State of Oregon to Monterey. Tyler perceived that the annexation of Texas alone was likely to prove exceedingly unpopular, especially at the North; and the mutterings of discontent at any compromise on the Oregon question were already distinctly heard, which crystallized later in the campaign cry of "54-40 or fight!" Here was an opportunity to perform a master stroke of diplomacy. California should be the fair prize to distract the attention of the jealous sections; while Great Britain, in return for the Oregon concession, should graciously see to it that our sister republic humbly acquiesced.

The mere recognition of Texas, [wrote the President to Webster, who was carrying on the negotiations,] would have the effect, if we went into that matter, of separating the question from California, and of stirring up all the agitation which you anticipate: whereas, introduced in the same treaty, the three interests would be united, and would satisfy all sections of the country.

Knowing the great influence of Great Britain over Mexico, largely on account of the indebtedness of the latter to English capitalists, Tyler expected that influence to be exerted to coerce Mexico to accede to a treaty which would dispossess her of Texas, New Mexico, and California to the thirty-sixth parallel, in return for which she was to receive a stipulated sum of money, to which England would be asked to contribute a certain amount, besides forcing the concession, in consideration of the surrender of our claims to Oregon north of the Columbia. Although, as the President's son and biographer expresses it, these negotiations were "too delicate to commit to paper," nevertheless there is sufficient evidence upon which to found a belief that they had progressed to a point when the formal approval of the Government of Mexico was all that was necessary to bring the affair to a satisfactory conclusion. Tyler declared in a note to Webster at this time that,

the assent of Mexico to such a treaty is all that will be wanting. The next will follow without an effort.

Adams wrote concerning a conversation with Webster on this matter:

He has a private letter from Everett [Minister to England], and one from Lord Ashburton. They will take the line of the Columbia, and let us stretch south at the expense of Mexico. Adams also records, with his characteristic candor and artlessness, that he suddenly

asked Webster if Waddy Thompson, United States Minister at Mexico, had been The instructed to negotiate for California. Secretary faltered, and said he did not know whether he could answer that question consistently with his official duty. Adams replied that his refusal to answer was a sufficient answer; and then these two great statesmen proceeded to have "warm, almost angry, words." Adams naïvely adds that he kept his own temper, but that he "pressed Webster more closely for an answer than was comfortable for him." Adams's conclusion was that such instructions had been given to Thompson.

Thompson himself wrote in 1846:—

I will not say what is our policy in regard to California. Perhaps it is that it remain in the hands of a weak power like Mexico, and that all the maritime powers may have the advantage of its ports. But one thing I will say, that it will be worth a war of twenty years to prevent England from acquiring it.

Thompson's actions at Mexico, his correspondence in regard to the expulsion of American citizens from California, together with Jones's fiasco at Monterey, all lend some probability to Adams's conjecture. President Tyler had "jocosely" charged Commodore Jones before he took command of the Pacific squadron, to "watch closely the French and British vessels, and not let them be the first to gain a presumptive right to any of the California harbors." In a subsequent conversation with Adams, Webster acknowledged that he had talked over the Oregon question with Lord Ashburton; that England wanted to come down the coast of the Pacific to the mouth of the Columbia River; and that the question had been put to Ashburton whether, if a cession from Mexico to include the port of San Francisco could be obtained, England would make any objections, and Lord Ashburton thought she would not. General Almonté, the Mexican representative at Washington, informed Adams that Webster had made a proposal for the cession by Mexico of six degrees of territory to the Pacific, including Santa Fé and Monterey. ing Santa Fé and Monterey. At the same time Almonté declared that the British consul had made an informal tender of mediation between Texas and Mexico, but that it had been rejected "with expressions of surprise." Several conferences concerning the triple agreement were now held with General Almonté, who at first,

very naturally, declined to receive the proposal, but "gradually gave way to the weight of arguments and inducements which were presented." Finally the negotiations for the "tripartite treaty" progressed so far that the matter was laid before the committees on foreign relations of the two Houses, and an appropriation was asked for a "special and extraordinary mission" to England, to which Webster was to have been appointed. By this stroke of policy, Tyler hoped at once to get Webster out of his Cabinet and conclude the tripartite treaty; but the House refused to make the appropriation, and the plan, for the time being, was dropped.

