hold forth a stronger protection to the labor of respectable emigrants."

แ

From the Arkansas Gazette. 1830.

Perhaps no hopes can be entertained of acquiring Texas, until the people shall throw off the yoke of allegiance to the Mexican government, which they will no doubt do as soon as they shall have a reasonable pretext for so doing. At present the Texians are probably subject to as few exactions or impositions as any people under the sun. Their lands are given to them, and they are exempt from taxes of every description; and enjoy many other privileges, which they could not look for under any other government."

It will increase the weight of this piece of evidence, to add that the paper is printed in the midst of the friends and neighbors, from whom about half of the American settlers of Texas have gone to their new abode.

From the Guide to Texas, a work which appears to be published under the direction of the Trustees of the Galveston Bay and Texas Land Company. 1835.

"They [the inhabitants of Texas,] are perfectly free, and contented with their condition; they desire no better. It is a free republic, like that of the United States; the people choose their own rulers and make their own laws, and those laws exempt them from duties on all imported goods for their own use, and from all taxes for the support of government for ten years from their settlement. What more can they desire? And if they did, we know not to what government they can look with a prospect of obtaining it.'

The settlers were chiefly from the contiguous and neighboring states of Louisiana, Alabama, Mississippi, and the territory of Arkansas; and, in general, they carried slaves with them, or subsequently purchased them from the United States.

By the Constitution of Mexico, adopted in 1824, it was provided that no person should thereafter be born or introduced a slave into the Mexican States; and that all slaves then existing should be subject to punishment only upon trial and judgment by magistrates. They were also to be paid stipulated wages, which were to go to their masters, if the slaves were employed by other persons, and to be cre

dited to them if they continued in the employment of their masters until their respective prices, to be fixed by magistrates, were worked out. Many regulations touching food, clothing, quantity of labor, and literary and religious instruction were added. It is sufficient for the present purpose to say, that the intermediate state betwixt slavery and perfect freedom, was to be a sort of apprenticeship. The American settlers continued under these provisions, not only to hold their slaves, which might be lawful, but to bring in others which could not be lawful. It is understood that the general mode of evading the law was to represent the slaves to be apprentices, indented for ninety-nine, or a great number of years. This condition of the new laborers was analagous to that of those already existing in the country, and it does not appear, that this important modification to which it would seem that the slaves in appearance assented, was contrary to the letter of any law then existing in Mexico.

On the 15th of September, 1829, the Anniversary of Independence, and a few days after the capitulation of the Spanish expeditionary force at Tampico, President Guerrero, in conformity to an article of the Constitution, empowering him to that end, issued a decree, abolishing slavery immediately, totally, and unconditionally throughout the republic.

That decree, received with applause by the civilized world, not even excepting the United States, produced the greatest dissatisfaction among the American settlers, and they determined to resist the execution of it. Within the present year, we were informed by one of them, that he was deputed to the United States to contract for arms and ammunition for the purpose. A revolution in the general government having occurred about this time, the party in power, to avoid the embarrassment of a serious affair in that remote quarter, and perhaps also to strengthen their hands in the immediate conflict for the possession of the government, granted a dispensation of the decree so far as respected Texas. Of course the apprenticeship system was revived within that territory. But to meet the flagrant abuses, of which the emigrants were guilty, a law was enacted, that no indentures of apprenticeship, or contracts for service or labor, should be valid for more than ten years from their respective dates. Thus our American emigrants, "born

and educated in a land of liberty," found it difficult with all their ingenuity, to carry slavery into a country, which but for them was entirely free. They have therefore, with all their unrivalled physical advantages and their unprecedented political privileges, remained in an unquiet and fearful state respecting the tenure by which they held slaves, and the consequences, which might accrue to them if the government should become settled, and have leisure to look to the execution of the ordinary laws. They, however, continued to introduce slaves from the United States, and even engaged to some extent in the African slave trade by way of Cuba.

