Texas annexation

Annexation of Texas

Annexation of the Republic of Texas to the United States
Republic of Texas Boundaries of Texas as annexed, 1845
Drafted	27 February 1844
Signed	29 December 1845 (1845-12-29)
Effective	14 February 1846
Condition	Ratification by Republic of Texas (including plebicite) and US Congress
Negotiators	Republic of Texas and the United States Republic of Texas  United States
Annexation of Texas at Wikisource

In 1845, the United States of America annexed the Republic of Texas and admitted it to the Union as the 28th state.

Since declaring their independence from the Republic of Mexico in 1836, the vast majority of Texas citizens favored the annexation of the Lone Star Republic by the United States.^[1]

During the 1830s the two major American political parties, the Democrats and the Whigs, had struggled to suppress the pro- and anti-slavery sectional controversies in Congress from alienating the northern and southern wings of each organization.^[2] Party leaders strenuously objected to incorporating the vast Texas slave owning region into this volatile political climate. Moreover, they wished to avoid a war with Mexico, whose government refused to acknowledge the sovereignty of its northern province.^[3] With its economic fortunes declining by the early 1840s, the President of the Texas Republic, Sam Houston arranged talks with Mexico to explore the possibilities to secure official recognition or independence, with Great Britain mediating.^[4][5]

In 1843, President of the United States John Tyler, unaligned with any political party, decided, as chief executive, to independently pursue the annexation of Texas in a bid to gain a popular base of support for another four years in office.^[6] His official motivation was to outmaneuver suspected diplomatic efforts by the British government to promote a general emancipation of slaves in Texas that would weaken the institution of human bondage in the United States.^[7][8]

Initiating and impelling secret annexation negotiations with the Houston administration, Tyler secured a treaty of annexation in April 1844. When the documents were submitted to the US Senate for ratification, the details of the terms of annexation became public and the question of acquiring Texas took center stage in the presidential election of 1844. Pro-Texas annexationist southern Democratic delegates denied their anti-annexationist leader Martin Van Buren the nomination at their party's convention in May 1844. In alliance with pro-expansionist northern Democratic colleagues, they secured the unanimous nomination of James K. Polk, who ran on a pro-Texas Manifest Destiny platform.^[9]

In June 1844, the Senate, with its Whig majority, soundly rejected the Tyler-Texas treaty. The pro-annexationist Democrat Polk would defeat the anti-annexationist Whig Henry Clay for the presidency by a small margin in November of 1844.

In December 1844, the lame-duck President Tyler called on Congress to pass his treaty by simple majorities in each house.^[10] The Democrat dominated House of Representatives complied with his request by passing an amended bill expanding on the pro-slavery provisions of the Tyler treaty. The Senate's minority Democrats narrowly passed a compromise version of the House bill, with critical support from several southern Whigs, designed to provide the incoming President-elect Polk the option to effect immediate annexation of Texas or open new talks to revise the annexation terms of the House amended bill.

On March 3, 1845, shortly after signing the bill, President Tyler preempted Polk and forwarded the House legislative alternative to Texas, offering immediate annexation to the republic. When Polk entered the White House the next day, he proceeded to encourage Texas to accept the Tyler offer. The Lone Star Republic ratified the treaty with popular approval from Texans. The bill was signed by United States President Polk on December 29, 1845, accepting Texas as the 28th state of the Union. Texas formally relinquished its sovereignty to the United States on February 14, 1846.^[11]

Background

Territorial Expansion and Texas

Louisiana Purchase boundaries of 1803

The boundaries of the United States and neighboring nations as they appeared in 1843.

First mapped by Spain in 1519, Texas was part of the Spanish empire for over 300 years.^[12] When the Louisiana territory was acquired by the United States from France in 1803, many people believed the treaty included the whole or parts of present day Texas.^[13]

US-Spain international boundaries for Texas took shape in the 1817–1819 negotiations between Secretary of State John Quincy Adams and the Spanish ambassador to the United States Luis de Onís y González-Vara ^[14] The configuration of Texas was determined within the larger geostrategic struggle to demarcate the limits of the United States' extensive western boundary with Spain's vast possessions in North America.^[15]

The Florida Treaty of February 22, 1819^[16][17] emerged as a compromise that excluded Spain from the lower Colombia River watershed, but established southern boundaries at the Sabine and Red Rivers "legally extinguish[ing]" any American claims to Texas.^[18][19] Nonetheless, Texas remained an object of interest to fervent American expansionists, among them Thomas Jefferson, who anticipated the eventual acquisition of its fertile lands.^[20]

The Missouri crisis of 1819–1821 sharpened commitments to expansionism among the countries slaveholding interests, when the so-called Thomas proviso established the 36°30' parallel imposing free-soil and slave-soil futures in the Louisiana Purchase lands.^[21] Congressman John Tyler of Virginia invoked the Jeffersonian precepts of territorial and commercial growth as a national goal to counter the rise of sectional differences over slavery. His "diffusion" theory declared that with Missouri open to slavery, the new state would encourage the transfer of underutilized slaves westward, emptying the eastern states of bondsmen and making emancipation feasible in the old South.^[22] This doctrine would be revived during the Texas annexation controversy.^[23][24]

