That this attitude of mind and these unscholarly habits often were his undoing, was inevitable.  He was often betrayed by fallacies and hasty inferences.  The speech before us illustrates this lamentable mental defect.  With the utmost assurance Douglas pointed out that Texas had actually extended her jurisdiction over the debatable land between the Nueces and the Rio Grande, fixing by law the times of holding court in the counties of San Patricio and Bexar.  This was in the year 1838.  The conclusion was almost unavoidable that when Texas came into the Union, her actual sovereignty extended to the Rio Grande.  But further examination would have shown Douglas, that the only inhabited portion of the so-called counties were the towns on the right bank of the Nueces:  beyond, lay a waste which was still claimed by Mexico.  Was he misinformed, or had he hastily selected the usable portion of the evidence?  Once again, in his eagerness to show that Mexico, so recently as 1842, had tacitly recognized the Rio Grande as a boundary in her military operations, he controverted his own argument that Texas had been in undisturbed possession of the country.  He corroborated the conviction of those who from the first had asserted that, in annexing Texas, the United States had annexed a war.  This from the man who had formerly declared that the danger of war was remote, because there had been no war between Mexico and Texas for nine years!

Before a vote could be reached on the Ten Regiments bill, the draft of the Mexican treaty had been sent to the Senate.  What transpired in executive session and what part Douglas sustained in the discussion of the treaty, may be guessed pretty accurately by his later admissions.  He was one of an aggressive minority who stoutly opposed the provision of the fifth article of the treaty, which was to this effect:  “The boundary-line established by this article shall be religiously respected by each of the two republics, and no change shall ever be made therein except by the express and free consent of both nations, lawfully given by the general government of each, in conformity with its own Constitution.”  This statement was deemed a humiliating avowal that the United States had wrongfully warred upon Mexico, and a solemn pledge that we would never repeat the offense.  The obvious retort was that certain consciences now seemed hypersensitive about the war.  However that may be, eleven votes were recorded for conscience’ sake against the odious article.

This was not the only ground of complaint.  Douglas afterward stated the feeling of the minority in this way:  “It violated a great principle of public policy in relation to this continent.  It pledges the faith of this Republic that our successors shall not do that which duty to the interests and honor of the country, in the progress of events, may compel them to do.”  But he hastened to add that he meditated no aggression upon Mexico.  In short, the Republic,—­such was his hardly-concealed thought,—­might again fall out with its imbecile neighbor and feel called upon to administer punishment by demanding indemnity.  There was no knowing what “the progress of events” might make a national necessity.[243]