held the proposed annexation of Texas with alarm,
and sturdily opposed it as far as they could through their friends in
Congress, predicting that it would be tantamount to a war with Mexico.
The Mexican minister declared the same result. But "Texas or Disunion!"
became the rallying cry of the South. The election of Polk, the
annexationist Democrat, in 1844, was seized upon as a "popular mandate"
for annexation, although had not the Liberty Party, who like the Whigs
were anti-annexationists, divided the vote in New York State, Clay would
have been elected. The matter was hurried through Congress; the Northern
Democrats made no serious opposition, since they saw in this annexation
a vast accession of territory around the Gulf of Mexico, of indefinite
extent. Thus, Texas, on March 1, 1845, was offered annexation by a Joint
Resolution of the Senate and House of Representatives, in the face of
protests from the wisest men of the country, and in spite of certain
hostilities with Mexico. On the following fourth of July Texas,
accepting annexation, was admitted to the Union as a slave State, to the
dismay of Channing, of Garrison, of Phillips, of Sumner, of Adams, and
of the whole antislavery party, now aroused to the necessity of more
united effort, in view of this great victory to the South; for it was
provided that at any time, by the consent of its own citizens, Texas
might be divided into four States, whenever its population should be
large enough; its territory was four times as large as France.

The Democratic President Polk took office in March, 1845; the Mexican
War, beginning in May, 1846, was fought to a successful close in a year
and five months, ending September, 1847; the fertile territory of
Oregon, purchased from Spain, had been peaceably occupied by rapid
immigration and by settlement of disputed boundaries with Great Britain;
California--a Mexican province--had been secured to the American
settlers of its lovely hills and valleys by the prompt daring of Capt.
John C. Fremont; and the result of the war was the formal cession to the
United States by Mexico of the territories of California and New Mexico,
and recognition of the annexation and statehood of Texas.

Both the North and the South had thus gained large possibilities, and at
the North the spirit of enterprise and the clear perception of the
economic value of free labor as against slave labor were working
mightily to help men see the moral arguments of t