While a majority of southern congressmen acquiesced to the exclusion of slavery from the bulk of the Louisiana Purchase, a significant minority objected.^[25][26] Virginian editor Thomas Ritchie of the Richmond Enquirer predicted that with the proviso restrictions, the South would ultimately require Texas: "If we are cooped up on the north, we must have elbow room to the west."^[27][28] Representative John Floyd of Virginia, in 1824, accused Secretary of State Adams of allegedly ceding Texas to Spain in 1819 in the interests Northern anti-slavery advocates and depriving the South of additional slave states.^[29]

When Mexico won its independence from Spain in 1821,^[30] the United States did not contest the new republic's claims to Texas, and both presidents John Quincy Adams (1825–1829) and Andrew Jackson (1829–1837) persistently sought, through official and unofficial channels, to procure all or portions of provincial Texas from the Mexican government, without success.^[31]

Texas Settlement and Independence

Anglo-American immigrants, primarily from the Southern United States, began emigrating to Mexican Texas in the early 1820s at the invitation of the Mexican government, which sought to populate the sparsely inhabited lands of its northern frontier.^[32][33] Colonizing impresario Stephen F. Austin managed the regional affairs of the mostly American-born population – 20% of them slaves^[34] - under the terms of the generous government land grants.^[35] Mexican authorities were initially content to govern the remote province through salutary neglect "permitting slavery under the legal fiction of 'permanent indentured servitude'", similar to Mexico's peonage system.^[36]

A general lawlessness prevailed in the vast Texas frontier, and Mexico's civic laws went largely unenforced.^[37][38] Mexican authorities, perceiving they was losing control over Texas and alarmed at the unsuccessful Fredonia Rebellion of 1826, abandoned the policy of benign rule. New restrictions were imposed in 1829–1830, outlawing slavery throughout the nation and terminating further American immigration to Texas.^[39][40] Military occupation followed, sparking local uprisings and a civil war. Texas conventions in 1832 and 1833 submitted petitions for redress of grievances to overturn the restrictions, with limited success.^[41] In 1835, an army under Mexican General Santa Anna entered Texas and abolished self-government. Texans responded by declaring their independence from Mexico on March 2, 1836. On April 20–21, 1836 rebel forces under Texas General Sam Houston defeated the Mexican army at the Battle of San Jacinto.^[42][43] The Mexican government refused to honor the terms granting the Lone Star Republic its independence agreed to by General Santa Anna in June 1836.^[44] Texans, now in possession of a de facto republic, recognized that their security and prosperity could never be achieved while Mexico denied the legitimacy of their revolution.^[45]

In the years following independence, Texas's unresolved international affairs with Mexico deterred migration of white settlers and the importation of black slave labor into the vast republic – not the least of these the threat of renewed warfare.^[46] American citizens who considered migrating to the new republic perceived that "life and property were safer within the United States" than in an independent Texas.^[47] The situation led to labor shortages, reduced tax revenue, large national debts and a diminished Texas militia.^[48][49]

Lone Star Republic

Mirabeau B. Lamar, second president of the Republic of Texas, terminated annexation efforts with the Martin Van Adminsitration in 1838.

Memucan Hunt, first Minister of the Republic of Texas to the United States, whose overtures to the Van Buren adminsitration for annexation proved futile.

The Anglo-American immigrants residing in Texas overwhelmingly desired immediate annexation by the United States.^[50] Despite his strong support for Texas independence,^[51] then President Andrew Jackson delayed recognizing the new republic until the last day of his presidency to avoid raising the issue during the 1836 general election.^[52][53] Jackson's political caution was informed by northern concerns that the admission of Texas would add several slave states to the Union and undermine the North-South balance in Congress.^[54]

Jackson's successor, President Martin Van Buren, viewed Texas annexation as an immense political liability that would empower the anti-slavery northern Whig opposition – especially if annexation provoked a war with Mexico.^[55] Presented with a formal annexation proposal from Texas minister Memucan Hunt, Jr. in August 1837, Van Buren summarily rejected it.^[56]

Annexation resolutions presented separately in each house of Congress were either soundly defeated or tabled through filibustering. After the election of Mirabeau B. Lamar in 1838, as president of the Republic of Texas and opponent of annexation, withdrew his offer due to these failures.^[57]

Texans were at an annexation impasse when John Tyler entered the White House in 1841.^[58]

John Tyler Administration

William Henry Harrison defeated President Martin Van Buren in the 1840 general election. Upon Harrison's death shortly after his inauguration, Vice-President John Tyler assumed the presidency.^[59] President Tyler was expelled from the Whig party in 1841 for repeatedly vetoing their domestic finance legislation. Tyler, isolated and outside the two-party mainstream, turned to foreign affairs to salvage his presidency, aligning himself with a southern states' rights faction that shared his fervent slavery expansionist views.^[60]

In his first address to Congress in special session on June 1, 1841, Tyler set the stage for Texas annexation by announcing his intention to pursue an expansionist agenda so as to preserve the balance between state and national authority and to protect American institutions, including slavery, so as to avoid sectional conflict.^[61]

US President John Tyler, champion of Texas annexation and the "diffusion" theory: "Texas was the great scheme that occupied me."

