ingly after a fashion, when he caused a civil government to be set up there under his authority. The demand, therefore, as an ultimatum, of the whole of New Mexico, on both sides of the Rio Grande, was a naked demand for the further dismemberment of Mexico, though for a consideration in money, to be assented to by that power, under the penalty of an immediate resumption and prosecution of the war against her.

Let, now, any man, possessing any just sensibility to the honor and proper fame of the country, turn to the President's Message, and read there, without a blush of shame if he can, the reasons which that high officer has grouped together to justify the nefarious demand which he caused to be made upon Mexico for the dismemberment of that country, by the forced cession of Upper California and New Mexico to the United States. We will give the substance and real meaning of these reasons, leaving it to the reader to verify our brief exposition by recurring to the President's own language.

The President believes, then, that as Mexico must be dismembered, it is for her convenience and interest, as well as our own, that these two provinces should be lopped off rather than any other. They lie a great way off from her capital, and if she does not lose them now, it is manifest the time will come when she will have to give them up. This is especially true of Upper California, and if we don't take it now, some other foreign power may, by-and-by. Or it may become independent of Mexico, by a revolutionary movement, and then be annexed to some other country; and if annexed to any country but our own, we should have to fight that country for it. These territories are contiguous to our territories, and if we had them we would bring them on, and make something out of them. Upper California is bounded right upon our Oregon possessions, and we could stock it with a good population, and, with the use of its harbors, make great commercial profits out of it, in which the commercial world might participate. New Mexico is naturally connected with our Western settlements, and after all is not worth much to Mexico. Besides, our State of Texas once threw its paper arms around the neck of this darling province, and embraced it with affection.

And, then, see what a benefit it would be to Mexico to give this province up to us; for we could protect it, and her, against the Indians, and make them give up their captives! Finally, in ceding these provinces to us, there would only be a moderate population of Mexican citizens [probably only about 175,000] who would be transferred, like cattle, without their consent and against their will, from Mexico to the United States. "These," adds the President, 66 were the leading considerations which induced me to authorize the terms of peace which were proposed to Mexico. They were rejected; and negotiations being at an end, hostilities were renewed." These were the " leading considerations" which induced the President to instruct his Commissioner, that unless Mexico, besides giving up to us half of the vast province of Upper California for our full indemnity, which she offered to do, would consent to a further dismemberment by ceding to us the rest of that province, and the whole of New Mexico, for a sum of money, the war should go on. Even if the Rio Grande had been yielded as a boundary for Texas, and every other demand of the President, still, for the "leading considerations we have recited, the war was to go on unless Mexico would give up also the whole of New Mexico and Upper California!

But besides these two provinces, there was that other considerable tract of country, embracing parts of three Mexican States, and having altogether an area of about 45,000 square miles-nearly equal to New-York-lying between the Nueces and the Bravo, which was also demanded as an ultimatum. And to this, as to the rest, except where there was an inconsiderable settlement on and near the Nueces, the United States had not the slightest claim of right, for herself or for Texas, unless by conquest. Yet this is the country in reference to which the President repeats in the present Message, the stale and miserable fiction, so often exposed before, that Mexico "involved the two countries in war by invading the territory of the State of Texas, striking the first blow, and shedding the blood of our citizens on our own soil;" that "Mexico commenced the war, and we were compelled, in self-defence, to repel the invader!" In the name of Truth, and by the authority of its unerring

the

Records, we pronounce every word of all this statement utterly without foundation in fact. The country where our army was found when the first blood was shed, was not American soil. It was in the peaceable possession and actual occupancy of Mexico, and under her undisputed jurisdiction, as it had always been since she was a nation, and as Spain had possessed and governed it before her. If the United States once preferred a claim, as against Spain, to the Rio del Norte as boundary of French Louisiana, the pretension was yielded by solemn treaty with that power in 1819. Thus the Sabine was settled as the boundary of our possessions in that direction, and the Republic of Mexico became the undisputed mistress of the country from that river westward. Texas with Coahuila was a State of the Mexican Confederation, and the indisputable limit of Texas in the south-west was the Nueces. Texas revolted and established her independence; and when she annexed herself to the United States, the Nueces was still her boundary, except that she had so far encroached on the neighboring loyal State of Tamaulipas, as to have a small settlement on the right bank of that river, over which she exercised jurisdiction. Thus far the just claim of Texas may go, and no farther. Beyond Corpus Christi, or San Patricio, in that direction, she had neither possession nor jurisdiction. Thence began a desert, a hundred and twenty miles wide, and reaching to within a few miles of the Rio Grande, where was a long established Mexican population, under undisputed Mexican jurisdiction. Here it was the first blood was shed in this war. The claim which Texas asserted to the whole of this country between the rivers Nueces and del Norte, and that which the President has set up after her example, rest on a title which is no better than a base and impudent forgery. It is a naked paper title in the shape of legislative enactments, made by the party selling up the claim, and having not a shadow of right to stand upon. A man could as well make himself a deed of his neighbor's farm, and establish a right under it in a court of justice. The most distinguished men of the President's own party have derided and denounced this claim of title: Benton, Wright, Woodbury, have done so. The President himself has

repudiated the main ground of the claim set up by Texas-her Legislative Act of 1836, declaring the Rio Grande to be her boundary in its whole extent; for this would give her a large part of New Mexico, and he has, by the most unequivocal acts, treated this part of her claim with contempt.

