NO. THE TEXAS QUESTION AS A FACTOR IN THE SECTIONAL STRUGGLE THESIS Presented to the Graduate Council of the North Texas State College in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements For the Degree of MASTER OF ARTS By Edwin Dale Odom, B. A. Denton, Texas August, 1956 TLEL OF CONTENTS Page PREFACE . 0 . 0 0 . 0 . 0 . 0 . 0 . .0 . iv Chapter I. THE ORIGIN OF THE TEXAS QUESTIONS. .I . 0 1 II. ANEXATION REJECTED. * 0 35 III. FOREIGN INVOLVEMENT AND RE-EMIERGENCE . 0 52 IV. PARTY POLITICS AND THE TEXAS TREATY. " 0 74 V. THE ELECTION OF 1844: MANIFEST DESTINY OR SECTIONALISM"?. * * . * . 92 VI. THE TRIUMPH OF MANIFEST DESTINY. - * . 113 BIBLIOGRAPHY. .1 * *. 128 iii PREFACE The question of Texas annexation was considered by con- temporaries as one of the most vital issues ever to confront the United States. Once consunated, the Texas question was lost in the controversy roused by the Mexican War and the consequent struggle over the issue of the expansion of slavery. However, for many years afterward, the argument raged as to whether or not the project to add Texas to the Union was an attempt by Southern slaveholders to expand and enhance the institution of slavery. Since the turn of the century historians have been inclined to take a more un- biased look at the annexation question and have generally concluded that the annexation of Texas, though advocated at times for sectional reasons, was really only a part of the great expansion movement by the United States which inter- mittently, but steadily, prevailed for more than a century after independence was established. Had sectional jealousy and bitterness not been present, Texas would have come into the Union some nine years earlier than it did. There might have been war with Mexico at that time, but it would have been a war less fraught with sectional significance. If the Texas question is considered to be an integral part of manifest destiny, there still remains unanswered the question of how much, and in what way, the contro- versial Texas question influenced the sectional struggle. iv The Texas question could have been an important factor in causing sectional animosity, or it could have been only a symptom of sectional bitterness already present; it could also have been a combination of both. As one might sus- pect, there is no simple, clear-cut answer. This thesis is an attempt to study the Texas question in its setting with particular emphasis on the sectional ramifications of the issue. It is not an attempt to document the diplomatic negotiations which led to annexa- tion. It is not an attempt to prove that it was the Texas issue which irreconcilably divided the North and South, bit it is an effort to assess the importance of the Texas question as a factor in the sectional struggle, by studying the origin, struggle, and climax of the effort to annex Texas to the United States. The chief concern here is with politics and sectionalism in the United States in the years, 1835-1846, and the way in which they affected, or were af- fected by the question of Texas annexation. Oply in- cidentally, and insofar as they affect the matter under consideration, is there any concern with affairs and events in Texas. v CHAPTER I THE ORIGIN OF THE TEXAS QUESTION That land north of Mexico, bordering the Gulf of Mexico, and lying on the southwestern border of the United States played a part in the course of affairs of the United States for over half of the nineteenth century. Just how much that block of land that came to be known as Texas influenced American affairs is difficult to measure, but it must be con- cluded that from the time of Phillip Nolan's hopeless fili- buster in the year 1800, Texas remained in the back of the minds of many restless, ambitious and adventurous Americans. Phillip Nolan, Aaron Burr, August Magee, Bernardo Gutierrez, James Long, and the men who plotted, dreamed, and acted with them were adventurers , but they also should be re- garded as representative of an era, and a nation; an eager, ambitious, confident, and aggressive nation. These men, however, were not builders, only dreamers, and as such were not to accomplish as much as were the more cautious and substantial element which succeeded them. However, those who followed them were only a little more cautious and con- servative, and just as confident and ambitious. In order to see the way in which the question of Texas became a major political problem in the United States in 1 2 the 1830's and 1840's, it is necessary to trace the develop- ment of American interest in Texas. As a fertile field for adventurers Texas first began to be of significance