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[174] cession of the remaining Texan territory to the United States, shall be agreed upon by the Governments of Texas and the United States.

And be it further enacted, That the sum of one hundred thousand dollars be, and the same is hereby, appropriated to defray the expenses of missions and negotiations, to agree upon the terms of said admission and cession, either by treaty to be submitted to the Senate, or by articles to be submitted to the two Houses of Congress, as the President may direct.

Approved, March 2, 1845.

President Tyler immediately, on the last day of his term, rendered the Walker amendment nugatory by dispatching a messenger to Texas to secure her assent to Annexation, pure and simple; and thus the triumph of the measure was secured.

The pretext or show of compromise with respect to Slavery, by a partition of territory, was one of the worst features of this most objectionable measure. So much of Texas as lay north of the parallel of 36° 30′ north latitude was thereby allotted to Free labor, when Texas had never controlled, and did not at that moment possess, a single acre north of that parallel, nor for two hundred miles south of it. All the territory claimed by her north of that line was New Mexico, which had never been for a week under the flag of Texas. While seeming to curtail and circumscribe Slavery north of the above parallel, this measure really extended it northward to that parallel, which it had not yet approached, under the flag of Texas, within hundreds of miles. But the chief end of this sham compromise was the involving of Congress and the country in an indirect indorsement of the claim of Texas to the entire left bank of the Rio Grande, from its mouth to its source; and this was effected.

This complete triumph of Annexation, even before the inauguration of Mr. Polk, was hailed with exultation throughout the South, and received with profound sensation and concern at the North. It excited, moreover, some surprise; as, three days before it occurred, its defeat for that session appeared almost certain. Mr. Bagby, a Democratic Senator from Alabama, positively declared from his seat that he would not support it; while the opposition of Messrs. Niles, of Connecticut, Dix, of New York, and Benton, of Missouri, was deemed invincible; but the Alabamian was tamed by private, but unquestionable, intimations, that it would not be safe for him to return to his own State, nor even to remain in Washington, if his vote should defeat the darling project; and the repugnance of Messrs. Niles, Dix, and Benton, was somehow overcome — the Walker amendment serving as a pretext for submission to the party behest, when no plausible excuse could be given. Mr. Polk was already in Washington, engaged in making up his jewels; and he had very freely intimated that no man who opposed Annexation should receive office or consideration at his hands. The three Tylerized Whigs from the South, who voted in the affirmative, had not been counted on as opponents of the scheme.

The Democrats of the North, having elected Mr. Polk after a desperate struggle, and being intent on the imminent distribution of the spoils, might regret this early fruit of their triumph, but could hardly be expected openly to denounce it. Mr. John P. Hale, of New Hampshire, who had evinced (as we have seen) insubordination

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James K. Polk (3)
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