Though it be true, therefore, that the President asserted a claim for a boundary on the Rio Grande, when this war was begun, yet it was only a claim, and had not a shadow of truth and justice to support it. The boundary between the State of Texas and the Republic of Mexico was undefined, and so considered and left by Congress in the Act of Annexation. It was no further undefined and in dispute, however, than as Texas had laid the foundation of a claim to some territory on and adjacent to the right bank of the Nueces, by having established and exercised actual jurisdiction over some small settlements along there. But because this left the President at liberty to plant one foot on the Nueces, it did not authorize him to plant the other on the Bravo, and so claim the whole country embraced in his colossal stride. Considering the hold which Texas has acquired on the Mexican side of the Nueces, and looking at the peculiar topography of the country, the true boundary separating the two countries, would be the broad desert between the two rivers, the line of which might properly run through its centre. We have not a doubt that Mexico would have consented to this, if it had been proposed or suggested. In effect, indeed, this is what she herself proposed. She offered to have the uninhabited desert preserved forever as a boundary, and barrier, to secure each country from the other.

She knew very well that peace could never be maintained, if the Anglo-Saxon was to be planted on one side of a narrow stream like the Rio del Norte, from which he could look into the windows of the Mexican on the opposite side; and she refused to make that river the boundary. Besides, though the real value of the country was not great, yet there were Mexican citizens who had their home on the left bank of that river, and she nobly declared that "it was not for the Mexican government to weigh the price of the attachment of the citizen to the soil on which

he is born." "As to these Mexicans, can a government go and sell them like cattle!"

We do not hesitate to say that the claim of title, or right, asserted by the President to the entire tract between the Nueces and the Bravo, was a baseless pretension, set up to cover a foregone resolution, right or wrong, to make it a part of the territory of the United States. And the demand, therefore, at the conferences near Chapultepec, of "a boundary on the Rio Grande, as an ultimatum, notwithstanding the offer of Mexico to make the desert, intermediate the two rivers, in effect, the frontier of the two countries, was, in truth, like those for California and New Mexico, a naked demand for the further dismemberment still of Mexico, to be assented to by that power, under the penalty of the immediate resumption and prosecution of the war against her.

We have said, that from the termination of the conferences between Mr. Trist and the Mexican Commissioners, the war became explicitly and without disguise a war for the Conquest and Dismemberment of Mexico. We say that Conquest and Dismemberment became the SOLE object❘ of the war. We have shown precisely what particular portions of the Mexican dominions were demanded to be ceded to the United States, and that, in every instance, these were naked demands, without any just pretence of right or title, and without any excuse or apology, to be found in any remaining cause of complaint against Mexico, or any unsatisfied claims upon her for indemnity, existing when the war commenced, or to which the war could have any just relation. We have shown how every other demand of the American Commissioner, except only his naked demands for the dismemberment of the Mexican empire, was met by the most ample offers and concessions on the part of the Mexican Commissioners, leaving, in very truth, nothing else but those demands for dismemberment for the war to stand on. It is only necessary to add here, that there were just two things embraced in the Counter-Project of a treaty presented by the Mexican Commissioners, which would have been deemed inadmissible by Mr. Trist, and which, there cannot be a doubt, would have been adjusted without

difficulty, if Mr. Trist's demands for territory had not put an end to all hopes of peace. Mexico asked for indemnity to her citizens for injuries sustained from our troops in the prosecution of the war; and she wished to levy duties on goods found in her ports, which had been imported under the authority of the President, and had paid duties into his military chest. The President makes the most of these objectionable claims, in his Message, calling them a part of the Mexican ultimatum, and forgetting entirely that the Mexican Commissioners, in presenting their Counter-Project, referred to them expressly as matters of "minor moment," which could occasion no serious difficulty. It is certain that the negotiations for peace did not fail on account of these matters of "minor moment," but that they did fail solely on the ground of the naked demands of our Commissioner, as the President's ultimatum, for the dismemberment of the Mexican empire.

Let it be observed, then-let the people of this abused country understand-that it was upon such an issue as we have here demonstrated-upon the President's demands and ultimatum, for the dismemberment of Mexico, and upon that issue only— that this war was begun de novo, after the breaking up of the conferences near Chapultepec. Upon this Issue of Dismemberment, the awful battle of El Molino del Rey was fought. Upon this Issue of Dismemberment, the terrible conflict at Chapultepec was waged, and the murderous affairs at the gates of Belen and San Cosme were enacted. Upon this Issue of Dismemberment, the proud capital of the enemy was entered, sword in hand, and the colors of the United States hoisted on the National Palace. Wonderful achievements all--brilliant and glorious feats of arms— if only they had been exhibited in a cause where national justice and honor, and human rights and human liberty, were to be defended! But every blow was struckevery life sacrificed-every gaping and hideous wound inflicted-upon this naked Issue of Dismemberment! Upwards of sixteen hundred gallant American citizens and noble spirits and among them some of the most valued in the land-were struck down in these battles alone; and of the enemy, whole hecatombs were sacrificed;