Authors:
Historic Era:
Historic Theme:
Subject:
February/March 1986 | Volume 37, Issue 2
Authors:
Historic Era:
Historic Theme:
Subject:
February/March 1986 | Volume 37, Issue 2
From the moment he entered the White House in March 1829, Andrew Jackson of Tennessee turned a cold and calculating eye on Texas. Sitting in his study on the second floor of the mansion, maps strewn around the room, the white-haired, sharp-featured, cadaverous President breathed a passion for Texas that was soon shared by other Americans.
Old Hickory always believed—or so he said—that Texas had been acquired by the United States as part of the Louisiana Purchase in 1803 and then had been recklessly thrown away when “that old scamp J. Q. Adams” negotiated the Florida treaty with Spain in 1819 and agreed to the Sabine River as the western boundary of the country. The claim was questionable at the very least, but many Southerners, outraged by Northern reaction to the slavery issue during the debates over the admission of Missouri and chagrined over the institution’s prohibition in the Louisiana Territory north of 36° 30’, decided to press it anyway.
The loss of Texas by virtue of the Florida treaty dismayed some Americans. It infuriated Jackson. “How infatuated must have been our councils who gave up the rich country of Texas,” he wrote. Such action, in his mind, verged on treason. And why had it happened? “It surely must have been with the view to keep the political ascendence in the North, and east,” he fumed, “& cripple the rising greatness of the West.” No matter. He would attend to it at the first opportunity. And indeed he did—or tried to. “I have long since been aware of the importance of Texas to the United States,” he wrote a friend just a few months after taking office as President, “and of the real necessity of extending our boundary west of the Sabine.... I shall keep my eye on this object & the first propitious moment make the attempt to regain the Territory as far south & west as the great Desert.”
All his attempts at acquiring Texas proved feeble, however, mostly because he had assigned a freewheeling, fast-talking, double-dealing incompetent to represent the United States in Mexico. Col. Anthony Butler made numerous “diplomatic” efforts to purchase Texas from Mexico, and when those failed, he turned to bribery. “I have just had a very singular conversation with a Mexican,” he wrote Jackson in October of 1833, and this Mexican “has much influence with the Presidt. Genl. St. Anna.” The Mexican had bluntly asked Butler, “Have you command of Money?”
“Yes, I have money,” Butler responded.
The price would be high, said the Mexican, in excess of half a million dollars. The Mexican himself required two or three hundred thousand, and Butler allowed that “there are others amongst whom it may become necessary to distribute 3 or 4 Hundred thousand more.”
“Can you command that Sum?” the Mexican demanded.
“Yes,” Butler assured him.
He was wrong. “I have read your confidential letter with care, and astonishment,” a furious Jackson replied, ”...astonishment that you would entrust