Here was a great empire offering itself to us--a State which had gained its independence, and built itself into a certain measure of order and thrift through American valor and enterprise. She offered us a magnificent estate of 376,000 square miles of territory, all of it valuable, and much of it of unsurpassed richness and fertility. Even those portions of it once condemned as desert now contribute to the markets of the world vast stores of wool and cotton, herds of cattle and flocks of sheep. Not only were these material advantages of great attractiveness to the public mind, but many powerful sentimental considerations reinforced the claim of Texas. The Texans were not an alien people. The few inhabitants of that vast realm were mostly Americans, who had occupied and subdued a vacant wilderness. The heroic defense of the Alamo had been made by Travis, Bowie, and David Crockett, whose exploits and death form one of the most brilliant pages of our border history. Fannin and his men, four hundred strong, when they laid down their lives at Goliad [Transcriber's Note: Lengthy footnote relocated to chapter end.] had carried mourning into every South-western State; and when, a few days later, Samuel Houston and his eight hundred raw levies defeated and destroyed the Mexican army at San Jacinto, captured Santa Anna, the Mexican president, and with American thrift, instead of giving him the death he merited for his cruel murder of unarmed prisoners, saved him to make a treaty with, the whole people recognized something of kinship in the unaffected valor with which these borderers died and the humorous shrewdness with which they bargained, and felt as if the victory over the Mexicans were their own. The schemes of the Southern statesmen who were working for the extension of slavery were not defensible, and we have no disposition to defend them; but it may be doubted whether there is a government on the face of the earth which, under similar circumstances, would not have yielded to the same temptation.