then, is to be done? I see no way but to retain the advantages we already possess, and to prosecute the war on her territory, as other wars, under like circumstances, would be prosecuted by other nations. What is there to prevent her from entering into negotiations at once? Pride—folly—but we were not too proud to negotiate with England, at the moment when the war was hottest. At the very moment of signing the treaty of Ghent, the British Commissioner supposed, and ours also, that the British troops were in possession of Louisiana, and one of them observed to the American Commissioner. “You have reason to be satisfied, for you have now regained New Orleans.” The idea of falling back on the Rio Grande, in the visionary hope of coaxing Mexico to make peace, and then in case of her refusal, retaking Monterey and Tampico, and the valley of the Rio Grande, would be like the fisherman, who after having one good haul, throws back the best fish into the sea, for the pleasure of retaking them! Footnote 5: Mr. Gallatin makes a strange mistake, when he says, that the refusal, was to receiving a _resident minister_. The refusal was on account of his not being a mere Commissioner on the _single subject of Texas_! What reasonable objection could there be to a resident minister, after a treaty of peace? And if no such treaty were made, then the minister clothed with those powers would take his _departure_, as a matter of course. Mr. Gallatin speaks very _lightly_ of a _suspension_ of diplomatic intercourse! I regard this, under the circumstance, as most serious. But there was more than suspension; Mexico declared _all negotiations_ at an end, and war was, therefore, the only alternative. ------------------------------------------------------------------------ LETTER 11. _The causes of the war.—The complaints on either side._ FEBRUARY, 1847.