SEPT. 8, 1850.
Texas has not a particle of rightful claim to all the north-western region this bill contends for; but she has passed a law claiming it, and threatens to make war upon the Union if her claim is not allowed. An extra session of her legislature is now in being. Her governor recommends that she should raise and equipmen to march to Santa Fé, and subdue the people there to her control (who are Mexicans, and who hate her); and the legislature is now preparing means to carry, or rather to seem to carry, their threats into execution. Our great Presidency-seekers, Webster, Cass, Clay, &c., wish to succumb to her claims. They cannot afford to offend any party at the South, because they want the votes of the South. The South wants Texas to have all this territory, because Texas is one of the most atrocious proslavery States in the Union; and, if any part of the territory is set off to New Mexico, they say it may eventually be free. Those who think their party will gain something by yielding to this false claim of Texas go for it with their leaders. Texas would not relinquish an inch of it but for money: therefore it is proposed to give her ten millions of dollars to buy her off. It is the most outrageous piece of swindling ever practised. In reality, we give her, by this boundary, a hundred thousand more square miles than she owns, and ten millions of dollars besides. President Taylor meant to maintain the rights of the country; and, if he had lived, we should have tried strength with the miserable braggarts of Texas: but, since his death, the whole policy of the Administration is changed, and with that, owing to their power and patronage, Congress is demoralized, and the bill has passed, and the Territories have governments without any prohibition of slavery. California is admitted as a free State; and that is all the compensation we have.
I am sick at heart, and disgusted at the wickedness of men.
SOURCE: Mary Tyler Peabody Mann, Life of Horace Mann, p. 322-3
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