Tyler's closest advisors counseled him that obtaining Texas would assure him a second term in the White House ^[62] and it became a deeply personal obsession for the president who viewed Texas annexation as the "primary objective of his administration".^[63] Tyler delayed direct action on Texas to work closely with his Secretary of State Daniel Webster on other pressing diplomatic initiatives.^[64]

With the Webster-Ashburton Treaty ratified in 1843, Tyler was ready to make the Texas his "top priority".^[65] Congressman Thomas W. Gilmer of Virginia was authorized by the administration to make the case for annexation to the American electorate. In a widely circulated open letter, understood as an announcement of executive branch's designs for Texas, Gilmer described Texas as a panacea for North-South conflict and an economic boon to all commercial interests. The slavery issue, however divisive, would be left for the states to decide as per the US Constitution. Domestic tranquility and national security, Tyler argued, would result from an annexed Texas; a Texas left outside US jurisdiction would imperial the Union.^[66] Tyler adroitly arranged the resignation of his anti-annexationist Secretary of State Daniel Webster, and on June 23, 1843, filled the post with Abel P. Upshur, a Virginia states' rights champion and ardent proponent of Texas annexation. This shift in cabinet appointment signaled Tyler's intent to aggressively pursue Texas annexation.^[67]

Tyler-Upshur-Calhoun Campaign for Texas

President John Tyler's Secretaries of State Abel P. Upshur (left) and John C. Calhoun, who in tandem, schemed to deliver the Tyler-Texas annexation treaty on a pro-southern agenda.

In late September 1843, in an effort to cultivate public support for Texas, Secretary Upshur dispatched a letter to his US minister to London Edward Everett, conveying his displeasure with Britain's global anti-slavery posture, and warning their government that forays into Texas affairs would be regarded as "tantamount to direct interference 'with the established institutions of the United States'".^[68] In a breach of diplomatic norms, Upsher leaked the communique to the press in order to inflame popular Anglophobic sentiments among American citizens.^[69]

In the spring of 1843, the Tyler administration had sent executive agent Duff Green to Europe to gather intelligence and arrange territorial treaty talks with Great Britain regarding Oregon; he also worked with American minister to France, Lewis Cass, to thwart efforts by major European powers to suppress the maritime slave trade.^[70]

Green, as secret envoy, alleged in executive reports reaching Secretary Upshur in July 1843, the he had discovered a "loan plot" by American abolitionists, in league with Lord Aberdeen, British Foreign Secretary, to provide funds to the Lone Star Republic in exchange for emancipating their slaves.^[71] Minister to London Everett was charged with determining the substance of these confidential reports alleging a Texas plot. His investigations, including personal interviews with Lord Aberdeen, concluded that British interest in abolitionist intrigues was weak, contradicting Secretary of State Upshur's conviction that Great Britain was manipulating Texas.^[72]

Though unsubstantiated, Green's unofficial intelligence so alarmed Tyler that he requested verification from his US minister in Mexico, Waddy Thompson.^[73] John C. Calhoun, a South Carolina pro-slavery extremist^[74] counseled Secretary of State Upshur that British designs on American slavery were real and required immediate action to preempt a takeover of Texas by Great Britain. When Tyler confirmed in September that the British Foreign Secretary Aberdeen had encouraged détente between Mexico and Texas, allegedly pressing Mexico to maneuver Texas towards emancipation of its slaves, Tyler acted at once.^[75][76] On September 18, 1843, in consultation with Secretary Upshur, he ordered secret talks opened with Texas Minister to the United States Isaac Van Zandt to negotiate the annexation of Texas.^[77] Face-to-face negotiations commenced on October 16, 1843.^[78]

Texas-Mexico-Great Britain Negotiations

Sam Houston, President of the Lone Star Republic, who consented to opening negotiations with the Tyler administration in 1843.

James Pinckney Henderson, chief Texas envoy in the Tyler-Texas annexation treaty negotiations.^[1]

By the summer of 1843, Sam Houston's Texas administration had returned to negotiations with the Mexican government to consider a rapprochement that would permit Texas self-governance as a state of Mexico, with Great Britain acting as mediator.^[79][80]

Texas officials were compelled by the fact that, other than the Gilmer letter, the Tyler administration appeared unequipped to mount an effective campaign for Texas annexation.^[81] With the 1844 general election in the United States approaching, the leadership in both the Democratic and Whig parties remained unequivocally anti-Texas. ^[82]

Texas-Mexico treaty options under consideration included a self-governing Texas ensconced within Mexico's borders, or, alternatively, an independent republic, with a caveat that Texans implement emancipation for its slaves upon recognition.^[83]

