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of wonder, had all this to do with the
country and the population on the Rio
Grande? A country widely separated
from the other by the natural boundary of
a great desert, comprising parts of four
states or departments of Mexico, stretch-
ing through twelve degrees of latitude,
having continuous settlements for 500
miles of its lower, and 500 miles of its
upper, portion, many of them of ancient
date, with not less than thirty towns,
cities, and villages, and a population of
not less, altogether, than 60,000 souls,
all living under their own laws, governed
by their own magistrates, and as loyal to
their own country as any people under
And yet this is the country that
Mr. Polk would persuade us to believe
was a part of the Republic of Texas, was
governed by the laws of that Republic in
its lifetime, and is now governed by the
laws, nay, actually represented, at this
day, in the Congress of the United States!
It serves to illustrate and characterize
this pretension that it is set up in the
face of the well-known fact, that there is
a law of the United States-and the only
law that we know of ever yet passed by
Congress with any special application to
any part of this whole region of country
on the Rio Grande-which authorizes a
drawback of duties paid on goods import-
ed into the United States and exported to
Santa Fe; a law constantly observed and
enforced by the Executive until recently,
when this same town, and the province of
New Mexico, of which it is the capital,
was captured by the American army, and
taken possession of as a conquered coun-
try! This noted city of Santa Fe is sit-
uated in the upper portion of the Rio
Grande country, some 1500 miles from
the sea.
Quite at the opposite extremity
on the Gulf, is the town of Santiago, also
now in our hands by military capture.
And here, as at Santa Fe, until they
were conquered by our arms, the com-
merce of the United States was accus-
tomed to pay duties at a Mexican custom-
house, as regularly and as freely as such
duties were paid at London or Liver-
pool.

was one, and Coahuila was another, and the river Nueces was the boundary between Texas on the one side, and New Santander (New Tamaulipas) and Coahuila on the other. In 1776, the country, then called the Viceroyalty of New Spain, was divided into twelve Intendencies and three provinces. The Intendency of San Louis Potosi comprehended Tamaulipas, (formerly New Santander,) Coahuila, and Texas, with the same boundaries they had under the previous arrangement. The Republic of Mexico succeeded, and in 1824, the country was divided into nineteen States, four Territories, and the Federal District. Tamaulipas was one of these States, still having the Nueces for its northern and eastern boundary. Coahuila still touched the Nueces above Tamaulipas; and on the opposite side of this river, over against Tamaulipas and Coahuila, was Texas. Under the Constitution of 1824, Coahuila and Texas retained each its distinct geographical existence, as when they were provinces, but had a political union for the purposes of State government. Finally, in 1835, a decree of the General Congress dissolved the State Legislatures, and converted the States again into provinces, or departments. Of these departments, Texas was one, on one side of the Nueces, as before, with Tamaulipas and Coahuila on the other. In 1832, the people of Texas, still with her western boundary on the Nueces, formed a separate State Constitution, casting off Coahuila, and asked for admission as such into the Confederacy. This was refused by the Central Government. Then came her revolt, and her declaration of independence in 1836, while Tamaulipas and Coahuila, on the other side of the Nueces, maintained their fidelity to Mexico. They never revolted. Her independence established by the fight of San Jacinto, the Republic of Texas proceeded, with singular modesty, to declare, by act of Congress, that she would deem the Rio Grande to be her western boundary, thenceforward, from its mouth on the gulf to its source in the Rocky Mountains! This is the plain and simple history of Texas and her boundary. And in the face of facts like these, we have the President of the United States -with a modesty only equaled by that of Texas in her Act of Congressthrough the process of annexation, which nevertheless expressly reserved the question of boundary to be settled

The attempt which the President has made, by historical recital, to carry Texas up to the Rio Grande, even from the beginning, demands that we should say a word or two more on this point. For a long period previous to 1776, the country known as Mexico was divided so as to form three kingdoms, so called; one colony, that of New Santander, and six provinces. Of these provinces, Texas

between Mexico and the United States, setting up, not a claim, but a positive and unquestioned title in the United States to the whole country in the left valley of the Rio Grande-towns, cities, rancheros, and all-Spaniards, Creoles, Indians, Mulattoes, Mestizoes, and Zamboes the people of Tamaulipas, the people of Coahuila, the people of Chihuahua, the people of New Mexico; for all these are claimed, of course, along with their country, by the same title, and constituted, at once, 60,000 souls of them and such souls too-willing or unwilling, good adopted citizens of the Model Republic!

