She claimed also those limits which her constitution had declared and marked out as the proper limits of Texas.  This was her claim, and when she was admitted into the United States, the United States did not define her territory.  They admitted her as she was.  We took her as she defined her own limits, and with the power of making four additional slave States.  I say “we,” but I do not mean that I was one; I mean the United States admitted her.

What, then, was the state of things in 1850?  There was Texas claiming all, or a great part, of that which the United States had acquired from Mexico as New Mexico.  She claimed that it belonged to her by conquest and by her admission into the United States, and she was ready to maintain her claim by force of arms.  Nor was this all.  A man must be ignorant of the history of the country who does not know, that, at the commencement of 1850, there was great agitation throughout the whole South.  Who does not know that six or seven of the largest States of the South had already taken measures looking toward secession; were preparing for disunion in some way?  They concurred apparently, at least some of them, with Texas, while Texas was prepared or preparing to enforce her rights by force of arms.  Troops were enlisted by her, and many thousand persons in the South disaffected towards the Union, or desirous of breaking it up, were ready to make common cause with Texas; to join her ranks, and see what they could make in a war to establish the right of Texas to New Mexico.  The public mind was disturbed.  A considerable part of the South was disaffected towards the Union, and in a condition to adopt any course that should be violent and destructive.

What then was to be done, as far as Texas was concerned?  Allow me to say, Gentlemen, there are two sorts of foresight.  There is a military foresight, which sees what will be the result of an appeal to arms; and there is also a statesmanlike foresight, which looks not to the result of battles and carnage, but to the results of political disturbances, the violence of faction carried into military operations, and the horrors attendant on civil war.  I never had a doubt, that, if the administration of General Taylor had gone to war, and had sent troops into New Mexico, the Texan forces would have been subdued in a week.  The power on one side was far superior to all the power on the other.  But what then?  What if Texan troops, assisted by thousands of volunteers from the disaffected States, had gone to New Mexico, and had been defeated and turned back?  Would that have settled the boundary question?  Now, Gentlemen, I wish I had ten thousand voices.  I wish I could draw around me the whole people of the United States, and I wish I could make them all hear what I now declare on my conscience as my solemn belief, before the Power who sits on high, and who will judge you and me hereafter, that, if this Texan controversy had not been settled by Congress in the manner it