Van Zandt, personally favoring annexation, was not authorized to entertain any overtures from the US government on the subject of annexation. Texas officials were at the moment deeply engaged in exploring settlements with Mexico diplomats, facilitated by Great Britain. Texas' predominant concern was not British interference with the institution of slavery - English diplomats had not alluded to the issue- but to a resumption of hostilities with Mexico.^[84]

Secretary of State Upshur vigorously courted Texas diplomats to begin annexation talks, finally dispatching an appeal to President Sam Houston in January 1845. In it, he assured Houston that, in contrast to previous attempts, the political climate in the United States, including sections of the North, was amenable to Texas statehood, and a two-thirds majority in Senate would be obtainable to ratify a Texas treaty.^[85]

Texans were loath to pursue a US-Texas treaty, as it might trigger a full scale military retaliation by Mexico when the document was made public. If ratification of the annexation measure stalled in the US Senate, the Lone Star Republic would face a war alone against Mexico, without possessing a commitment in writing that President Tyler would send military forces to their aid. This was the crux of the problem.^[86] Whereas only Congress could declare war, the Tyler administration would be exceeding his constitutional executive authority. When Secretary Upshur provided a verbal assurance of a military defense, President Houston, responding to urgent calls for annexation from the Texas Congress of December 1843, authorized the opening of annexation negotiations.^[87]

The US-Texas Treaty Negotiations

As Secretary Abel P. Upshur accelerated the secret treaty discussions, Mexican diplomatic circles became aware that US-Texas talks were taking place. Mexican minister to the US Juan Almonte confronted Upshur with these reports, warning him that if Congress sanctioned a treaty of annexation, Mexico would break diplomatic ties and immediately declare war.^[88] Secretary Upshur evaded and dismissed the charges, and pressed forward with the negotiations.^[89] Tyler, in his annual address to Congress in December 1844, maintained his silence on the secret treaty, so as not to damage relations with the wary Texas diplomats.^[90] Throughout, Tyler did his utmost to keep the negotiations secret, making no public reference to his administration's singleminded quest for Texas.^[91]

In addition to pressing forward with Texas diplomats, Upshur was secretly lobbying US Senators to gain support for annexation, providing lawmakers with persuasive arguments linking Texas acquisition to national security and domestic peace. By early 1844, Upshur was able to assure Texas officials that 40 of the 52 members of the Senate were pledged to ratify the Tyler-Texas treaty, enough to secure a two-thirds majority required for passage.^[92]

The treaty was in its final stages when the chief architects the of the Tyler-Texas treaty Secretary Upshur and Secretary of the Navy Thomas W. Gilmer, died in a tragic accident aboard the USS Princeton on February 28, 1844, just a day after achieving a preliminary treaty draft agreement with the Texas Republic.^[93] The Princeton disaster proved a major setback for Texas annexation, in that Tyler expected Secretary Upshur to elicit critical support from Whig and Democratic Senators during the upcoming treaty ratification process.^[94]

Tyler selected John C. Calhoun to replace Upshur as Secretary of State and to finalize the treaty with Texas. The choice of Calhoun, a most highly regarded American statesmen,^[95] risked introducing a politically polarizing element into the Texas debates, but Tyler prized him as a strong advocate of annexation.^[96][97]

Robert J. Walker and the "Safety-Valve"

US Senator of Mississippi, Robert J. Walker, author of the widely read pro-Texas annexation "Letter of Mr. Walker, of Mississippi, relative to the annexation of Texas: in reply to the call of the people of Carroll County, Kentucky, to communicate his views on that subject in January, 1844. His letter "articulated most forcefully" the textbook arguments for annexation.^[2]

With the Tyler-Upshur secret annexation negotiations with Texas near consummation, Senator Robert J. Walkerr of Mississippi, a key Tyler ally, issued a widely distributed and highly influential letter, reproduced as a pamphlet, making the case for the Lone Star Republic's immediate annexation.^[98] In it, Walker argued that Texas could be acquired by Congress in a number of ways – all constitutional – and that the moral authority to do so was based on the precepts for territorial expansion established by Jefferson and Madison, and promulgated as doctrine by James Monroe in 1823.^[99]

Senator Walker's polemic offered analysis on the significance of Texas with respect to slavery and race. He envisioned Texas as a corridor through which both free and enslaved African-Americans could be "diffused" southward in a gradual exodus that would ultimately supply labor to the Central American tropics, and in time, empty the United States of its slave population.^[100]

The "safety-valve" theory "appealed to the racial fears of northern whites" who dreaded the prospect of absorbing emancipated slaves into their communities in the event that the institution of slavery collapsed in the South.^[101] This scheme for racial cleansing was consistent, on a pragmatic level, with colonization proposals for blacks, pursued by a number of American presidents, from Jefferson to Lincoln.^[102] Walker bolstered his position by raising national security concerns, warning that in the event annexation failed, imperialist Great Britain would maneuver the Republic of Texas into emancipating its slaves, forecasting a dangerous destabilizing influence on southwestern slaveholding states. The pamphlet characterized abolitionists as traitors who conspired with the British to overthrow the United States.^[103][104]

