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[149] the allegiance sworn to the government of last year, was binding in favor of that whereby it had since been arbitrarily supplanted.

In the year 1827--Mr. John Q. Adams being President--Mr. Clay, his Secretary of State, instructed Joel R. Poinsett, our Minister to Mexico, to offer one million of dollars for the cession to us by the republic of Mexico of her territory this side of the Rio Grande. Mr. Poinsett did not make the offer, perceiving that it would only irritate and alienate the Mexicans to no good purpose.

In 1829, Mr. Van Buren, as Gen. Jackson's Secretary of State, instructed our Minister at Mexico to make a similar offer of four or five millions for Texas, including no part of the valley of the Rio Grande, nor of that of the Nueces, this side of it, and, of course, no part of New Mexico. Still, Mexico would not sell.

Sam Houston, born in Rockbridge County, Virginia, in 1793, had early migrated to Tennessee, settling very near the reserved lands of the Cherokee Indians, to whom he speedily absconded, living three years among them. More than twenty years later — having, meantime, been a gallant soldier in the War of 1812, an Indian agent, a lawyer, district attorney, major-general of militia, member of Congress, and Governor of Tennessee--he abruptly separated from his newly-married wife, and repaired again to the Cherokees, now settled west of the Mississippi, by whom he was welcomed and made a chief. After living with them three years longer as a savage, lie suddenly left them again, returned to civilization — of the Arkansas pattern — set out from Little Rock, with a few companions of like spirit, for the new country to which adventurers and lawless characters throughout the Southwest were silently tending. A Little Rock journal, noticing his departure for Texas, significantly said: “We shall doubtless hear of his raising his flag there shortly.” The guess was a perfectly safe one.

For the Slave Power had already perceived its opportunity, and resolved to profit by it. Houston and other restless spirits of his sort were pushed into Texas expressly to seize upon the first opportunity to foment a revolution,1 expel the Mexican authorities,

1 In the Winter of 1830, the first year of Jackson rule at Washington, Houston came to that city from the wilds of the far West, in company with a band of Indians, who professed to have business there. He remained some weeks or months, ostensibly attending to this business, and made or renewed the acquaintance of one Dr. Robert Mayo, with whom he became intimate, and to whom he imparted his Texas project; and by him it was betrayed to President Jackson, who, very probably, had already heard it from Houston himself.

“I learned from him,” wrote Mayo, “that he was organizing an expedition against Texas; to afford a cloak to which, he had assumed the Indian costume, habits, and associations, by settling among them in the neighborhood of Texas. That nothing was more easy to accomplish than the conquest and possession of that extensive and fertile country, by the cooperation of the Indians in the Arkansas Territory, and recruits among the citizens of the United States. That, in his view, it would hardly be necessary to strike a blow to wrest Texas from Mexico. That it was ample for the establishment and maintenance of a separate and independent government from the United States. That the expedition would be got ready with all possible dispatch. That the demonstration would and must be made in about twelve months from that time. That tile event of success opened the most unbounded prospects of wealth to those who would embark in it,” etc., etc.

Dr. Mayo further learned from one Hunter, a confederate of Houston, that there were then secret agencies in all the principal cities of the Union, enlisting men for the Texas enterprise.

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