The aim during Mr. Webster's occupancy of the State Department was to secure from Mexico an extension of our southern boundary to the thirty-sixth parallel, which divides Lake Tulare into about equal parts and touches the Pacific a little north of Point Gorda, in Monterey County, The Secretary, though strongly opposed to the acquisition of any further southern territory, heartily favored this plan. In 1845, after the adoption of the resolution annexing Texas, Webster wrote to his son Fletcher:

But she [England] will doubtless now take care that Mexico shall not cede California, nor any part thereof, to us. You know my opinion to have been, and it now is, that the port of San Francisco would be twenty times as valuable to us as all Texas.

When the resignation of Webster and the tragic death of Mr. Upshur had made way for Calhoun in the State Department, negotiations for acquisition of Texas and California appear to have been renewed. The conclusions as to these later proceedings in the Tyler administration rest upon rather slender evidence; but it seems probable that Calhoun's appetite for southern territory was more voracious than that of his New England predecessor, and that he endeavored to secure an extension of our boundary to the thirty-second parallel, the present southern limit of the State. Doctor Silas Reed, who was SurveyorGeneral of Missouri and Illinois during Tyler's term, in a letter written in 1888, declared that President Tyler explained to him, in a conversation the next day after Polk's inauguration, the terms of a treaty that had been agreed upon with Mexico

and only required the ratification of the Senate to make it binding. The terms of this treaty, according to Doctor Reed, were similar to those of the treaty of Guadalupe-Hidalgo, and he draws the conclusion that when President Polk desired a projét to send with his envoy, he merely copied the identical one which Calhoun had negotiated just before Tyler's term expired. No evidence, however, could be found in the State Department by Secretary Evarts, to whom Doctor Reed wrote, showing that any such negotiations had taken place. And in spite of Reed's expressed belief that the Mexican State Department must contain a copy of the treaty, or evidence of it, a search of that Department at Mexico failed to reveal any document throwing light upon the matter. The inevitable conclusion is, that Doctor Reed, who was a strong partisan of Tyler's, depended upon a memory not faultless, in which unconsciously the terms of the actual treaty negotiated by Trist at the conclusion of the war were presented as those of the proposed treaty mentioned by President Tyler. At any rate, he was clearly mistaken in supposing that the Mexican Government had agreed either to the Webster line of the thirty-sixth parallel or the Calhoun boundary of the thirty-second. Though

it appears very likely that the American Minister at Washington had consented to Webster's proposal, and possibly to Calhoun's also, there is no reason for supposing that the negotiations had proceeded any further when they were cut short by Tyler's retirement.

By the opening of Polk's administration, the acquisition of California was a common topic of discussion, and was generally favored by both Whigs and Democrats. Even the stalwart Whig Review, though apprehensive in regard to "the spirit of conquest which seems to have seized our Government," declared that the purchase of California would not be an unwise investment; only for the sake of its ports, however, "for its soil every day grows leaner and leaner as we acquire more reliable information in regard to it." The newspapers favoring expansion, on the other hand, teemed with articles on the fertility of California, and its vast importance to the United States; but more than

all else, they laid stress on the secret designs of Great Britain to appropriate the Territory to herself, either by force or by treaty, as the prime motive for a counter movement on the part of our Government.

This fear that the most desirable and the most remote of Mexico's half-alienated provinces should wander voluntarily or be driven into the British fold, though based upon rather circumstantial evidence, was not wholly founded on mere suspicion. As early as 1843, in response to a resolution of the House of Representatives, Webster replied that there was no information in possession of the Department of State concerning any negotiations or overtures on the part of Great Britain for the acquisition of California; and in a postscript to a private letter to Webster, written after his return to England in 1844, Lord Ashburton referred to the alarm expressed when he was in America about England's supposed intentions of making a lodgment in California, and declared his belief that such a purpose was never dreamed of by anybody in England. Outside of England's traditional greed for territory and the suspicious movements of her war-ships in the Pacific, the principal reason for suspecting that she had designs on California was based on the great financial obligations of the Mexican Republic to certain English capitalists. In 1837 these debts aggregated more than fifty million dollars, and were secured by a mortgage embracing one hundred and twentyfive million acres of land situated in the Departments of Texas, Chihuahua, Sonora, and California. Provision was made by the Mexican Government in 1839, by which holders of these obligations might exchange their claim for land in any of the departments named, and settle as colonists upon their possessions. Care was exercised, however, that citizens of this country should be excluded from this privilege, lest the very scheme of colonization should be attempted which was afterward successfully carried out in both Texas and California.