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And now we return to the embarrassing question, which we have supposed, some distance back, to have moved the President to flounder into the meshes of this desperate entanglement -what was our army doing, in the month of March last, on the banks of the Rio Grande ? There it was, set down opposite the old Spanish town of Matamoros, with a battery of four 18 pounders, bearing directly, as the General in command promptly reported to the President, on the public square, and within good range for demolishing the town." "Their object," he added significantly, "cannot be mistaken by the enemy. And to attain this position, the army had marched in hostile array, and as a force invading an enemy's territory, more than one hundred miles through a country (where it was occu pied at all) peopled with Mexican subjects, governed by Mexican laws, and defended by Mexican troops, and to which neither Texas nor the United States the brutum fulmen of a Texan Act of Congress notwithstanding-had no more title, claim, or pretension, than they had to the city of Mexico itself. What was our army doing there? Congress had not declared war against Mexico; Mexico had not declared or made war on the United States. Well, the army was marched to that position by the positive orders of the Executive. This is not denied; and we see now what apology the President has had to offer to the country for this extraordinary proceeding. He chose to assume, against all fact and all history, that our new Texan dominion had its fixed boundary on the Rio Grande, and he sent his army into the very centre of the Mexican State of Tamaulipas, and up to the doors

of its capital, by way of covering Texas with military protection!

We give the President the benefit of his own apology and defence, as he has chosen to write it down. The Bravo being in his mind the proper limit of Texas, the point to which the army was directed, was the true position to be taken for the defence of Texas against a threatened attack from Mexico. This is his case, as he himself presents it to us. But our army had occupied a defensive position on the Nueces for the protection of Texas, in complete security and quiet, for five months before the peremptory order of the 13th January was given which carried it to the Rio Grande. What, then, had occurred to require this change in the position of the army? The President, we are sorry to say, treats this part of the case with as little directness and candor as the rest. He jumbles the most important dates together in a way to produce confusion and misapprehension. We will take, however, for his true defence, the exact impression that he means to convey-especially, as otherwise no shadow of defence is presented. It is, that this order of the 13th January was given on account of "the apprehensions of a contemplated Mexican invasion," the danger of which was then specially felt to be imminent by the Executive-an invasion, "the avowed purpose" of which was to reconquer Texas, and to restore Mexican authority over the whole territory, not to the Nueces only, but to the Sabine." If this is not exactly what the President means we shall understand by his language, then we can only say that he has used language, in all this part of the case, without any meaning at all and has offered no defence whatever for his order of the 13th January. And if we have given his meaning correctly, then we have to say, that his defence has not one single fact, or shadow of a fact, to stand on. The published correspondence which we have, shows in the clearest manner, that on and about the period when this fatal order was given, neither the President at Washington, nor the General at Corpus Christi, felt any apprehension whatever, or had the slightest reason to feel any apprehension, of an immediate or early Mexican invasion, for the reconquest of Texas, or, indeed, apprehension of any hostility whatever to be begun by Mexico, for any purpose, so long as our army was not advanced beyond Corpus Christi. In the

summer of 1845, it had been thought possible, and only possible, that Mexico really might mean something by her threats of war. This feeling had now, and for some time, quite subsided. Early in September, Gen. Taylor had begged that no militia force should be sent to him. "I am entirely confident," said he," that none will be required." And this tone of confidence was kept up down to the last letter written by him, which could have reached Washington before the order of the 13th of January.

