WRITINGS OF SAM HOUSTON, 1846
477
ten years between Mexico and Texas; and it had been declared in advance on the part of Mexico, when the question of the annexa- tion of Texas to the United States was agitated, that if that annexation took place the war would not only be continued against Texas, but war would be proclaimed also against the United States. The war had continued to be prosecuted against Texas, and Texas having in the meantime become a portion of the United States, the Government of the United States was now placed in the situation occupied heretofore by Texas in relation to Mexico. War, there- fore, in his judgment, unquestionably existed between Mexico and the United States. It had been extended to the United States by the declaration of the Mexican Government, and had been continued and renewed by the recent acts of that Government- acts of outrage and violence committed upon the United States troops within that territory, from which they had declared they would expel the citizens of Texas as intruders and rebels. Texas having been annexed to the United States in the face of these declarations on the part of Mexico, and in the face of the existing war, he would ask what circumstances had occurred since the annexation which had at all changed the nature of those relations, and rendered them peaceful? He apprehended that those rela- tions had not changed; and if they had not changed, the United States and Mexico were unquestionably in a state of war, Mexico being yet engaged in an aggressive war upon the State of,Texas, one of the States of this Union. The United States was therefore, placed precisely in the situation in which Texas had been for the last ten years, subject to the aggressions, incursions, inroads, attacks, and outrages of the Mexican forces, acting in obedience to the commands of the constitutional authorities of the Mexican Government. Could any doubt exist that they were in fact and truth in a state of war? In his conscience he could not resist the conviction that they were as virtually, as effectually in a state of war, as if Mexico had six weeks ago declared war expressly against the United States. Ten years ago Mexico commenced hostilities against Texas; there were temporary suspensions of hostilities, but the war was renewed from time to time; those cessations of arms we1:e from time to time interrupted by renewed declarations of war and extermination against the inhabitants of Texas. How long was it necessary, then, to pause and consider whether there was war or not? How long was the Congress of the United States to ponder? Were they to regard the declara- tions of Mexico, pronounced by the chief officer or usurper of her
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