State of the Union AddressesPolk, James K. (James Knox)
History
State of the Union Addresses
Polk, James K. (James Knox)
Presidents -- United States -- Messages; United States -- Politics and government -- Sources
In the month of May, 1836, Santa Anna acknowledged by a treaty with the
Texan authorities in the most solemn form "the full, entire, and perfect
independence of the Republic of Texas." It is true he was then a prisoner
of war, but it is equally true that he had failed to reconquer Texas, and
had met with signal defeat; that his authority had not been revoked, and
that by virtue of this treaty he obtained his personal release. By it
hostilities were suspended, and the army which had invaded Texas under his
command returned in pursuance of this arrangement unmolested to Mexico.
From the day that the battle of San Jacinto was fought until the present
hour Mexico has never possessed the power to reconquer Texas. In the
language of the Secretary of State of the United States in a dispatch to
our minister in Mexico under date of the 8th of July, 1842--
Mexico may have chosen to consider, and may still choose to consider, Texas
as having been at all times since 1835, and as still continuing, a
rebellious province; but the world has been obliged to take a very
different view of the matter. From the time of the battle of San Jacinto,
in April, 1836, to the present moment, Texas has exhibited the same
external signs of national independence as Mexico herself, and with quite
as much stability of government. Practically free and independent,
acknowledged as a political sovereignty by the principal powers of the
world, no hostile foot finding rest within her territory for six or seven
years, and Mexico herself refraining for all that period from any further
attempt to reestablish her own authority over that territory, it can not
but be surprising to find Mr. De Bocanegra the secretary of foreign affairs
of Mexico complaining that for that whole period citizens of the United
States or its Government have been favoring the rebels of Texas and
supplying them with vessels, ammunition, and money, as if the war for the
reduction of the Province of Texas had been constantly prosecuted by
Mexico, and her success prevented by these influences from abroad.
In the same dispatch the Secretary of State affirms that--
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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