The same tone of confidence in the peaceable aspect of affairs, was expressed in the letters of the Secretary of War and the Secretary of State, during the same period. The last communication from Mr. Marcy to Gen. Taylor, before the order of January 13th, was dated October 16th, and began with saying; "The information which we have here renders it probable that no serious attempts will at present be made by Mexico to invade Texas." And yet this very letter contained an authority to Gen. Taylor, only just short of an order, to move his army to the Rio Grande. It was only because Taylor would not take on himself a responsibility which belonged to the Executive, that the march to the Rio Grande was not begun under the instructions of this letter of the 16th of October. We have not a doubt that the Executive intended it should be. And at any rate, between the date of this let ter and the peremptory order, not a sign had appeared on the earth, or in the heavens, to induce the President to believe that war was any nearer at hand from Mexico, than it had been three months, or six months before. Though Herrera had then descended from the Chieftainship in Mexico, yet this fact was unknown in Washington; and it was positively known that Herrera would not make war on the United States on his own responsibility. True, the President intimates that this revolution, which placed Paredes at the head of affairs, was anticipated, and not without apprehensions for the consequences, from the letter of Mr. Slidell of the 17th of December, received before his hostile order was issued; but it is also true that that same letter, in allusion to this expected or possible revolution, gave to the President this very significant opinion of the writer, in regard to its effects; "Notwithstanding the desire, which I believe

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the present administration really entertains, to adjust all their difficulties with us, so feeble and inert is it, that I am rather inclined to the opinion that the chances of a successful negotiation would be better with one more hostile, but possessing greater energy." The President cannot say with truth that he believed, or seriously apprehended, on the 13th of January, that Paredes, if then in power in Mexico, was any more disposed, or more likely, to declare or make war on the United States, or to invade Texas, on his own responsibility, than Herrera was, or had been. Not the slightest intimation of the sort had been given from any quarter. Such a measure, it was well known, if resorted to at all, and whoever might be chief, must come from a Congress of Mexico, and not from any President; and the work of gathering such a Congress, and collecting its opinions, was to be a work of time. In point of fact, the first movement of Paredes on this subject was after our army had marched from Corpus Christi, when he issued orders for "the defence of the Mexican territory, invaded by the United States," with a public proclamation, declaring to the world, even then;-" I solemnly announce that I do not declare war against the United States."

It is of the number of remarkable things found in the Message of President Polk, that he should roundly assert that Mexico herself had never placed her warlike demonstrations towards our forces in Tamaulipas, "upon the ground that our army occupied the intermediate territory between the Nueces and the Rio Grande, but that her "avowed purpose" was to reconquer Texas to the Sabine. Can it be possible that the President had ever read the proclamation of Paredes, and the communications and proclamations of the several chiefs, Meija, Arista and Ampudia, which preceded the commencement of their military operations? Their language was, that General Taylor's occupation of the soil of Tamaulipas" must lead to hostilities; and they called on him to retire, not to the Sabine, but to the Nueces. And we aver that not a syllable can be found from any one of them which indicated any further purpose than to compel him to fall back to the latter river.

But we stop here; we are sick of following the President through the sort of defence which he has ventured to set up for invading Mexico, and bringing on a

war, no matter for what cause, on his own responsibility, in contempt of the Constitution, and in contempt of Congress. Congress, be it ever remembered, was in session under his eye, at the moment when he issued his daring and fatal order of the 13th of January. He refused to consult that body, until he had made a movement, which all men see, if he did not, was sure to bring on war-which left Congress no alternative, but to adopt the war which he had thus precipitated. He made this movement deliberately, and with a purpose distinctly disclosed in a dispatch from Mr. Buchanan to Mr. Slidell of the 20th of January. "The President, in anticipation of the final refusal of the Mexican government to receive you, has ordered the army of Texas to advance," &c.; and why? Is it because the President expected, in that event, a declaration of war from Mexico, or an invasion of Texas? Nothing of the sort is pretended in that letter. Government, it is said, would then "take the redress of the wrongs of its citizens into its own hands." Congress was to be asked to give the Executive the requisite authority, but not until it should be too late for Congress to deliberate, or have any opinion in the matter, The anticipated rejection of our minister was the signal for a warlike demonstration, undertaken by the President, on his own responsibility. "The wrongs of our citizens" were to be brought in on an appeal to Congress, to recognize and adopt the war, if in the progress of this experiment it should be found that Mexico had courage enough to meet our invasion; for come what might, the territory of Mexico to the Rio Grande was, first of all, to be secured to the United States by an armed occupation of the country.

