It may be pardoned if we pause awhile to consider a subject of such vital importance. The solution of the question was placed by one party upon the determination whether the Rio Grande was the boundary between Texas and Mexico before the battle of San Jacinto; and, if not, whether it has been made so since by competent authority. Up to that period it was asserted to be a recognized fact that the Nueces was the western boundary of Texas. Mr. John Quincy Adams, in his controversy with Don Luis De Onis, upon the Spanish boundary question, in March, 1818;[86] and Messieurs Pinckney and Monroe, in their argument with Cevallos at Madrid in April, 1805,[87] claimed the Rio Grande as the true limit between the United States and Mexico, by virtue of the ancient rights of France and the treaties between that sovereignty and the Spanish king.[88] It was asserted, therefore, that by the cession of Louisiana all the rights of France over Texas, as an integral part of her territory, accrued to us; and consequently that when the State of Texas was united to this country it was only _re_-annexed with what were _claimed_ to be its ancient limits. But this was not a true statement of the controversy, for after our treaty with Spain the aspect of the affair changed. The question then was no longer what had been the boundary under the laws between France and Spain, or between Spain and the United States,--but what were the limits either under the colonial government of the Mexican viceroyalty, or under the laws of Mexico, when she became an independent republic. It was asserted that no map or geography existed since the establishment of the republic that did not lay down the boundary north of the Rio Grande. The map of Texas, compiled by Stephen H. Austin, the parent of Texan colonization, published at Philadelphia in 1835, and setting forth all the Mexican grants in Texas, represents the Rio Nueces as the western boundary. General Almonté in 1834, as I have previously stated, alleged, upon the authority of the State government of Coahuila and Texas that the boundary between them was even east of the Nueces. This was probably in accordance with the ancient Spanish division; for, in 1805 Cevallos declared to our ministers at Madrid that the province of Texas, "where the Spaniards have had settlements from the 17th century, was bounded on the east by Louisiana, and contains the extensive country which lies between the river Medina _where the government of Coahuila ends_, and the post now abandoned." Authorities to this effect might be extensively multiplied.[90] Brazos de Santiago was a Mexican port of entry, which continued to be held up to the period of hostilities, and Laredo was a small Mexican town, occupied by a Mexican garrison. If such was the geographical division between Texas and Mexico on the lower Rio Grande, near its mouth in the gulf, it was asserted that there could be infinitely less right to claim it as a limit nearer its source, since