He, too, would have failed but Mr. Upshur, his Secretary of State, being killed in 1844 by the accidental explosion of a cannon, John C. Calhoun became his successor. The latter at once arranged a treaty of annexation, but this the Senate rejected. Both Van Buren and Clay, leading candidates of their respective parties for the Presidency in 1844, were opposed to the annexation; the former was defeated for nomination, and the latter at the election, because, during the canvass, to please the slaveholding Whigs he sought to shift his position, thus losing his anti-slavery friends, "whose votes would have elected him"; and Polk became President. Annexation, however, did not wait for his administration. In the House of Representatives, in December, 1844, an attempt was made to admit Texas, half to be free and half slave, making two States. By resolutions of Congress, dated March 1, 1845, consent was given to erect Texas into a State with a view to annexation; and in order that she might be admitted into the Union such resolutions provided that thereafter four other States, with her consent, might be formed out of its territory. In August succeeding, a Constitution was framed prohibiting emancipation of slaves (56) and authorizing their importation into Texas, which was thereafter adopted by the people of the Republic of Texas, under which Congress, by resolution (December 29, 1845) formally admitted Texas into the Union--the last slave State admitted. As a sop to Northern "dough-faces," and to induce them to vote for the resolutions of March 1st, it recited that the new States lying south of latitude 36 deg. 30' should be admitted with or without slavery as their inhabitants might decide, those north of the line without slavery. In the subsequent adjustment of the north boundary line of Texas, it was found _no part of it_ was within two hundred miles of 36 deg. 30'; so all of Texas (in territory an empire, in area 240,000 square miles, six times greater than Ohio) was thus dedicated forever, by law, to human slavery, in the professed interest of the nineteenth century civilization. The intrigue, the bad faith, the perfidy by which this great political and moral wrong was consummated were laid up against the "day of wrath." (56) How different is Texas' Constitution of 1876, the first paragraph of which runs: "Texas is a free and independent State." XV MEXICAN WAR--ACQUISITION OF CALIFORNIA AND NEW MEXICO 1846-8 With Texas came naturally a desire for more slave territory. Wrong is never satiated; it hungers as it feeds on its prey.