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21
in spite of the message of the 22d of December, dissuading
the acknowledgment of Texan Independence for many
strong reasons therein given, an amendment was suddenly engrafted
upon the annual appropriation bill, in one of its last
stages in the House of Representatives, three or four days
prior to the third of March, 1837, which amendment provided
for the pay of a diplomatic agent to the republic of Texas,
as soon as the President should receive satisfactory evidence
that Texas was an independent power. The Senate consented.
Almost, perhaps quite in the selfsame hour that the
President signed the appropriation bill, he also obtained such
evidence of the independence of Texas as to induce him
forthwith, and before the expiration of the remaining minutes
of his power as President, to nominate the diplomatic agent
provided for in the bill. This was one of his very last official
acts. If his policy had not been successful in acquiring
to the United States this territory, he at any rate had the
consolation to reflect that he had wrested it from Mexico, in
payment for her obstinacy, in refusing to sell it when she was
required so to do.
After such an act as this, who is there that ought to wonder
at the attempt of Mr. Tyler, to steal a march upon the
country with a treaty ? Yet the lapse of less than seven
years has had the effect of so far sinking the old proceeding
into oblivion throughout the Northern States, that people actually
seem to regard this new one as something entirely unprecedented.
Nothing wakes them up but the clap of thunder
which comes after the lightning has done all the damage
possible. The two great parties are so afraid of doing or
saying any thing which shall appear in the least to justify the
organization of the third or abolition party, that they have
united in striving to forget as far as possible that there are any
questions at all which must grow out of the existence of slavery.
Had they met those questions as they ought in the outset, it
is not too much to say that there would not now have been
any third party worth considering. It is not the mere momentary
outbreak against a measure upon the eve of accomplishment,
preceded by a cold and studied incredulity of its
existence until it becomes evident beyond the possibility of
contradiction, that will ever go far to counteract a systematic
policy managed by persons occupying stations of power under
the general government, or that will satisfy the just clamor
of an irritated community after the time shall have passed
when action might have been properly directed..
And now that we can look back upon the history of this
business, we think that one thing will be most particularly
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Adams, Charles Francis. Texas and the Massachusetts Resolutions, book, January 1, 1844; Boston, Massachusetts. (https://texashistory.unt.edu/ark:/67531/metapth2355/m1/21/: accessed April 25, 2024), University of North Texas Libraries, The Portal to Texas History, https://texashistory.unt.edu; crediting UNT Libraries Special Collections.