Here, then, we find an explanation of the excessive influence which Great Britain exercised over Mexico, and which President Tyler endeavored to employ in the interests of the United States. Forbes, in his history, published in 1839, stated that there had been some thoughts of proposing to Mexico to cancel the whole debt in return

for a transfer of California to the creditors; and further suggested that if such a transfer took place, the creditors could be formed into a company and exercise a sort of sovereignty over the country, as the East India Company did in the Orient. Reputable English journals and periodicals, such as the London Times and the Foreign Quarterly Review, referred in very pointed terms to negotiations already entered into with Mexico for the acquisition of California, strongly advocating the proposal. It is scarcely a matter for surprise, therefore, that the Government of the United States should consider the time ripe for some definite action in regard to this fair province; so, under the vigorous, if not very discreet, management of President Polk, the curtain rose on the first act of the real drama, which was to culminate in arousing this Sleeping Beauty of the Pacific from her long repose, and in settling indisputably her status in the family of nations.

Almost the last act of the Tyler administration had been to approve the joint resolutions admitting Texas into the Union. Carrying out his previous threat, the Mexican Minister at Washington had demanded his passports. Mr. Shannon, our Minister, had left Mexico and all diplomatic intercourse had been abruptly broken off. Mexico was exceedingly sensitive over the matter. It was a critical period, when the most delicate management was necessary to prevent open rupture and hostilities between the two republics. Instead of this, however, Polk sent John Slidell to Mexico to storm the Department of Foreign Affairs, and by persistent bluster to endeavor to break down the diplomatic barriers which the Mexican Government had set up. September 17, 1845, Secretary of State Buchanan directed John Black, United States Consul at Mexico, to inquire if the Mexican Government would receive an "envoy from the United States intrusted with full power to adjust all the questions in dispute between the two Governments." Black secured an interview with Señor Peña y Peña, Minister of Foreign Affairs, and presented the inquiry of the United States. Peña requested a private interview at his own house instead of at the department, and at eight o'clock in the evening, to avoid all suspicion from those Mexicans who were bitterly opposed to opening

On

negotiations. Black went to the Minister's house, found him alone in the library, and was politely and cordially received. Peña was a man of much culture and refinement, a lawyer and jurist of distinction, and an able and patriotic statesman. His state papers are models of composition, graced with all the elegances of speech indigenous to his race and language, and when occasion requires, display thorough legal knowledge and profound statesmanship. With such an antagonist the ardent and precipitate Slidell was destined to cut but a sorry figure in diplomatic correspondence. Peña handed the consul a formal answer to his communication, in which he was informed that the Mexican Government felt disposed to receive the "commissioner of the United States, who may come . . . with full powers ... to settle the present dispute in a peaceable, reasonable, and honorable manner." He added that he hoped the commissioner would be a person endowed with the personal qualities proper to the attainment of a favorable result to the negotiations. It is rather unusual for a government in opening negotiations to specify in advance the characteristics necessary to render an envoy persona grata; but Mexico doubtless remembered Anthony Butler, and Powhatan Ellis, and Waddy Thompson, to its sorrow; and perhaps Señor Peña y Peña had some dim forebodings of the coming invasion of John Slidell, who was to prove no more diplomatic than his predecessors. It will be noticed that two words are italicized in Peña's note. The Minister agrees to receive a commissioner, not a minister, coming with full powers to settle the present dispute, not disputes. These distinctions are important, as the ultimate fate of Slidell's mission hinged upon the interpretation of Peña's phraseology.

On November 10, 1845, Secretary of State Buchanan directed Slidell to repair to his post at Mexico and present himself as "Envoy Extraordinary and Minister Plenipotentiary of the United States near the Government of Mexico." This is the formal title of a regular minister, not of a special envoy. Slidell was informed that he had been selected because of his perfect knowledge of the Spanish language, his well-known firmness and ability, and his "taste and talent for society!" He was to keep his eye on the foreign powers; to

consider the independence of Texas (the only question concerning which Mexico was willing to negotiate) as a settled fact, not to be called in question by Mexico; and to look after claims of citizens of the United States against Mexico. There was one other subject of vast importance to the United States which would demand his particular attention. From information possessed by the State Department, Buchanan informed him, it was seriously apprehended that both Great Britain and France had designs upon California. The United States did not intend to interfere between California and Mexico, yet it would vigorously interfere to prevent the Territory from becoming a French or British colony. Slidell was instructed to discover if Mexico had any designs of ceding California to any other nation. The consequences would be disastrous if all the great advantages of the bay and harbor of San Francisco should be turned against us by cession to Great Britain, our greatest commercial rival. It was doubted whether the authority of Mexico, which was merely nominal over California, would ever be reestablished, and it was the desire of the President that Slidell should use his best efforts to obtain a cession of that province to the United States. He was assured that money would be no object when compared with the value of the acquisition. After sounding the Mexican Government, if he found a prospect of success, it was declared that the President would not hesitate to authorize him to offer, in addition to the assumption of the just claims of our citizens on Mexico, twenty-five million dollars for a boundary running due west from the southern extremity of New Mexico to the Pacific Ocean; or from any other point on the western boundary of New Mexico which would embrace Monterey within our limits. If Monterey could not be obtained, he was authorized to offer twenty millions, in addition to assumption of claims, for any boundary that would include the bay and harbor of San Francisco.

