Note 11 — IX THE UNITED STATES MEETS THE CRISIS May—July, 1846

Livermore, for example, argued in this way (War, 15): Texas was annexed for the protection of Southern institutions; the war with Mexico resulted from the annexation of Texas; therefore the war with Mexico was due to the slaveholders’ interest in slavery. But both of his premises need qualification; and the conclusion, so far as it suggests that the war was the necessary and designed consequence of the slaveholders’ action in the Texas matter, does not follow. The abolitionists were enthusiastic, earnest, and on the outside of things. Hence they were naturally and almost unavoidably over-suspicious. Von Holst (U. S., iii, 302) says that the radical wing of the southern Democratic party openly avowed that the war with Mexico was a southern war; but was not Calhoun the leader and prophet of that wing? A few public men, the Charleston Patriot and Courier, and the Federal Union of Alabama looked upon the war as for the interest of the South; but it does not appear that they had any appreciable influence in bringing it about.