s efforts to ward
off the threatened blow. But one course was left the Executive, acting
within the limits of its constitutional competency, and that was to
protest in respectful, but at the same time strong and decided, terms
against it. The war thus threatened to be renewed was promulgated by
edicts and decrees, which ordered on the part of the Mexican military
the desolation of whole tracts of country and the destruction without
discrimination of all ages, sexes, and conditions of existence. Over the
manner of conducting war Mexico possesses no exclusive control. She has
no right to violate at pleasure the principles which an enlightened
civilization has laid down for the conduct of nations at war, and
thereby retrograde to a period of barbarism, which happily for the world
has long since passed away. All nations are interested in enforcing an
observance of those principles, and the United States, the oldest of
the American Republics and the nearest of the civilized powers to the
theater on which these enormities were proposed to be enacted, could not
quietly content themselves to witness such a state of things. They had
through the Executive on another occasion, and, as was believed, with
the approbation of the whole country, remonstrated against outrages
similar but even less inhuman than those which by her new edicts and
decrees she has threatened to perpetrate, and of which the late inhuman
massacre at Tabasco was but the precursor.

The bloody and inhuman murder of Fannin and his companions, equaled only
in savage barbarity by the usages of the untutored Indian tribes, proved
how little confidence could be placed on the most solemn stipulations of
her generals, while the fate of others who became her captives in
war--many of whom, no longer able to sustain the fatigues and privations
of long journeys, were shot down by the wayside, while their companions
who survived were subjected to sufferings even more painful than
death--had left an indelible stain on the page of civilization. The
Executive, with the evidence of an intention on the part of Mexico to
renew scenes so revolting to humanity, could do no less than renew
remonstrances formerly urged. For fulfilling duties so imperative Mexico
has thought proper, through her accredited organs, because she has had
represented to her the inhumanity of such proceedings, to indulge in
language unknown to the courtesy of diplomatic intercourse and offensive
in the highe