Texas, on certain conditions. The permission was granted, as is said, on the representation df Austin, that Catholics Avere oppressed in the United States, and it was agreed that all the settlers to be introduced by him, should be of the oppressed religion. Austin dying, the grant was in 1823, renewed to his son, who commenced a colony on the Brazos, with emigrants from Tennessee, Mississippi, and Louisiana. By the renewed grant, the settlers, it is asserted, were to be' exclusively Catholics;
but whatever was their creed in other respects, they were behevers in the right of man to hold property in man, and accordingly carried their slaves with them.
In 1826, a body of emigrants from the United States, settled about Nacogdoches, again raised the standard of insurrection under a man of the name of Edwards, and published a declaration of independence. They were, however, soon crushed by the Mexican forces.
At the date of the boundary treaty, Mexico was a * Speech of Mr. Severance in H. of R., Feb. 4, 1847.
slaveholding country, and its near propinquity to our own settlements, was on that account viewed with less jealousy by southern statesmen.
The planters, as we have seen, might cross the line with their slaves, and pursue the cultivation of sugar and cotton ; nor was any difficulty apprehended with regard to the recovery of fugitives slaves from the States.
These border relations were, however, changed by a decree of the Mexican Congress of 13th July, 1824, prohibiting the introduction of slaves from foreign coun- tries. The Mexican Constitution, adopted the same year, declared that no person should hereafter be horn a slave ;
thus providing for the gradual but total abolition of slavery throughout the Republic.