pawning of Texas until repaid, which insidious proposal was meant to fill the country of Texas with Anglo-Americans and slaves, and to hold it after in any event."
The failure of Mr. Poinsett to obtain from Mexico a stipulation to surrender fugitive slaves, gave a new stimu- lus to the eflforts of the slaveholders to possess themsel\^es of Texas CHAPTER II INDEPENDENCE OF TEXAS.
The insurrectionary efforts under Long and Edwards having failed, the Colony under Austin having yielded as yet no aid to the slaveholding interest in the United States, all hopes of acquiring Texas by purchase being now abandoned, and no pretext for war with Mexico ex- isting, the slaveholders, as a last,, resort, determined to effect the separation of the Province from the Mexican Republic, as a necessary preliminary to annexation. Coming events were thus shadowed forth in an article pub- hshed in 1830, in the Arkansas Gazette: " No hopes need be entertained of our acquiring Texas (by purchase)
until some party more friendly to the United States than the present, shall predominate in Mexico ; and perhaps not until the Peojile of Texas shall throw off allegiance to that government, which they will no doubt do, so soon as they have a reasonable pretext for doing so. At present they are probably subject to as few exactions and impositions as any people under the sun." It will be observed that the writer takes for granted that we shall acquire Texas, as soon as the American settlers shall have a pretext for revolting from Mexico. At a Congressional election held about this time in the State of Mississippi, the following interrogatories were addressed to certain of the candi- dates—"Your opinion of the acquisition of Texas, and how—whether by force or treaty ; and whether the law* • Passed by Mexico in 1830, and repealed in 1833 preventing the emigration of Americans is not evidence of apprehension that that province wishes to secede from the Mexican Government, and whether,