The coJonists of Texas being American citizens, at no time wislied to remain a separate and independant nation.
Their highest aspiration was to see their lone star admitted into the American constellation. The slave-holders also were adverse to the rise of a small independent State on their southern borders—a State that in time might form a barrier to the progress of slavery. It was the policy of the Texans to stimulate the desire of the slave-holders for annexation, and hence within fifteen days after the decla- ration of independence, they adopted a constitution giving the rights of citizenship to all white emigrants, after a residence of six months, authorizing emigrants to bring their slaves with them, and renderino^ human bondagfe perpetual, by depriving the legislature of the power to abolish it. A boon was held out to the breeding States, by granting them the monopoly of the Texan market, the importation of slaves being prohibited, except from the United States. Free negroes and mulattoes, it is well known, are regarded by the slave-holders as a dangerous population. In Texas, no colonization society was needed to remove such nuisances from the country. By the Con- stitution, every negro and every mulatto, now or in future, remaining on the soil of Texas, was doomed to bondage.
There was still one more lure held out to the South. INIr.
Benton had calculated that nine slave States might be carved out of Texas ; but his %ision of the future was con- fined to the Mexican province of that name. The Ameri5* can instirgents, however, resolved to offer to the slave- holdmg interest, not a single province only, but parts of Coahuila,