THE WEBSTER-ASHBURTON TREATY FORE-CASTS THE FATE OF TEXAS

By a French-born American Citizen

THE ASHBURTON TREATY, AND THE REASONS WHY IT HAS MADE THE ANNEXATION OF TEXAS POPULAR IN THE UNITED STATES

THIS is one in a series of articles published anonymously in France and America shortly after the Webster-Ashburton Treaty between Great Britain and the United States was signed three years before Texas was annexed, in 1845. It explains why the treaty was making Texas annexation a popular American issue, the reason being that Great Britain was seeking to establish a protectorate over Texas and had bamboozled America into making the Webster-Ashburton Treaty.

Prior to its ratification, England could not communicate with Canada (other than Nova Scotia) in winter because of a wedge-shaped strip of land belonging to Maine. This was ceded to Canada, the United States paying Maine and Massachusetts $300,000 as compensation.

THE news lately received from the United States, represent the popular feeling in favor of the annexation of Texas as daily gaining ground; the impulse that produces it, proceeds from a cause that begins to be felt in the Northern States, although that cause has not yet been publicly divulged. The reasons why the American press has been silent thereupon, will be easily seen through on reading the following explanation. It is now given in France, for the purpose of refuting, at once, the daily abuse belched out by the British press, concerning what it calls the grasping ambition of the United States; the cause alluded to is briefly explained underneath.

The Ashburton Treaty has enabled England to assume a threatening, and a truly formidable attitude on the Northern and Northwestern frontiers of the Federal Union. The new position created by that treaty, enables her to stir up, on a great scale, the whole of the Indian nations and tribes which have been of late years mostly concentrated west of the Mississippi, many of them with hostile feelings against the United States. Admitting the assertion as to the effect of the treaty to be true, it will be easily conceived, by looking over a chart of America, how important it is to prevent Great Britain from extending her protection to Texas, and from cementing with that country a connection akin to the one she established formerly with Portugal; it would, undoubtedly, enable her to control altogether the Gulf of Mexico; and it would give her an entering wedge to scatter her emissaries among the Indian tribes as far up as Lake Michigan, and thereby encircle with enemies the whole of the western frontier of the Union from North to South, which enemies would rise up at her bidding; and in order to demonstrate the strict truth of the above assertion, as to the dangerous consequences of the Ashburton Treaty, I am going to set forth, as clearly and as forcibly as I possibly can, the position of England before the treaty, and compare it with what it is now, and what it may be within a short time.

In the month of November, 1837, a general rising of the people of Canada took place against the Colonial Government. The river St. Lawrence was then bound in icy fetters, and the news reached England through the United States, as no part of Canada can be approached from sea in winter time. Halifax, in Nova Scotia, is the only harbor that has a free communication with England all the year round; but Halifax, before the Ashburton Treaty, could not communicate with Canada, on account of a strip of land belonging to the State of Maine, which stretched so far North in those uncultivated and dreary regions as to prevent the possibility of its being turned. The result was, that England, notwithstanding her large standing army and her numerous fleets, could not send a single regiment to strengthen the garrison. The St. Lawrence did not open until the end of the month of May, and England would no doubt have lost, forever, her colony; if local causes had not enabled the Colonial Government to get over their adversaries without any material aid from the metropolis.

Anterior to the Ashburton Treaty, the Northern and Western frontiers of the Union were comparatively safe, as, in case of war, Canada was actually cut out from England seven months out of twelve. It was then annually dependant on the United States for supplies and intelligence from abroad that is, from the month of November to the month of May. The Ashburton Treaty has brought about a complete change. That part of the State of Maine which England had been so long coveting, for the purpose of opening a short and easy communication between Halifax and Canada, having been given up to her by the United States, a military road has already been completed; a railway is even talked of, and now, the British Ministry can send direct, despatches, emissaries, ammunitions, troops, &c., whenever it suits them, in winter as well as in summer. It must be taken into consideration, besides, that England keeps in North America, since the treaty, a garrison of twelve thousand men, which is nearly double the number of the whole regular American army, while in 1837 she had hardly three thousand! England has now completed such a compact and powerful organization in Canada, that she can, through the means of her steam navy on the Lakes, annoy and harass the American Union on a frontier extending three thousand miles.

But what ought to be considered the most dangerous features of this new position, is the rapidity wherewith instructions may be transmitted from London to Montreal. Celerity in war movements is well known to be the most energetic promoter of success, and the British Ministers might now, in the space of a few weeks, organize a plan of operations with the incalculable advantage of being able to superintend its execution, details, and progress, almost daily, from Downing street, in London, through expeditious steamers from England to Halifax; and the whole available force of Great Britain might thus be brought to act wherever it would be thought to be the most effective.

The Colonial authorities in Canada succeeded in the last war, with limited means, to stir up against the Americans some of the Indian tribes, which waged on the borders a war of extermination, without distinction of age or sex. Now that we can appreciate the extent and efficiency of the means at the disposal of England, we may form some idea of the extension she might give to such a cruel and barbarous warfare. Well, if England, over and above the powerful means that the Ashburton Treaty has supplied her with, was to succeed besides to draw Texas under her protection, and was thereby, as a matter of course, to control the Gulf of Mexico, she might, it appears obvious, stir up simultaneously an Indian war all along the extensive Western frontiers, and at the same time, a war of revolted slaves at the South; which war of all others, is the most dangerous to the American Confederacy. To break asunder the Republican Union, has been the secret aim at which British machinations have been directed ever since 1815. This is the aim she had in view when she lavished so much money to abolish slavery in her Colonies on the coast of America.

It is needless, no doubt, to enter into further developments. Every intelligent reader understands now the reasons why the annexation of Texas has become so popular. The Ashburton Treaty has made it an event of sheer necessity for the protection of the American Confederacy; so much so, indeed, that many individuals in the Northern States, who at first opposed annexation on account of honest and conscientious scruples about slavery, admit now, after a more comprehensive view of the subject, the urgency of immediate annexation.

But many people will probably exclaim, how is it that the American Government has been drawn into the discreditable cession of a passage whereof the consequences might be so disastrous? I confine myself to-day to prove the fact the following remarks will, however, account for the silence of the American press. The fed attorney of Baring & Co. was Secretary of State, and was the American negotiator of the disgraceful treaty. President Tyler was so situated with his Whig Cabinet, that he was drawn into signing it over two-thirds of both the Whig and Democratic Senators were equally guilty in voting for its ratification. Most of the influential presses took sides in its favor, some of them biased by their political leaders, others through mere corrupt influence. These circumstances, and the general disgust they created, explain the sullen silence of the great mass of the community on that infamous treaty.