A variation of the Tyler's "diffusion" theory, it played on economic fears in a period when slave-based staple crop markets had not yet recovered from the Panic of 1837. The Texas "escape route" conceived by Walker promised to increase demand for slaves in fertile cotton growing regions of Texas, as well as the monetary value of slaves. Cash poor plantation owners in the older eastern South were promised a market for superfluous slaves at a profit.^[105] Texas annexation, wrote Walker, would eliminate all these dangers and "fortify the whole Union."^[106]

Walker's polemic brought forth strident demands for Texas from pro-slavery expansionists in the South; in the North, it allowed anti-slavery expansionists to embrace Texas without appearing to be aligned with pro-slavery extremists.^[107]

Walker's assumptions and analysis "shaped and framed the debates on annexation but his premises went largely unchallenged among the press and public.^[108]

Tyler-Texas Treaty and the Election of 1844

The Tyler-Texas treaty, signed on April 12, 1844 was framed so as to induct Texas into the Union as a territory, following constitutional protocols. To wit, Texas would cede all its public lands to the United States, and the federal government would assume all its bonded debt, up to $10 million. The boundaries of the Texas territory were left unspecified.^[109] Four new states could ultimately be carved from the former republic – three of them likely to become slave states.^[110] Any allusion to slavery was omitted from the document so as not to antagonize anti-slavery sentiments during Senate debates, but providing for the "preservation of all [Texas] property as secured in our domestic institutions." ^[111]

President John Tyler's Secretary of the Treasury John C. Spencer (left) and Secretary of War Williams Wilkins; Wilkins defended Tyler's assertive stance on Texas annexation; Spencer resigned due to strict constructionist scruples on violations of the separation of powers.

Upon the signing of the treaty, Tyler complied with the Texans demand for military and naval protection, deploying troops to Fort Jesup in Louisiana and a fleet of warships to the Gulf of Mexico.^[112] In the event that the Senate failed to pass the treaty, Tyler promised the Texas diplomats that he would officially exhort both houses of Congress to establish Texas as a state of the Union upon provisions authorized in the US Constitution^[113] Tyler's cabinet was split on the adminsitration's handling of the Texas agreement. Secretary of War William Wilkins praised the terms of annexation publicly, touting the economic and geostrategic benefits with relation to Great Britain.^[114] Secretary of the Treasury John C. Spencer, was alarmed at the constitutional implications Tyler's application of military force without congressional approval, a violation of the separation of powers. Refusing to transfer contingency funds for the US Navy mobilization, he resigned.^[115]

Tyler submitted his Texas-US treaty for annexation to the US Senate, delivered April 22, 1844, where a two-thirds majority was required for ratification.^[116][117] Secretary of State John C. Calhoun of South Carolina (assuming his post March 29, 1844)^[118] included a document known as the Packenham Letter with the Tyler bill that was calculated to inject a sense of crisis in Southern Democrats of the Deep South.^[119] In it, he characterized slavery as a social blessing and the acquisition of Texas as an emergency measure necessary to safeguard the "peculiar institution" in the United States.^[120] In doing so, Tyler and Calhoun sought to unite the South in a crusade that would present the North with an ultimatum: support Texas annexation or lose the South.^[121]

The leading presidential hopefuls of both political parties, Democrat Martin Van Buren, and Whig Henry Clay, publicly denounced the treaty. Texas annexation and the reoccupation of Oregon territory emerged as the central issues in the 1844 general election.^[122]

Tyler and the Polk Presidential Nomination

James K. Polk of Tennessee, president-elect of the United States during the joint house Texas treaty debates.

President Tyler expected that his treaty would be debated secretly in Senate executive session.^[123] Less than a week after debates opened, the treaty, its associated internal correspondence and the Packenham letter were leaked to the public. The nature of the Tyler-Texas negotiations caused a national outcry in that "the documents appeared to verify that the sole objective of Texas annexation was the preservation of slavery".^[124] A mobilization of anti-annexation forces in the North strengthened both major parties hostility to the Texas treaty.^[125] Tyler moved to quickly organize a third-party in hopes of inducing the Democrats to embrace a pro-expansionist platform.^[126] Nominated for a second term, Tyler's pro-Texas campaign threatened to siphon off Democratic voters who strongly supported the annexation of Texas. Democratic party disunity would put Henry Clay in the White House, a staunchly anti-Texas Whig.^[127]

Pro-annexationist delegates among southern Democrats, with assistance from a number of northern delegates, succeeded in ousting the anti-expansionist presidential candidate Martin Van Buren at their convention, nominating the pro-expansionist champion of Manifest Destiny, James K. Polk of Tennessee. Polk would unify his party under the banner of Texas and Oregon acquisition.^[128]

Tyler-Texas Treaty Defeat in the Senate

As a treaty document with a foreign nation, the Tyler-Texas annexation treaty required a two-thirds majority in the Senate for passage. The election campaign had hardened partisan positions on Texas among Democrats.^[129] When the Senate voted on the measure, June 8, 1844, it failed by a two-thirds majority. The vote was largely along party lines: Whigs had opposed it almost unnanimously (27-1), while Democrats split, but overwhelmingly in favor (15-8).^[130]

