Horace Greeley, The American Conflict: A History of the Great Rebellion in the United States of America, 1860-65: its Causes, Incidents, and Results: Intended to exhibit especially its moral and political phases with the drift and progress of American opinion respecting human slavery from 1776 to the close of the War for the Union. Volume I.

[160] consummated: The Annexation of Texas to this Union. In the press of business incident to the last days of a session of Congress, we have not time, did we deem it necessary, to enter upon a detailed statement of the reasons which force upon our minds the conviction that this project is by no means abandoned; that a large portion of the country, interested in the continuance of Domestic Slavery and the Slave-Trade in these United States, have solemnly and unalterably determined that it shall be speedily carried into execution; and that, by this admission of new Slave territory and Slave States, the undue ascendancy of the Slave-holding Power in the Government shall be secured and riveted beyond all redemption.

That it was with these views and intentions that settlements were effected in the province, by citizens of the United States, difficulties fomented with the Mexican (Government, a revolt brought about,and an independent government declared, cannot now admit of a doubt; and that, hitherto, all attempts of Mexico to reduce her revolted province to obedience have proved unsuccessful, is to be attributed to the unlawful aid and assistance of designing and interested individuals in the United States; and the direct and indirect cooperation of our own Government, with similar views, is not the less certain and demonstrable.

The open and repeated enlistment of troops in several States of this Union, in aid of the Texan Revolution ; the intrusion of an American army, by order of the President, far into the territory of the Mexican Government, at a moment critical for the fate of the insurgents, under pretense of preventing Mexican soldiers from fomenting Indian disturbances, but in reality in aid of, and acting in singular concert and coincidence with, the army of the Revolutionists; the entire neglect of our Government to adopt any efficient measures to prevent the most unwarrantable aggressions of bodies of our own citizens, enlisted, organized, and officered within our own borders, and marched in arms and battle array upon the territory and against the inhabitants of a friendly government, in aid of freebooters and insurgents; and the premature recognition of the Independence of Texas, by a snap vote, at the heel of a session of Congress, and that, too, at the very session when President Jackson had, by special Message, insisted that “the measure would be contrary to the policy invariably observed by the United States in all similar cases,” would be marked with great injustice to Mexico, and peculiarly liable to the darkest suspicions, inasmuch as the Texans were almost all emigrants from the United States, and sought the recognition of their independence with the avowed purpose of obtaining their annexation to the United States. * * *

The open avowal of the Texans themselves — the frequent and anxious negotiations of our own Government — the resolutions of various States of the Union the numerous declarations of members of Congress — the tone of the Southern press — as well as the direct application of the Texan Government-make it impossible for any man to doubt that Annexation, and the formation of several new Slaveholding States, were originally the policy and design of the Slaveholding States and the Executive of the Nation.

The same references will show very conclusively that the particular objects of this new acquisition of Slave territory were the perpetuation of Slavery and the continued ascendancy of the Slave Power. * *

We hold that there is not only “ no political necessity” for it, “no advantages to be derived from it,” but that there is no constitutional power delegated to any department of the National Government to authorize it; that no act of Congress, or treaty for annexation, can impose the least obligation upon the several States of this Union to submit to such an unwarrantable act, or to receive into their family and fraternity such misbegotten and illegitimate progeny.

We hesitate not to say that Annexation, effected by any act or proceeding of the Federal government , or any of its departments, would be identical with dissolution. It would be a violation of our National compact, its objects, designs, and the great elementary principles which entered into its formation, of a character so deep and fundamental, and would be an attempt to eternize an institution and a power of a nature so unjust in themselves, so injurious to the interests and abhorrent to the feelings of the people of the Free States, as, in our opinion, not only inevitably to result in a dissolution of the Union, but fully to justify it; and we not only assert that the people of the Free States “ought not to submit to it,” but, we say with confidence, they would not submit to it. We know their present temper and spirit on this subject too well to believe for a moment that they would become particeps criminis in any subtle contrivance for the irremediable perpetuation of an institution, which the wisest and best men who formed our Federal Constitution, as well from the Slave as the Free States, regarded as an evil and a curse, soon to become extinct under the operation of laws to be passed prohibiting the Slave-Trade, and the progressive influence of the principles of the Revolution.

To prevent the success of this nefarious project — to preserve from such gross