to the United States. In the year 1800, when the United States had no vestige of a claim on Texas, an adventurer named Phillip Nolan organized an expedition into Texas. His twenty-one man force left Natchez for Texas ostensibly to trap wild horses, but the Spanish Garrison at Nacogdoches broke up the expedition after Nolan's mea hag begun catching wild horses and had established themselves on the Brazos River. In 1803 the United States began its course of gigantic land appropriations with the purchase of the Louisiana ter- ritory. Napoleon's negotiators led Livingston and Monroe to believe that the land known as Texas could be made a part of the Louisiana transaction with a minimum of effort. True, most Americans at that time were more concerned with the ac- quisition of Florida, than Texas, but Aaron Burr and James Wilkinson were planning to make Texas the stepping stone for an acquired Spanish empire. Burr's expedition never got far past the planning stage, but in 1812 another group went much further. Augustus Magee, a former lieutenant in the United States army, and Bernardo Gutierrez, a Mexican liberal, led an army of considerable size into Texas in that 1 Texasalmanac, 1868, pp. 60-64, cited in Hubert H. Bancroft The North Mlexican StAtes and Texas (San Francisco, 1889), I, 15-19. 3 year. Their force consisted of about three thousand men at most, about eight hundred of whom were Anglo-Americans, while the remainder were Mexicans and Indians. Gutierrez and Magee thought to take advantage of Spain's troubles in Europe with Napoleon's occupation army, to throw off the Spanish hold on Texas, and perhaps Mexico as well. Their army met with some initial success, capturing Bexar (San Antonio), the most im- portant Spanish stronghold in Texas, but it was decisively defeated and scattered on the Medina River below San An- tonio.2 It is true that the United States would probably have been successful in gaining control of Texas at this time had the government chosen to openly assert its claims to Texas, but it chose not to do so, even though no claims were dis- avowed. It is also true that Spain was taken aback by the sale of Louisiana to the United States, because she did not relish her as a next door neighbor. A big factor in the failure of the Gutierrez and blagee expedition was Spain's determination to maintain Texas as a buffer state peopled with Indians unfriendly to American expansion, and gar- 3 risoned with Spanish soldiers. 2 Bancroft, II, 19-24. 3 Clarence R. Wharton, ThejRepublic jfTexas, (Houston, 1922), p. 19. 4 Actually, very few people in the United States were much interested in Texas before 1820. Even the attempted expe- ditions into Texas were mainly for the purpose of making Texas and Mexico independent of Spain, even if the partici- pants did have visions of having a great deal of influence in the new independent country. They were not particularly intended to add any territory to the United States. However, ac- the United States government was very much interested in quiring Spanish territory on the east side of the Mississippi River. Florida was a constant source of friction between the two countries, and the situation rapidly got out of hand in the years immediately following the war of 1812. To some extent, due to Andrew Jackson's exploits in Florida in 1817, Spain decided she must relinquish Florida or have it taken, but at the same time the Spanish government attempted to bolster her claim on Texas by insisting that the United States renounce any claim they might have on it as a result of the Louisiana Purchase. When the treaty, purchasing Florida and renouncing all claims on Texas, was concluded in February of 1819, it received the warm approval of the 4 press as well as the United States Congress. There were however, some voices raised against the proceedings, particularly in the WViest. The redoubtable Thomas Hart Benton from the Missouri territory blasted the 4 Thomas Hart Benton, Igrt Years View (Boston, 1854), I, p. 16. trade in the St. Louis newspapers. Benton insisted that the United States could have had Texas as well, and that it was due to the presidential ambitions of the Southern men in Monroe's cabinet that the government did not take as much as Spain offered. Benton contended that the Missouri con- troversy raging at that time so alarmed the presidential as- pirants in the cabinet that they gave away Texas so it could never become an issue which might subvert party lines and throw the country into turmoil over the extension of slavery. He decided that this must be the case after he had received the inside information on the proceedings.