Here, then, we have revealed the real object of Slidell's mission, viz., the acquisition of California. That Secretary Buchanan, an experienced diplomatist himself, had a due appreciation of the delicacy of the negotiations, if his minister had not, and perceived the difficulties in the way of

their successful conclusion, is shown by his closing words of caution. Slidell is reminded that the Mexicans are proverbially jealous; that they have been irritated against this country by recent events (annexation of Texas), and by the intrigues. of foreign powers. The Minister must not wound their national vanity. He might have to endure unjust reproaches, but he must endure all patiently. "It would be difficult to raise a point of honor," writes the Secretary, "between the United States and so feeble and distracted a power as Mexico." This would teach the Minister "to bear and forbear much" for the sake of accomplishing the great objects of his mission. Thus ran the Minister's written instructions. How well this accomplished envoy, with his "taste and talent for society," heeded these timely cautions, we shall presently see.

Con

Whatever other secret commands he received were communicated to him by President Polk himself, in a private interview, and have never been made public. cerning this interview, Slidell wrote to Buchanan that the President had enjoined him not to communicate what had been said to him to a living soul. A glimpse is caught of the commissioner's personal characteristics through the anxiety he expresses in this letter lest the fact that he had revealed the purposes of his mission to his wife might be regarded as a violation of the President's solemn injunction. He begs Buchanan to explain the matter to the President, declaring that he is sure that his wife could keep a secret, because she had not even told her mother; that he never had any secrets from her anyway; besides, she lived in the country where there was not much gossip; and at any rate, if he had been mysterious with her, she would have been shrewd enough to guess what was in the wind! Slidell was, at least, a domestic diplomatist of the first rank. That this was a bona fide mission, arranged with a profound desire for success on the part of the President, there is no good reason to doubt; that it was not a mere sham, designed only to throw dust in the eyes of the public and disguise the real purposes of the administration, is attested by the commissioner's written instructions. The failure of the mission may be ascribed with propriety, not to the connivance of Polk

nor the advice of Buchanan, but to the blundering impetuosity of the Minister himself.

Slidell arrived at Vera Cruz November 30th. The Government of Mexico, of which General Herrera was the temporary head, was at this time tottering to its fall. The revolutionary party had seized upon the Texas question to effect its overthrow. Herrera's inclination to restore friendly relations with the United States and his agreement to receive a commissioner were violently assailed. No art was spared to rouse the indignation of the susceptible people. Public feeling was wrought up to a white heat of passion. Under these circumstances it behooved Herrera's Government to act with the utmost circumspection. Slidell's precipitate arrival in the country was like a firebrand to the inflammable populace, and it flashed out in the customary denunciations and threatening demonstrations. Consul Black was instantly informed by Señor Peña that his Government was not ready to receive the commissioner; that he had not been expected until January; that his appearance at the capital at this inopportune time might prove destructive to the Government, and thus defeat the whole affair; that the opposition were denouncing the members of the existing Government as traitors for entering into negotiations with the United States; and the consul was entreated to prevent Slidell, if possible, from even disembarking at Vera Cruz, much less from coming on to the capital. But Slidell was already on his way toward the City of Mexico. Black hastened to intercept him, and at Puebla laid before him Peña's serious objections to receiving him at that crisis. Šlidell was not to be restrained, even by such an emphatic warning. He addressed a note at once to the Minister of Foreign Affairs, requesting to be informed when an interview would be granted him, and hastened onward toward the capital.

Nothing will be gained by following minutely the progress of Slidell's efforts to break into the Mexican diplomatic corps. He continued to bombard the Department of Foreign Affairs with written and verbal messages, sent through Consul Black, growing more impatient and peremptory with every rebuff. Peña courteously, but ingenuously, replied to these demands, setting forth a variety of reasons, some well-founded,