Editor’s note: this article is a selection from Chapter 16 of Cronyism: Liberty versus Power in Early America: “Resurrecting the American System: The Growth of Imperialism.”
The Texas Question
Similar to the Louisiana Purchase, Texas annexation drastically increased the United States’ size and thereby exploded the American Empire’s power. Several interests supported annexation. First, debt holders wanted Congress to bail out the Texas government. Second, land speculators desired a US monopoly over cotton. Lastly, slave owners wanted to make it harder for fugitive slaves to escape. Further-more, annexation and the related issue of slavery’s expansion caused Van Buren and Benton to momentously split from Jackson and Polk, corrupting the libertarian Democratic Party into increasingly bellicose and expansionist policies.
Despite the Missouri Compromise, by the early 1830s, slavery had returned to the political realm. The British abolitionist movement and the 1833 gradual compensated emancipation in the West Indies caused this momentous return. Most notably, Massachusetts’ William Lloyd Garrison founded The Liberator newspaper in 1831 and helped organize the American Anti-Slavery Society in 1833. Garrison declared slavery a moral sin, urging immediate abolition without any compensation to the owners whatsoever. He astutely recognized that the Constitution protected slavery through its crony fugitive slave and three-fifths representation clauses. As a result, he advocated northern secession to induce a massive hemorrhaging of southern slaves and peacefully end the practice. Garrison and William Cullen Bryant informally worked with followers of the British abolitionist Richard Cobden, emphasizing the similarities between free trade and free men as well as protectionism and slavery. The activities of the libertarian Garrison shook up the nation.
It is extremely important to understand that the abolitionist movement was still a very small, albeit extremely vocal, minority. Yankees, descendants of the New England Puritans, filled the abolitionists’ ranks. These pietists wanted to stamp out sin, which also included restricting Catholic immigration, suspending Sunday mail delivery, prohibiting alcohol, and controlling schools. Most northerners did not share the Yankee’s abolitionist sentiments or care about the plight of blacks, and the French traveler Alexis de Tocqueville actually remarked that northern prejudice was stronger than southern. To the extent the average northerner fought slavery, he fought its westward extension to prevent the three-fifths clause from taking effect and to stop black slaves from competing with white yeomen. Northerners did not want to interfere with slavery in the southern states or increase their small black population, because freed slaves would compete with white workers and lead to an integrated society. Instead, they embraced colonizing the freed slaves.
Equally crucial, the South rapidly changed its sentiments. The death in 1833 of John Randolph, who manumitted his slaves in his will, symbolically marked the end of an era. Paranoid southerners increasingly worried that a small group of vocal abolitionists threatened their property: the “slavery scare” that Antifederalists and Old Republicans had conjured up in years past to discourage federal aggrandizement now seemed like a frightening possibility. As a result, the region suffocated antislavery sentiments, tightened slavery regulations, and transitioned from the “necessary evil” regret to the “positive good” argument. In March 1833, the Richmond Whig wrote that the anti-slavery agitators were doing more to “alienate the south from their northern brethren, than the tariff or any or all political causes, that we complain about.” The South viewed slavery as an issue separate from tariffs, but still one that could cause a massive problem. Soon enough, the philosophy of South Carolina’s Calhoun, who proclaimed that the “great institution” of slavery provided “the most safe and stable basis for free institutions in the world,” dominated southern sentiments.
Even with changing regional views, to most Americans, the important political issues concerned the American System. The average politician believed slavery agitation by Yankee abolitionists and southern sectionalists could wreck the Whig and Democratic Parties, making it harder to achieve their goals. Consequently, Democrats and Whigs minimized debate. Some vocal holdouts in Massachusetts existed, such as John Quincy Adams, who adopted anti-slavery principles after his humiliating 1828 defeat. But Adams’ actions starkly contrasted with those of the Boston Associates, particularly Abbott Lawrence and their political lackey Webster. The abolitionist emphasis on slavery and calls for secession horrified these men, because their large textile companies depended on cheap slave cotton.
