In order, however, to check what the British minister called "their usual system of evasion," a satisfactory reply of some kind within three weeks was to be required, and should it not be made without "unnecessary" delay, Ellis, after giving a fortnight's notice, was to withdraw" In October Monasterio, after delaying for weeks to answer Ellis, admitted that his predecessors had neglected this business, and promised he would give his first attention to our claims, many of which, as we know, were very simple, very old and very familiar to the foreign office; but his reply, the following month, was mere evasion. Why, asked Ellis, have not the claims presented during the past ten years been either accepted or rejected? But the mystery was not explained, and at the end of December, 1836—after waiting, not three weeks, but three months—he withdrew. Meanwhile Gorostiza distributed among the diplomats at Washington a pamphlet in which he accused our government of grossly dishonorable conduct in regard to Texas; and the unqualified approval of his superiors turned this impropriety into a grave international issue.[1]
President Jackson had originally felt most sympathetic toward Mexico; and although Butler and Ellis agreed that indulgence was a mistaken policy, and her official journal described all Americans as villains and all our claims as the pretexts of smugglers, yet in a Message of December, 1836, Jackson recommended courtesy and great forbearance. The evasions practised upon Ellis, however, and still more the approval of Gorostiza's insulting pamphlet, sharpened his feelings, and early in February, 1837, he laid the subject of our claims anew before Congress, as it was his right and his duty to do, proposed to make the next demand for settlement from the deck of a warship, and asked for authority to undertake reprisals in case that step also should prove intellectual. 1n the official view of Mexico, Gaines's advance and Gorostiza's withdrawal from Washington amounted to a formal rupture, even though Castillo, her ordinary representative, lingered in the United States until March; and in our own official opinion the endorsement of Gorostiza's conduct, the refusal to examine our claims, and the return of Ellis could signify hardly less. Under such circumstances Jackson's February Message was perfectly normal and proper.[2]
