The Texans were, as we all know, a people who came for the most part from the United States, and who were drawn southward by the combined influence of a genial climate and liberal gifts of land. These attractions had but one drawback, and that was of a religious nature. By the very terms of the gift, all emigrants were, or became, or professed to become, Roman Catholics. In many cases marriages of long standing were reconsecrated with Catholic ceremonies, while the children were baptized at Catholic altars. Until the year 1835 the Texans had been citizens of Mexico,--the district which they inhabited, together with Coahuila, making a sovereign state and constituent part of that federal republic. Though the Texans had thus lived for many years under the protection of Mexican law, it would not be true to say that they had done so always cheerfully or even peaceably. There had been much smothered discontent, and some open violence. The reasons were various. The vexations, and perhaps oppression, incident to the rapid and violent changes of the Mexican government, led to much ill feeling, and engendered controversies not easily put to sleep. The natural averseness, too, of a people of Anglo-Saxon origin to yield obedience, however legitimate, to a mixed race like the Mexicans, created bitterness, which was intensified by the arrogant and reckless temper characteristic of no small part of the Texan people. Last, but not least, their irritation at those laws which abolished slavery, and which from the beginning they had always broken and always meant to break, would have sundered a far stronger chain than ever bound them to the land of their adoption. When the centralized constitution of 1835 came into force, their discontent ripened into open rebellion. In the light of our own bitter experience, with the inception and growth of our own civil war open for our instruction, few Northern men will doubt that this was the infant Secession whose full-grown power we are breasting. That there were some real grievances we may allow; for, with so many shifting governments, there could hardly have failed to be some injustice and some oppressive measures or deeds. That, with the essential difference of feeling, character, and habits which existed between the two people, disturbances must sooner or later have arisen, we may also allow. But, after all, one of the most powerful motives for rebellion was love of slavery. Mexico stood a bar to the establishment of that new and powerful Slave State which was the dream not only of the Texan, but perhaps even more of the statesmen and leaders of the extreme South. If Mexico became a powerful government, all the more would she be an insuperable bar to such a project. However much, then, the Texans may have desired a separate State existence, and however little they may have liked the establishment of a great central power, their fear was not so much that the strong government would oppress them as that it