In the beginning of 1833, to relieve themselves from their apprehensions, they held a convention at St. Felipe de Austin to form a Constitution for the new State of Texas, separate from Coahuila. This convention, in point of form, was not agreeable to law. They proceeded, however, to form a constitution, and commissioned Mr. Stephen F. Austin to proceed to Mexico and request a ratification of it, and the admission of the proposed State into the Mexican Union. This Mr. Austin is the son of Moses Austin, originally of Connecticut, to whom the royal government had granted a large and fine tract of land in the central part of Texas. He died without effecting much towards possessing and enjoying the grant; bu this son, above mentioned, having obtained from the republican government of Mexico a confirmation to him of the grant to his father, commenced a settlement under better auspices, which has become the leading one in the colony. The Mexican Congress rejected the application of the Texians for several reasons, but principally because they considered the object to be to establish and perpetuate slavery contrary to the national constitution, and contrary to that of the State, which prohibits slavery and the introduction of slaves under any pretence whatever. The proposed constitution contained no provision on that subject! Upon the failure of his mission, Austin wrote to the municipal authorities in Texas, urging them to proclaim the new constitution in spite of the general government. Without doubt he desired to precipitate the province into a rebellion for the desperate chance of obtaining thereby the blessings of slavery. The Ayuntamiento of Bejar, upon receipt of Austin's communication, adopted a declaration cen

suring him for it, and ordered the whole subject to be referred with the documents to the governor of Coahuila and Texas, and he immediately passed them to the President of the Mexican States. Meantime Austin had left the capital to proceed homeward, but he was overtaken by a messenger of the government and arrested in the town of Saltillo on the frontiers of Texas and Coahuila, and brought back to the city. This was the occasion of that imprisonment of Austin which has elicited so much sympathy in his favor from the press of the United States. How little he merited it, this narrative sufficiently shows.

It is now necessary to look at the movements of our government. The river Sabine is the boundary between Mexico and the United States established by the Florida treaty in 1819. That treaty, if not mainly intended to gratify Georgia, was undoubtedly much hastened on her account. It was recently stated by a member of Congress of that day, a gentleman opposed to abolition,* that in a secret session of the House of Representatives on the subject of that treaty, it was stated that the President, Monroe, had received more than a hundred and fifty letters from inhabitants of Georgia, residing near the Florida line, declaring that their slaves ran away in such numbers, and found an asylnm in Florida, that if the province were not obtained by treaty, the Georgians would rise and take it by force. We pass the melancholy subject of the robbery of the aborigines.

Florida was obtained, but scarcely was peaceable possession taken of it, when a longing eye was cast upon Texas. Mr. Adams, a northern President, accused by the slaveholders of having sacrificed a good claim on Texas to obtain Florida, because he was jealous of the slave states, gave way to this grasping disposition and sent a Minister Plenipotentiary, Mr. Poinsett of South Carolina, to Mexico with instructions to purchase Texas, if it could be had; and if zeal, intrigue, and taking every advantage of the intestine divisions of the country could have ensured a favorable result, there cannot be a doubt that Mr. Poinsett would have obtained the land, and "five more slave states," would have now been in rapid process of preparation for brightening the North American constellation. Fortunately there was

*Timothy Pitkin.

nothing accomplished in Mr. Adams' time in which there was certainly the most danger, from his wary and experienced diplomacy. Gen. Jackson having succeeded to the Presidency, sent off new and pressing instructions to Poinsett, in consequence of which that minister appears to have pulled the wires with an intensity, till then unknown. Then it was that his house was beset by a mob, and the American flag unfurled to protect our minister from their fury. It was duly honored by the Mexicans, and we would fain say as much of the American side of the affair. It was reported at home that Poinsett was assassinated. He had made himself the master-mover among the Yorkinos, or York Masons, a political party under the name of Freemasonry.

The Mexican people, as well as every administration for the last eight or ten years, have been not only opposed to the sale of Texas, but sorely sensitive on the subject. Their national constitution defines the limits of the national domain. These could not be altered without an alteration of the constitution. The Mexicans resented the idea of a foreigner's proposing an object, which could not be reached without breaking down and rampling upon their constitution. When it was found that they would not sell Texas, Mr. Poinsett taking advantage of an approaching invasion and of the supposed exhaustion of the treasury, proposed to loan them the sum of $10,000,000 upon a mortgage of Texas. The Mexicans considered this a farther and grosser insult.

In the latter part of the year 1829 Poinsett was recalled, and all the information respecting these remarkable transactions, which the President has thought proper to give, or any member of Congress to call for, was a declaration in the message of that year that the imputations upon Poinsett of interference in the political concerns of Mexico were believed to be groundless! Mr. Poinsett left Mexico amidst the general execrations of the people and government.

A Chargé de Affaires, Col. Butler, was sent to replace him, but we understand that he has never ventured openly to propose a renewal of the negociation. In the year 1831, it had come to be well understood in the United States, that all hope of taking Texas by diplomacy was at an end. But it was said by the Southern presses, and evidently with the sanction, if not at the suggestion of official persons, that the