The Quarterly of the Texas State Historical Association, Volume 5, July 1901 - April, 1902 Page: 29
370 p. : ill. ; 23 cm.View a full description of this periodical.
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The Annexation of Texas and the Mexican War. 29
tobacco-spurting Indian killers, demagogues and politicians hunt-
ing around to steal a slice of land suitable for slave labor." This
forceful, if not elegant, characterization is expurgated before it
reaches the school room.
The main end at which all the labor of this class of historians is
aimed is to show, in the first place, that the annexation of Texas
to the United States was the culmination of a deliberate scheme
to enlarge the area of slavery, and was therefore a measure purely
in the interests of the slaveholder. To establish this they hold up
the Texas pioneer as a mere instrument in the hands of the slave-
holder to make Texas a slave colony, and say that when Texas
became large enough to make a respectable show of a rebellion, the
revolution against Mexico was precipitated, the slaveholder fur-
nishing the men and means requisite to the success of that revolu-
tion. And the effort has been to show, in the second place, that
the immediate cause of the war in 1846 was the unwarranted and
unprovoked invasion of Mexican territory, which forced Mexico, in
self-defense, to attack United States forces and thus become tech-
nically responsible for that war.2
A very wide range of facts is drawn upon to establish these
propositions-facts selected out from a great mass and grouped so
as to give plausibility to their theories. To reply in detail to these
would consume more than two entire issues of T-IE QUARTERLY. In
lieu thereof some general facts will be given, which will serve, in
the main, as an answer to the whole.
As the annexation of Texas and its logical sequence, the acqui-
'Bancroft's Hist. of Mew., Vol. V., p. 307; Von Holst's Const. and Pol.
Hist. U. S., Vol. II, p. 512 et seq.
2The spirit of the partisan is nowhere more manifest than in the follow-
ing: "The Texan army under Houston amounted to only eight hundred
men [at San Jacinto] of whom it is said not more than fifty were citizens
of Texas." Von Holst's Constitutional Hist. U. S., Vol. II, p. 570. In sup-
port of this statement, Wise, of Virginia, is quoted in a foot note as saying
"It was they [the people of the great valley of the Mississippi] that con-
quered Santa Anna at San Jacinto, and three-fourths of them after winning
that glorious field had peaceably returned to their homes." To this is
added, by Von I-olst, "in the United States." It is susceptible of almost
positive proof that ninety-eight per cent. of those who fought at San Jacinto
were already settled in Texas or remained in the Republic after the Revolu-
tion.
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Texas State Historical Association. The Quarterly of the Texas State Historical Association, Volume 5, July 1901 - April, 1902, periodical, 1902; Austin, Texas. (https://texashistory.unt.edu/ark:/67531/metapth101021/m1/35/: accessed April 19, 2024), University of North Texas Libraries, The Portal to Texas History, https://texashistory.unt.edu; crediting Texas State Historical Association.