
the Executive without setting at defiance your own solemn declaration
that that Republic was an independent State. Mexico had, it is true,
threatened War against the United States in the event the treaty of
annexation was ratified. The Executive could not permit itself to be
influenced by this threat. It represented ill this the spirit of our
people, who are ready to sacrifice much for peace, but nothing to
intimidation. A war under any circumstances is greatly to be deplored,
and the United States is the last nation to desire it; but if, as the
condition of peace, it be required of us to forego the unquestionable
right of treating with an independent power of our own continent upon
matters highly interesting to both, and that upon a naked and
unsustained pretension of claim by a third power to control the free
will of the power with whom we treat, devoted as we may be to peace
and anxious to cultivate friendly relations with the whole world, the
Executive does not he