The President completes his account of "the causes which led to the war," by

a circumstantial narrative of the "mission of peace" to Mexico instituted by him, and conducted by Mr. Slidell. It had been our purpose to examine that mission at some length in this article-a purpose which we are now obliged to forego for want of space. We shall not forget that mission, however. We think it ought to have been, and might have been made successful, provided only that the terms of peace which the government were prepared to offer, were sufficiently moderate and reasonable. Why it was a total failure we think is apparent enough, and may be easily shown.

From the length to which this article has already run, we feel obliged to bring it to a sudden conclusion. We must do this without exposing the Message in several particulars wherein it seems to us the American people are loudly called on to wake up to the imminent hazards to which the country is exposed. A war commenced by the Executive has been followed already by vast acquisitions of foreign territory, conquered by our arms, and over which, or some parts of it, the President, through his military commanders, has assumed the prerogative of organizing complete governments. Tricks have been played in these conquered countries before high Heaven, to make the angels weep. Governors of provinces make and unmake themselves, and appoint successors, and establish laws, and judicial tribunals, and receive oaths of allegiance, and Heaven knows what not, as if all this was an ordinary business, done after approved precedents, and by authority of the Constitution. Surely, democracy is progressive. Already, it has left the Constitution of the country far enough out of sight. There seems to be nothing that it dare not attempt, even though, like Phæton, it may set the world on fire.

B.

ON THE DEATH OF A YOUNG GIRL.

Our meek and silent Emma then is gone,
And we are mourning over one we loved;
Yet who could scarce be said to love in turn,
So cold and passionless and pure she seemed.
A girl of fifteen summers,-in her face
Most beautiful, in words most kind and sweet,
Patient beneath her duty's slender calls,
And unrepining at whatever came ;-
But yet, a mystery, she moved about,
With no more sympathy for breathing things
Than what was needed for her being here;
Seeking no tie but those by nature hers,
Her thoughts and her affections all unknown.
Her life brought no distress nor joy to her,
So peacefully she rested on the sea

Of measureless content. She never seemed
Like one of humankind: or, if she did,

Like one who moved and spoke, yet all the while
Dwelling serenely in a blissful dream.

We might have deemed her sinless: as it was,

She never could have wandered far from heaven.
Her heart was in her thoughts, and they, no doubt,
Were pure and beautiful in sight of God-

A sacred wedlock in itself content

And so she seemed to seek no love beyond.

And could they call thee cold, thou angel one!
Because thy spirit ne'er was bared to us,
But, like the new moon dark among the stars,
Shone to some other world, but not to this-
Save in the palest outline of her form-
Her brightness turning to the holy sky!

Or wert thou but the more the heaven-guest,

Because thy heart and soul found each their love-
The human on the breast of the divine ?

How softly, too, thy spirit stole from us!
And, ere we knew it, was in heaven again!
As when a fainting breeze, unheard, yet heard,
Melts to the murmur that the ear will make
When silence reigns supreme; we start-and lo!
The sound has faded into memory's realm.

The cords of life which tied thee were not snapped,
But gently drawn and made attenuate,
Until they were not for their subtleness!
Death came, and found thy soul already loose;
He looked again-it seemed within thy lips,

Yet when he made the sign it moved away.

The young flowers close their petals on thy grave,
To shade their hearts from day-and so, are pale.
But at the spirit hour they ope their lids,
To catch a vision of the starry host,
And drink the light that quickens nought but soul,
And for return breathe out their balmy lives,-
Meek emblems of thy being,-holy flowers!

Farewell, thou dear poetic maid! although
The music of thy being was unheard,
As zephyrs breathing the pine-groves among,
So is thy memory lingering in the heart.

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