Part
4: A Treaty of Annexation
The Annexation Treaty
Once a penniless immigrant from Tennessee, Isaac Van Zandt
shepherded the annexation treaty past doubters in his own
government. Prints and Photographs Collection, 1/102-573.
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Van Zandt immediately wrote home to Texas
Secretary of State Anson Jones, telling him that Upshur had proposed
annexation. Van Zandt felt strongly in favor of making a treaty
and continued to speak informally with Upshur while awaiting instructions
from Jones. When the reply came, its coldness shocked him. Jones
wrote dismissively that the choice for Texas was stark: peace
with Britain or U.S. annexation and war with Mexico.
Van Zandt was so sure that annexation
was the right course for Texas that he did not reveal the harsh
nature of the letter to Upshur. Instead, he continued to talk
with the U.S. secretary of state. In the meantime, he boldly wrote
home again to Jones, proposing in stronger terms that Texas pursue
the golden opportunity for annexation. It might never come again.
Most people back in Texas agreed with
Van Zandt. It is estimated that some 90 percent of Texans still
favored annexation to the United States. Despite some recent immigration
by Europeans, especially Germans, the majority of Texans were
American Southerners by birth. They hadn’t come to Texas
to become part of the British Empire; most were particularly incensed
by the British insistence on emancipation of the slaves. Responding
to public sentiment, the Texas Senate demanded that President
Houston give them a full accounting of his dealings with Great
Britain.
U.S. Secretary of State Abel Upshur was one of a new generation
of activists determined to promote the cause of the slave-holding
South above all other concerns. He saw Texas annexation
as essential to the preservation of the Southern way of
life. Courtesy Navy Art Collection, Washington, D.C.
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Houston still believed that annexation
was a pipe dream that would never pass the U.S. Senate. But he
was also a politician. He realized that if he did not appease
the annexation supporters, the Texas Congress would lay the question
directly before the people in an election. In such a vote, Houston
knew he would lose badly. To stave off political disaster, Houston
turned to James Pinckney Henderson, the highly respected attorney
and diplomat who had successfully negotiated trade deals and diplomatic
recognition with Britain and France. Henderson, a vocal advocate
of annexation, was sent to join Van Zandt in Washington to represent
Texas at the annexation treaty negotiations.
Henderson was a tough negotiator by nature,
and he also bore specific instructions on what Texas wanted out
of the annexation negotiations. Besides securing a guarantee that
Texas would be defended against Mexican attack, Henderson and
Van Zandt were to insist that Texas enter the United States as
a state, not a territory, and that Texas be allowed to retain
slavery. In addition, the United States must agree to assume the
debts of the Republic of Texas; the diplomats were authorized
to bargain away Texas’s public lands in exchange for this
guarantee.
In the meantime, Houston still hoped
that Britain might negotiate a peace settlement with Mexico. But
when Henderson’s appointment became known, Mexico had the
perfect excuse to leave the talks and resume talk of an invasion.
Henderson’s appointment also mobilized the opposition in
the U.S. Congress; opponents of annexation realized that Texas
would not be sending such a high-powered diplomat to Washington
unless an annexation treaty was in the works.
Robert J. Walker of Mississippi introduced the resolution
for Texas annexation and relentlessly managed the bill during
the contentious Senate debate. Courtesy Biographical Dictionary
of the United States Congress.
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President Tyler was not leaving the treaty’s
fate in the Senate to chance. To manage the political side of
the annexation issue, he had chosen Senator Robert J. Walker of
Mississippi, a close ally and tireless advocate of American territorial
expansion. Walker, a small, stooped man who made up for his lack
of stature in energy and shrewdness, was one of the most effective
backroom politicians of his own or any era. In February 1844,
Walker launched a public relations campaign to bring citizen opinion
in on the side of Texas annexation. His “Letter to the Citizens
of Carroll County, Kentucky" setting out the arguments in
favor of annexation sold over 50,000 copies.
A few weeks later, the prospects for annexation
almost went up in smoke—literally. While waiting for Henderson
to arrive in Washington, Upshur and Van Zandt had continued to
work out a draft treaty of annexation that provided for Texas
to be admitted as a territory. Then, on February 28, 1844, both
men took time out to join President Tyler and most of the rest
of official Washington on a cruise in the Potomac on the USS Princeton,
a new U.S. warship. The ceremony was to include a demonstration
of the Peacemaker, then the world’s largest naval cannon.
Only by chance was Tyler below decks when
the cannon exploded, killing Upshur, along with the Secretary
of the Navy and six others. Many others were hurt and maimed;
the scene was one of chaos, panic, and dreadful carnage. Tyler
himself, weeping at the sight of his dead colleagues, rescued
a young woman whose father was among the dead; she would shortly
become his second wife, making him the first president to marry
while in the White House. Van Zandt witnessed the terrible scene
but fortunately escaped injury. The Princeton disaster was the
worst peacetime accident ever suffered by the young United States
military.
Once Henderson arrived in a Washington
still in shock from the disaster, the two Texans could do little
but wait while the government regrouped. At the end of March,
the president appointed a new Secretary of State, John C. Calhoun,
probably the most forceful and controversial politician in America.
A former vice-president, senator, and cabinet officer, Calhoun
was considered a radical on the subject of states’ rights
and slavery. Years before, the calculating and relentless South
Carolinian had made an enemy of young Sam Houston. But now, Calhoun
saw Sam Houston’s republic as a means of furthering the
interests of the plantation culture he loved. He was eager to
take a leading role in the annexation of Texas.
With very few changes, Calhoun accepted
the treaty that Van Zandt and Upshur had worked out. But there
was one sticking point. Legally, Calhoun could not make the guarantee
of military protection that the Texans had been instructed to
secure. He could only offer a letter with a vague promise that
troops and naval forces would be dispatched “near the frontier”
to meet any emergencies. Henderson and Van Zandt feared that writing
home for instructions would cause so much delay that the treaty’s
slim chances in the Senate would be sunk. On April 12, 1844, they
took the responsibility on their own shoulders and signed the
treaty of annexation on behalf of the Republic of Texas.
Upon getting the news back in Texas,
Secretary of State Jones wrote to the diplomats that he and President
Houston felt “great mortification and disappointment”
about the treaty. To them, an independent Texas under British
protection seemed far better than hoping for territorial status
under a government too timid even to guarantee protection for
a country it claimed to want. But if they complained privately,
they made the best of things publicly. Their envoys had signed
the treaty, and there was nothing to do now but watch the U.S.
Senate and see how it all came out.
Part 4 continued: Tyler's Failed Gamble>> |