Tyler had ancipated that the measure would fail, due largely to the devisive effects of Secretary Calhoun's Packenham letter.^[131] Undeterred, he formally asked the House of Representatives to consider other constitutional means to authorize passage of the treaty. Congress adjourned before debating the matter.^[132]

In August 1844, in the midst of the election campaign for presidient, Tyler withdrew from the race. The Democratic party was by then uneqivocally committed to a Texas annexation and Tyler, assured by Polk's envoys that as president he would effect Texas annexation, urged his supporters to cast their votes for the Democratic Party.^[133]

Democrat James K. Polk narrowly defeated Whig Henry Clay in the November election.^[134]

Congressional Debate on the Joint House measure

The same Senate that had rejected the Tyler-Calhoun treaty by a margin of 2:1 in June 1844 ^[135] reassembled in December 1844 in short (lame-duck) session.^[136] (Though pro-annexation Democrats had made gains in the fall congressional races, those legislators – the 29th Congress – would not assume office until March 1845.)^[137]

The victorious Democrats were poised to acquire Texas under the leadership of their president-elect James K. Polk, the pro-Texas annexation champion of Manifest Destiny,^[138] rather than on the pro-slavery agenda favored by the Tyler-Calhoun expansionists.^[139]

Lame-duck President John Tyler, persisting in his efforts to annex Texas in the final months of his administration, wished to avoid another overwhelming Senate rejection of his treaty.^[140] In his annual address to Congress on December 4, he declared the Polk victory a mandate for Texas annexation ^[141] and proposed that congress adopt a joint resolution procedure by which simple majorities in each house secure ratification for the Tyler treaty.^[142] This method would obviate the constitutional 2/3 majority rule necessary to pass international treaties in the Senate.^[143] Bringing the House of Representatives into the equation boded well for Texas annexation, as the pro-annexation Democratic Party possessed nearly a 2:1 majority in that chamber.^[144][145]

By resubmitting the discredited treaty through a House-sponsored bill, the Tyler administration reignited sectional hostilities over Texas admission.^[146]

Both northern Democrat and southern Whig Congressmen had been bewildered by local political agitation in their home states during the 1844 presidential campaigns.^[147] Now, Democratic legislators found themselves vulnerable to charges of appeasement to their southern wing if they capitulated to Tyler's slavery expansion provisions. On the other hand, Manifest Destiny enthusiasm in the north placed politicians under pressure to admit Texas immediately to the Union.^[148]

Constitutional objections were raised in House debates as to whether both houses of Congress could constitutionally authorize admission of territories, rather than states. Moreover, if the Republic of Texas, a nation in its own right, was admitted as a state, its territorial boundaries, property relations (including slave property), debts and public lands would require a Senate ratified treaty.^[149]

Democrats were particularly uneasy about shouldering the United States with $10 million in Texas debt, resenting the deluge of speculators, who, in possession of inflated Texas bonds, lobbied Congress in favor of the Texas House bill.^[150]

House Democrats, at an impasse, relinquished the legislative initiative to the southern Whigs.^[151]

Brown-Foster House Amendment

Anti-Texas Whig legislators had lost more than the White House in the general election of 1844. In the southern states of Tennessee and Georgia, Whig strongholds in the 1840 general election, voter support dropped precipitously due to the pro-annexation excitement in the Deep South – and where Henry Clay had lost every state to James K. Polk.^[152]

Northern Whig's uncompromising hostility to slavery expansion increasingly characterized the party, and southern members, by association, had suffered from charges of being "soft on Texas, therefore soft on slavery" by Southern Democrats.^[153] Facing congressional and gubernatorial races in 1845 in their home states, a number of Southern Whigs sought to erase that impression with respect to the Tyler-Texas bill.^[154][155]

Southern Whig legislators in the House, including Representative Milton Brown and Senator Ephraim Foster, both of Tennessee, and Representative Alexander Stephens of Georgia ^[156] collaborated to introduce a House amendment on January 13, 1845 ^[157] that was designed to enhance slaveowner gains in Texas beyond those offered by the Democrat sponsored Tyler-Calhoun treaty bill.^[158]

The legislation proposed to recognize Texas as a slave state which would retain all its vast public lands, as well as its bonded debt accrued since 1836. Furthermore, the Brown amendment would delegate to the US government the responsibility to negotiate the disputed Texas-Mexico boundary. The issue was a critical one, as the size of Texas would be immensely increased if the international border was set at the Rio Grande River, with its headwaters in the Rocky Mountains, rather than the traditionally recognized boundary at the Nueces River, 100 miles to the north.^[159]

While the Tyler-Calhoun treaty provided for the organization of a total of four states from the Texas lands – three likely to qualify as slave states – Brown's plan would permit Texas state lawmakers to configure a total of five states from its western region, south of the 36°30' Missouri Compromise line, each pre-authorized to permit slavery upon statehood, if Texas designated them as such.^[160]

