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recital would be to justify our government in commencing a war. If the argument is not valid for this, it cannot be for any purpose. But we are immediately told that Mexico bethe war, gan that we made every effort to avoid it, and that it was forced upon us by her invasion. Through many pages government is laboring to justify an act, which it is all the while insisting that it did not commit. These two strings were badly out of tune, and the performance on them together produced a horrible discord.

We shall not consume the time of our reader in proving that it was a crime for a great nation to make war upon a weak and distracted state upon such pretexts as these. The payment of her debt by Mexico had been suspended for about two years. The claims of our citizens on France for her spoliations remained neglected by that government for twenty years, and were at last amicably settled.

We have seen that in accordance with national usage, and with the far higher obligations of justice and magnanimity, the United States, instead of visiting Mexico with their vengeance, on account of her refusal to receive

their minister, should have yielded to her just and proper demand.

A quarrelsome people seeking a cause for hostility, a tyrant wanting an excuse for blood, an ambitious and selfish government envying its neighbor her possessions, and watching an opportunity to despoil her of them, might take up with such imagined provocation. But that a christian government, a friend of peace, a free enlightened people, should go to war on such pretexts as these, should use such language as we have read, and adopt such measures as we have witnessed, is as incomprehensible as it is disgraceful.

But war with Mexico was not the only object of the movement to the Rio Grande. It was indeed its great ultimate end, but there was an incidental object which it was designed to effect, with the meanness of which the act of commencing war upon frivolous pretexts can aspire to no rivalry.

We shall show, that the object of the advance to that river was not only to involve this country in a war with Mexico, but was part of a deliberate contrivance to bring the

war about in such a manner as to throw on Mexico the odium of its commencement.

The facts of the case present a strange enigma. This hostile act was committed with an eagerness which led to an unconstitutional assumption of power by the executive. That it was aware of the unconstitutionality of this order, is evident from the fact which we have already seen, that to conceal its character a deliberate falsehood was told to congress and the people.

The secretary of state informed Mr. Slidell, as we have seen, that, having ordered the army to the Rio Grande, the president would be enabled to act with vigor and promptitude the moment that congress should give him authority. The army encamps on the bank of the Rio Grande. The minister is rejected. Congress remains in session ready to receive any communication from the executive. But that officer never asks for authority. Nearly two months elapse, but the executive, who was to act with such vigor and promptitude, remains entirely inactive. The army meanwhile has sat quietly down on acknowledged Mexican soil, blocka

ding her harbors, and threatening one of her cities, but instructed not to molest her posts and citizens, not to strike the first blow.

Why was this strange silence? There can be only one explanation. The purpose of the executive was accomplished when the army took up its position on the Rio Grande. It was not sent there to act, but to provoke a blow. The case admits of no other supposition. The presence of the army accomplished no other object. Time has failed to disclose to us any other object for which it could have been sent there and maintained there, in the manner that it was.

The most favorable interpretation that can be put on Mr. Buchanan's dispatches to Mr. Slidell is, that the army was sent to the Rio Grande for the purpose of intimidation. This object failed. Mr. Slidell was rejected. Government knew it. He was ordered home, but the army was not moved. Of course the gov ernment who kept it there had something for it to do. It could no longer serve to intimidate, it could only irritate and provoke. The executive must have known that hostilities would be the inevitable consequence of its

presence. Then to incite Mexico to war must have been the design of the movement.

If the antecedent circumstances of the case admit of no other conclusion than this, those which follow establish its truth beyond a question.

During this "masterly inactivity" the plot was ripening. The carefully laid train was burning up to the mine. Mexico, having received injuries which would arouse the spirit of a slave, having seen hostilities committed against her on account of the "urgent necessity to defend that portion of our country," which no nation on earth would have endured, finally declares her determination to prosecute the hostilities which the United States had commenced, and sends her army across the Rio Grande to attack the invaders.

On the receipt of this intelligence, the executive sends a war message to congress. "Mexico," it declares, "has passed the boundary of the United States, has invaded our territory, and shed American blood on American soil;" and it calls upon the nation to punish this outrage, and to prosecute to "an honorable peace" the war thus "forced upon us."

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