The Democrats led the suppression of slavery debates, because they controlled Congress and wanted to dismantle the American System. In August 1835, the American Anti-Slavery Society flooded the postal system with abolitionist literature. The Charleston postmaster censored the mail, and Postmaster General Amos Kendall allowed this illegal censorship of free speech. Later that year, Jackson, an ardent slave owner, requested that Congress prohibit the distribution of such publications. When the House narrowly refused, Kendall continued to allow subordinates to decide on the delivery of antislavery literature. However, Congress did subsequently institute a “gag rule” tabling various anti-slavery petitions. Kendall’s decision earned the ire of William Leggett, who criticized him for privileging slave owners and restricting free speech. The Washington Globe promptly attacked Leggett and Democrats cast the libertarian out of the party. The experience turned Leggett into a dedicated opponent of slavery and an advocate of northern secession. In addition, Vice President Van Buren and Senator Benton uneasily watched the unfolding proslavery policies. Although they ultimately agreed with the decisions, their acquiescence would not last forever.
The massive elephant in the room, Texas, threatened to amplify the slavery question and destroy the Jacksonians’ classical liberal foreign policy. Americans increasingly brought their slaves to settle in Texas, and annexing the region threatened to resurrect the western slavery controversy and potentially spark war with Mexico. In 1829, when Jackson authorized Van Buren to purchase the region for up to $5 million, Van Buren delayed. By the mid-1830s, Jackson had cooled on the question, realizing that amplifying Texas could sabotage Van Buren’s election and their goal to end the American System. In fact, when Texas seceded from Mexico in 1835, Jackson astutely turned down their pleas for aid. This continued after Texas became an independent republic in 1836 and declared ownership down to the Rio Grande River, land Texans never homesteaded. Jackson would only recognize the young republic if Congress requested it, instead preferring that Mexico or a European power do it first. Unfortunately, despite efforts by Congressman Churchill Cambreleng and Senator Silas Wright, in March 1837, Congress passed resolutions favoring recognition and Jackson appointed a representative to the country.
Fortunately, the noninterventionist President Van Buren rebuffed Texas President Sam Houston’s annexation pleas, insisting that the Constitution did not authorize the acquisition of independent countries. Van Buren might have been able hold the line in the early 1840s if he had won reelection. Instead, Tyler wanted to achieve presidential glory by acquiring Texas. After the Whigs resigned from the cabinet en masse, save for Secretary of State Webster, Tyler surrounded himself with a pro-annexation group of advisors. They included Virginia judge Nathaniel Beverly Tucker, his new Secretary of the Navy Abel Upshur of Virginia (who eventually became secretary of state), Massachusetts’ Congressman Caleb Cushing (whom Tyler unsuccessfully tried to appoint treasury secretary three times), and Virginia congressmen Henry Wise and Thomas Gilmer (who later served as secretary of the Navy). Like other annexationists, these advisors had a vested interest in the question.
The holders of Texas debt formed the first pro-annexation group. During its war for independence, Texas sold bonds at highly depreciated rates. In the early 1840s, the debt sold for less than 10 percent of its face value, standing at $10 million. Speculators, most prominently Nicholas Biddle, who bought debt for himself and the Bank of the United States of Pennsylvania, hoped for a Hamiltonian bailout. Admittedly, financial distress after the Panic of 1837 forced the Whig to sell much of his personal holdings, but he still vigorously pushed for annexation to benefit his former central bank (after the institution failed in 1841, its creditors owned the Texas debt). Other prominent speculators included James Hamilton, a former governor of South Carolina; John Slidell, a Louisiana congressman; William S. Wetmore, a New York merchant involved in the China trade; Samuel Swartwout, Jackson’s corrupt collector at the New York ports; and Tyler advisors Gilmer and Tucker, the latter of whom candidly admitted that “his own large interests” influenced his view on Texas. These men were not fringe lobbyists.
Land speculators also pushed for annexation. If the independent Texas joined the Union, the decrease in international cotton competition would increase land values. Biddle, who acquired large Texas landholdings, also led these lobbyists. He ardently wanted the United States to control the Atlantic, Pacific, Caribbean, Gulf of Mexico, and Isthmus of Panama. After annexation, Tyler candidly credited Biddle’s “bright and accomplished mind” with emphasizing the “value of the virtual monopoly of the cotton plant.” Other important land speculators included Gilmer, Tucker, and Senator Walker, who acquired large Texas landholdings from his brother. In the early 1840s, financial difficulties forced Walker to sell his investments, but he successfully convinced his two close friends Gwin and John F. H. Claiborne to purchase six hundred thousand acres. Like Biddle, Walker stressed that an independent Texas would turn into “a great rival in the cotton markets of the world,” a threat that had to be stopped.