Politically, the Brown amendment was designed to portray Southern Whigs as "even more ardent champions of slavery and the South, than southern Democrats."^[161] The bill also served to distinguish themselves from their northern Whig colleagues who cast the controversy, as Calhoun did, in strictly pro- versus anti-slavery terms.^[162]

While almost all Northern Whigs spurned Brown's amendment, the Democrats quickly co-opted the legislation, providing the votes necessary to attach the proviso to Tyler's joint resolution, passing 118-101.^[163] Southern Democrats supported the bill almost unanimously (59-1), while Northern Democrats split strongly in favor (50-30). Eight of eighteen Southern Whigs cast their votes in favor. Northern Whigs unanimously rejected it.^[164] The House proceeded to approve the amended Texas treaty 120-98 on January 25, 1845.^[165] in which party affiliation prevailed over sectional allegiance.^[166] The bill was forwarded the same day to the Senate for debate.

Benton Senate Compromise

Senator Thomas Hart Benton of Missouri

By early March 1845, when the Senate began to debate the Brown amended Tyler treaty and passage seemed unlikely, as support was "perishing".^[167] The partisan alignments in the Senate were near parity, 28-24, slightly in favor of the Whigs.^[168] The Senate Democrats would require undivided support among their colleagues, and three or more Whigs who would be willing to cross party lines to pass the House amended treaty. The fact that Senator Foster had drafted the House amendment under consideration improved Senate Democrat prospects to pass the measure.^[169]

Thomas Hart Benton, anti-annexation Senator from Missouri, a border slave state, had been the only Southern Democrat to vote against the Tyler Texas measure in June 1844.^[170][171] His original proposal for an annexed Texas had embodied a national compromise, whereby Texas would be divided in two, half slave-soil and half free-soil.^[172] As pro-annexation sentiment grew in his home state, Benton retreated from this compromise offer.^[173] By February 5, 1845, in the early debates on the Brown amended House bill, he advanced an alternative resolution that, unlike the Brown scenario, made no reference whatsoever to the ultimate free-slave apportionment for an annexed Texas and simply called for five bipartisan commissioners to resolve border disputes with Texas and Mexico and set conditions for the Lone Star Republic's acquisition by the United States.^[174]

The Benton proposal was intended to calm his parties northern anti-slavery wing, who wished to eliminate the Tyler-Calhoun treaty altogether, as it had been negotiated on behalf of the slavery expansionists, and allow the decision to devolve upon the soon to be inaugurated Democratic Party president-elect Polk.^[175] President elect Polk had expressed his ardent wish that Texas annexation be accomplished before he entered Washington D.C. in advance of his inauguration of March 4, 1845, the same day Congress would end its session.^[176] With his arrival in the capitol, he discovered the Benton and Brown factions in the Senate "paralyzed" over the Texas annexation legislation.^[177] On the advice of his soon to be Secretary of the Treasury Robert J. Walker, Polk urged Senate Democrats to unite under a dual resolution that would include both the Benton and Brown versions of annexation, leaving enactment of the legislation to Polk's discretion when he assumed the presidency.^[178]

James K. Polk, in private and separate talks with supporters of both the Brown and Benton plans, left each side with the "impression he would administer their [respective] policy. Polk meant what he said to Southerners and meant to appear friendly to the Van Burenite faction." ^[179] Polk's handling of the matter had the effect of uniting Senate northern Democrats in favor of the dual alternative treaty bill.^[180]

On February 27, 1845, less than a week before Polk's inauguration, the Senate voted 27-25 to admit Texas, based on the Tyler protocols of simple majority passage. All twenty-four Democrats voted for the measure, joined by three southern Whigs.^[181] Benton and his allies were assured that Polk would act to establish the eastern portion of Texas as a slave state; the western section was to remain unorganized territory, not committed to slavery. On this understanding, the northern Democrats had conceded to vote for the dichotomous bill.^[182]

The next day, in an almost strict party line vote the Benton-Milton measure was passed in the Democrat-controlled House of Representatives.^[183] President John Tyler signed the bill the following day, March 1, 1845.^[184]

Tyler's Preemption of Texas Annexation

Senate and house legislators who had favored Benton's renegotiated version of the Texas annexation bill had been assured that President Tyler would sign the joint house measure, but leave its implementation to the incoming Polk administration.^[186]

During his last day in office, President Tyler, with the urging of his Secretary of State Calhoun ^[187] decided to act decisively to improve the odds for the immediate annexation of Texas. On March 3, 1845, with his cabinets assent, he dispatched an offer of annexation to the Republic of Texas by courier, exclusively under the terms of the Brown-Foster option of the joint house measure.^[188] Secretary Calhoun apprized president-elect Polk of the action, who demurred without comment.^[189][190]

Tyler justified his preemptive move on the grounds that Polk was likely to come under pressure to abandon immediate annexation and reopen negotiations under the Benton alternative.^[191]

Anson Jones last president of the Lone Star Republic, presides over the raising of the American flag over the new state of Texas.

Anson Jones, last president of the Lone Star Republic prior to Texas statehood.

