William Alexander Linn, Horace Greeley Founder and Editor of The New York Tribune

[142] the frigate Princeton; in March, 1844, Calhoun took his place; and on April 12 the treaty was signed and ten days later sent to the Senate, where, on June 8, it was defeated by a vote of sixteen yeas to thirty-five nays. Tyler at once, in a special message, urged the House to secure annexation by “some other form of proceeding,” but Congress adjourned without carrying out the scheme.

The year 1844 was a presidential year, and the most probable candidates for the heads of the two tickets were Clay and Van Buren. Both of these leaders looked on the Texas question as a dangerous one, and two years earlier, when Van Buren visited Clay at Ashland, it was said that they had agreed to place themselves in opposition to annexation. Clay found himself forced to define his position before the Whig convention met, and he did so in his “Raleigh letter” of April 17. In this he stated his belief that any title to Texas which our Government had received under the Louisiana purchase had been ceded to Spain by subsequent treaty; that the United States should not go to war with Mexico to secure Texas, and that he was not in favor of acquiring new territory simply to maintain a balance of power between the North and South. Van Buren also wrote a