Lastly, the slave interests desired Texas. Southerners feared that an independent Texas would be susceptible to British abolitionism, leading to a significant drain of escaping southwestern slaves. In reality, southerners widely overestimated the extent of British antislavery designs, but that did not stop paranoid southerners from wanting to acquire the region to strengthen the Constitution’s fugitive slave protection. Prominent southern politicians, most of whom owned slaves, raised the slavery argument. Jackson, firmly on the annexationist side in the mid-1840s, noted that a free Texas would make “slaves in the great valley of the Mississippi worth nothing, because they would all run over to Texas.” Tyler, Upshur, Gilmer, and Walker agreed. Above all, pro-slavery clamor came from Calhoun, who became Tyler’s secretary of state in March 1844. In a letter to the British ambassador to the United States, Calhoun described slavery as a “wise and humane” institution and annexation as “the most effectual, if not the only, means of guarding against” British abolitionism. Calhoun’s remarks served as a veritable bomb scare that brought the slavery issue to the forefront of American politics.
Matters rapidly reached a fever pitch in 1844, when Calhoun presented an annexation treaty that included debt assumption. Opponents knew it would lead to war because Mexico held a better claim to the Rio Grande lands. Clay announced opposition to immediate annexation to prevent hostilities with Mexico. However, after securing the Whig nomination, he weakened his stance because of campaign manager Leslie Combs, a significant owner of Texas debt. At the same time, Van Buren, the presumptive Democratic nominee, announced his opposition. Heroically, the New Yorker refused to give into “the lust of power, with fraud and violence in the train, [which] has led other and differently constituted governments to aggression and conquest.” Van Buren’s supporters, particularly Wright, Tilden, and Francis Preston Blair, knew they witnessed his finest hour. Surprisingly, Benton, formerly a staunch annexationist, agreed with Van Buren, because proponents of “Texas scrip and land speculation” had joined forces with southern sectionalists. Disastrously, the pro-annexation Jackson and Polk split with Benton and Van Buren, depriving the latter of the nomination.
In the Senate, Benton unleashed what William Chambers described as “a pyrotechnic attack.” He thundered that the administration, in agreeing with Texas’ land claims, attempted to seize “two thousand miles of a neighbor’s dominion.” The “ratification of the treaty,” he roared, would lead to “war between the United States and Mexico.” This war would be “unjust in itself—upon a peaceable neighbor—in violation of treaties and of pledged neutrality—unconstitutionally made.” The Missourian also declared that while he supported slavery, he opposed the institution’s “extension into regions where it was never known.” After fierce debate, the Senate flatly refused annexation. Whigs overwhelmingly opposed while Democrats split, with Benton and Wright in the minority. Subsequently, Benton proposed his own annexation treaty, dividing Texas into half free and half slave and authorizing the president to negotiate with Mexico over the boundary, but the Senate failed to act.
When Polk won the presidential election, annexation appeared increasingly likely. The emboldened Tyler and Calhoun treated Polk’s victory as a mandate and decided to secure annexation through a joint congressional resolution, spearheaded by Illinois’ Representative Stephen Douglas and Senator Walker. Barnburner Democrat Congressman George Rathbun sarcastically remarked how “surprising” is was that Secretary Calhoun, the supposed “standard-bearer of strict construction,” supported this approach. When the Senate narrowly voted 27-25 for the resolution in February 1845, Benton supported annexation after obtaining assurances that Tyler would not act and Polk would cautiously press for boundary negotiations. Unfortunately, Tyler wanted the credit and quickly sent over Andrew Jackson Donelson, nephew of the former president, to initiate annexation. Polk happily agreed, sending Archibald Yell and Charles Wickliffe to assist, providing them secret executive funds to speed up arrangements. Even worse, the new president, eyeing California, started to position troops in the Southwest to provoke a war between Texas and Mexico. Benton bitterly criticized Tyler and Polk’s treacherous lies.
Although debt speculators did not secure assumption under the second annexation movement, their goal seemed far more achievable now that the Union included Texas. Consequently, in the ensuing years, new speculators gobbled up the debt, including the prominent bankers and financial houses Jay Cooke, W. W. Corcoran, and Drexel & Co. However, annexation benefited the other interests immediately: Texas land values soared, and in July 1845 British officials in the new state noted that slave prices “have risen in value at least 30 per Cent.” The United States moved closer to a cotton monopoly and strengthened slavery protections.
To his credit, Polk still wanted to dismantle the American System, diligently securing the Independent Treasury, the Walker Tariff, and anti-internal improvements victories. But, thanks to Texas annexation, he also aggressively provoked Mexican hostilities. As far as the president was concerned, the imperial executive could secure additional—and far larger—land holdings than Texas.