When President Polk entered the White House the following day, March 4, 1845, he was in a position to recall Tyler's dispatch to Texas and reverse his decision. On March 10, after conferring with his cabinet, Polk upheld Tyler's action and allowed the courier to proceed with the offer of immediate annexation to Texas.^[192] The only modification was to exhort Texans to accept the annexation terms unconditionally.^[193] Polk's decision was based on his concern that a protracted negotiation by US commissioners would expose annexation efforts to foreign intrigue and interference.^[194]

While President Polk kept his annexation endeavors confidential, Senators passed a resolution requesting formal disclosure of the administration's Texas policy. Polk stalled, and when the Senate special session had adjourned on March 20, 1845, no names for US commissioners to Texas had been submitted by the White House. Polk denied charges from Senator Benton that he had misled him on his intention to support the new negotiations option, declaring "if any such pledges were made, it was in a total misconception of what I said or meant."^[195]

A Texas annexation convention debated the Tyler-Polk annexation offer and almost unanimously passed it on July 4, 1845. President James K. Polk signed the legislation making the former Lone Star Republic a state of the Union on December 29, 1845.^[196] Texas formally relinquished its sovereignty to the United States on February 14, 1846.^[197]

Border disputes

The joint resolution and ordinance of annexation have no language specifying the boundaries of Texas, but only refer in general terms to "the territory properly included within, and rightfully belonging to the Republic of Texas", and state that the new State of Texas is to be formed "subject to the adjustment by this [U.S.] government of all questions of boundary that may arise with other governments."

Proposals for Texas north and west boundaries in 1850 debate

According to George Lockhart Rives, "That treaty had been expressly so framed as to leave the boundaries of Texas undefined, and the joint resolution of the following winter was drawn in the same manner. It was hoped that this might open the way to a negotiation, in the course of which the whole subject of the boundaries of Mexico, from the Gulf to the Pacific, might be reconsidered, but these hopes came to nothing."^[198]

There was an ongoing border dispute between the Republic of Texas and Mexico prior to annexation. Texas claimed the Rio Grande as its border, while Mexico maintained that it was the Nueces River and did not recognize Texan independence. President James K. Polk ordered General Zachary Taylor to garrison the southern border of Texas, as defined by the former Republic. Taylor moved into Texas, ignoring Mexican demands to withdraw, and marched as far south as the Rio Grande, where he began to build a fort near the river's mouth on the Gulf of Mexico. The Mexican government regarded this action as a violation of its sovereignty.

Though the Republic of Texas claimed the Rio Grande as its southern and western border, it never controlled what is now New Mexico. The failed Texas Santa Fe Expedition of 1841 was its only attempt to take that territory. El Paso was only taken under Texas governance by Robert Neighbors in 1850, over four years after annexation; he was not welcomed in New Mexico.^[199] Texas continued to claim New Mexico as far as the Rio Grande, supported by the rest of the South, and opposed by the North and by New Mexico itself, until agreeing to today's boundary in the Compromise of 1850.

Joint Resolution Precedent and Legacy: Hawaii

A page of the Ku'e Petitions that prevented Hawaii from being annexed by US Senate treaty.

On August 12, 1898, the flag of the Republic of Hawaii over ‘Iolani Palace was lowered to raise the United States flag to signify annexation.

The formal controversy over the legality of the annexation of Texas stems from the fact that Congress approved the annexation of Texas as a state, rather than a territory, with simple majorities in each house, instead of annexing the land by Senate treaty, as was done with Native American lands.

Tyler's extralegal joint resolution maneuver in 1844 exceeded strict constructionist precepts, but was passed by Congress in 1845 as part of a compromise bill. The success of the joint house Texas annexation set a precedent that would be applied to Hawaii's annexation in 1897.^[200]

Lame-duck Republican President Benjamin Harrison (1889–1893) attempted, in 1893, to annex Hawaii through Senate treaty. When this failed, he was asked to consider the Tyler joint house precedent; he declined. Democratic President Grover Cleveland (1893–1897) did not pursue the annexation of Hawaii. When President William McKinley took office in 1897, he quickly revived expectations among territorial expansionists when he resubmitted legislation to acquire Hawaii. When the two-thirds Senate support was not forthcoming, committees in the House and Senate explicitly invoked the Tyler precedent for the joint house resolution, which was successfully applied to approve the annexation of Hawaii in July 1898.^[201]

See also

• Adams-Onís Treaty
• History of Texas
• Mexican-American War
• Republic of Texas
• Texas Revolution

Notes

References

Cited in footnotes

Secondary sources

v t e Territorial expansion of the United States Concept: Manifest destiny Thirteen Colonies (1776) Treaty of Paris (1783) Louisiana Purchase (1803) Red River Cession (1818) Adams–Onís Treaty (1819) Texas Annexation (1845) Oregon Treaty (1846) Mexican Cession (1848) Gadsden Purchase (1853) Guano Islands Act (1856) Alaska Purchase (1867) Annexation of Hawaii (1898) Treaty of Paris (1898) Treaty of Berlin (1899) Treaty of Cession of Tutuila (1900) Treaty of Cession of Manuʻa (1904) Treaty of the Danish West Indies (1917)