home1.gte.net ... large file, interesting, tripped over this while looking for something else ... it is quite rare to see anything like an accurate story of this in english ... one small mistake that may be a typo, the british empire outlawed slavery in 1833 [though the law was still being implemented well into 1834], not '1838' -
' The Spanish government allowed Americans to settle in Texas beginning in 1820, and the Mexican government foolishly allowed the practice to continue the next year. The deal was for only American Catholics to settle Texas, but the American whites only pretended to be Catholic. As the fake Catholics flooded in, they quickly wore out their welcome, especially as they brought African slaves with them, and Mexico opposed slavery. The whites began trying to take Texas from Mexico as early as 1826, with its Fredonian Rebellion. The rebellion caused the Mexican government to forbid more white settlement in Texas. Afraid that Mexico would abolish slavery in Texas, the white settlers revolted, and stole Texas from Mexico in 1836.
[....]
Harrison was the first president to die in office, and the Constitution was unclear about what should happen. The general thinking was that the vice president should become acting president, and call for a new election. Tyler decided to grab the throne for himself, which was bitterly denounced in his day, but his move became the precedent that America has used ever since.
Tyler was another slave-owning Virginian plantation owner, who believed that the landed aristocracy should run things. As a congressman, Tyler was against the Missouri Compromise, not wanting any restrictions on slave ownership. Another slave-owning president was an embarrassing anachronism in the West during the 1840s. The abolition movement was strong by that time. The British Empire freed all of its slaves in 1838. France was forced to by the European revolutions of 1848, leaving Latin American sugar plantations and the United States virtually alone on the world stage. About the sole feat of Tyler’s administration was bringing Texas into the national fold in 1845, something that he did in cahoots with the next president, Polk. A treaty to annex Texas was defeated in the Senate in 1844 due to the slavery issue, so Tyler and Polk fabricated a legal end-run around the abolitionists, making it so that only a majority vote was needed, instead of the two-thirds majority that the Constitution required for treaty-ratification. Tyler pushed through his strategy and signed the measure a few days before he left office.
James K. Polk took office in 1845 and immediately began planning a vigorous American expansion, to make America’s Manifest Destiny come to fruition. There were even discussions at Polk’s inaugural about buying California from Mexico. Mexico considered Texas a renegade territory, and when the United States absorbed Texas, Mexico broke off diplomatic relations with the United States, and Polk’s cohorts began immediately plotting to seize western lands from Mexico.
For hundreds of years, all references to New Spain’s province of “Tejas” delineated its western boundary as the Nueces River, something that Mexican maps confirmed. The Texas land grabbers, however, claimed that Texas extended another 150 miles westward, to the Rio Grande River, in violation of the region’s history. Mexico was understandably upset with the claims of Texas, not only becoming part of the United States, but also arbitrarily extending its boundaries another 150 miles into Mexico.
General Zachary Taylor, whose claim to fame was, as usual, killing Indians, did not even like the idea of annexing Texas, but he was ordered to lead an army to the Rio Grande and start something. The U.S. army purposely created a “border” incident to justify launching an invasion. Hitler did a similar thing to Poland, to start World War II. Before word even got back to Polk of Taylor’s successful baiting of Mexico into the trap, Polk was campaigning to his cabinet to declare war on Mexico. When news came of the expected incident, Polk immediately declared war. U.S. Congressman Abraham Lincoln, among others, heatedly contested the war declaration, calling it nothing more than a naked land grab. A young officer serving under Taylor, Ulysses S. Grant, helped lead the American army into Mexico, where the army marauded almost at will. Grant later wrote in his memoirs that he regarded the Mexican-American war as “one of the most unjust ever waged by a stronger against a weaker nation.” Disinterested historians have generally agreed with Grant’s assessment. ' |
