Emigration poured in from the Lower Mississippi Valley,—from Louisiana, Arkansas, and Mississippi,—and even the older States contributed to swell the tide. The law forbade slavery, but many brought negroes with them and held them in spite of it. Many were adventurers who held law in little estimation, or found in Texas a convenient asylum from the pursuit of their creditors. Others were poor people whom the liberal offers of the Mexican Government lured from their homes in the hope of bettering their condition. Though sound at the heart, in no long time Texas had won for itself an unenviable name throughout the Union as the chosen home of lawless men, through its worst elements rising to the top. Our Government had long coveted Texas, and had made two unsuccessful attempts to buy it of Mexico, considering it as an integral part of Old Louisiana, to which we had a sort of right by the prior discovery of La Salle. Texas, which the Spaniards had weakly settled and feebly governed, declared herself independent of Mexico in 1835. When this revolt took place there were more Americans than people of Spanish blood in Texas, so bringing over to the Texan cause the warm sympathy and active aid of a large part of the American people. The conflict was short and bloody. After meeting reverses at Goliad and the Alamo,[2] the Texans won their independence by defeating the Mexican army at San Jacinto,[3] in 1836. General Samuel Houston, the Texan leader, was subsequently made president of the Republic of Texas, which then set up for itself upon the model of the United States. In no long time Texas applied for admission to the Union. Too weak to maintain herself as an independent power, her interests were now at one with the South. Her soil, climate, and productions were much the same. Her population was largely derived from that source, and owned to like feelings and prejudices with their brethren of that section. The South, therefore, favored the admission of Texas, not only for these general reasons, but because it would add a slave State to the Union, as, since Missouri and Arkansas had come in, there was no more territory, except Florida, open to slavery under the interdicted line of 36° 30´. [Illustration: THE ALAMO.] For this very reason the growing anti-slavery sentiment of the North strongly opposed the admission of Texas. It was further opposed on the ground that as Mexico had not yet acknowledged the independence of Texas, so unfriendly an act toward Mexico would lead to war. Moreover, Texas was of such vast extent, compared with other States, that the bill for its admission allowed the making of four more new States out of it, so opening the door of the Union not to one, but several slave States in the future. [Illustration: SAMUEL HOUSTON.]