The annexation of Texas to the United States constituted no just cause
of offense to Mexico. The pretext that it did so is wholly inconsistent
and irreconcilable with well-authenticated facts connected with the
revolution by which Texas became independent of Mexico. That this may be
the more manifest, it may be proper to advert to the causes and to the
history of the principal events of that revolution.
Texas constituted a portion of the ancient Province of Louisiana, ceded
to the United States by France in the year 1803. In the year 1819 the
United States, by the Florida treaty, ceded to Spain all that part of
Louisiana within the present limits of Texas, and Mexico, by the
revolution which separated her from Spain and rendered her an
independent nation, succeeded to the rights of the mother country over
this territory. In the year 1824 Mexico established a federal
constitution, under which the Mexican Republic was composed of a number
of sovereign States confederated together in a federal union similar to
our own. Each of these States had its own executive, legislature, and
judiciary, and for all except federal purposes was as independent of the
General Government and that of the other States as is Pennsylvania or
Virginia under our Constitution.
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