ST. LOUIS, April 13, 1886.
Dear Brother: Your letter was duly received, and the
quotation from Corwin's speech will be all I want. I remember the fact that
when General Taylor's army marched from Corpus Christi, Texas, to Matamoras, it
was generally noted that what few people were encountered south of the Nueces
were all Mexicans. Their (Mexican) maps made Texas cease at that line, and our
only title to that part of the country was Texas' claim to the Rio Grande as
the boundary, so that the army officers, notably General Taylor, always
ridiculed the action of the President and Congress—“whereas American blood has
been shed on American soil," etc., etc.
Nevertheless war did
exist and did continue till we had acquired California, New Mexico, etc. Our
payment to Mexico of $15,000,000 at the end of the war was an act of
generosity, and made our title one of purchase rather than conquest. Mexico
never could have developed California as we did, and without California we
could not have filled up the intervening space. . . .
SOURCE: Rachel
Sherman Thorndike, Editor, The Sherman Letters: Correspondence Between
General and Senator Sherman from 1837 to 1891, p. 372
No comments:
Post a Comment