CHAPTER XX.
In the diary of John Quincy Adams, recently published, is this record under date of March 29, 1843; at which time, as a member of the House of Representatives from Massachusetts, he, as ex-President, was opposing President Tyler's plan for the annexation of Texas to the United States. Mr. Adams says: "With the commencement of my administration I appointed Poinsett Minister to Mexico, and Mr. Clay instructed him to propose the purchase of Texas. This they declined; but two years after, the proposition was renewed." In the same diary, under date of April 18th, three weeks later, Mr. Adams records, as to an act of his administration: " Poinsett, under instruction from H. Clay, approved by me, had proposed and urged the purchase of Mexico for one million dollars." Another record states that Spain was sounded as to the purchase of Cuba, but that the Spanish Government, taking alarm, secured the remonstrance of England, and the threat of war, should forcible means be used to bring Cuba into the American Union. This revelation of what was in the mind of President Monroe when through Adams, as his Secretary of State, he announced the Monroe doctrine, or rather what was in the mind of Mr. Adams, is most suggestive as to the distinction between the statesman and the politician. It certainly prepares the student of Houston's life to judge his character for wisdom and integrity in the history of events which brought that same Texas twenty years later into the Union, with Sam Houston as its special representative in the Senate.
For eighteen years, closing with his second term in the House of Representatives, in March, 1827, Houston, becoming first Governor of Tennessee, then an exile among the Indians west of the Mississippi, and then the hero of Texas, had no other connection with the United States Government than as a delegate from the Arkansas Indians, and then as negotiator for the annexation of Texas. A complicated succession of events must have come over the affairs of the United States Government during that brief period, in order that Mr. Adams, a leading actor meanwhile in all those affairs, should be led to make this ingenuous statement of facts as to his
(187)
