st, but not
least, their irritation at those laws which abolished slavery, and which
from the beginning they had always broken and always meant to break,
would have sundered a far stronger chain than ever bound them to the
land of their adoption. When the centralized constitution of 1835 came
into force, their discontent ripened into open rebellion. In the light
of our own bitter experience, with the inception and growth of our own
civil war open for our instruction, few Northern men will doubt that
this was the infant Secession whose full-grown power we are breasting.
That there were some real grievances we may allow; for, with so many
shifting governments, there could hardly have failed to be some
injustice and some oppressive measures or deeds. That, with the
essential difference of feeling, character, and habits which existed
between the two people, disturbances must sooner or later have arisen,
we may also allow. But, after all, one of the most powerful motives for
rebellion was love of slavery. Mexico stood a bar to the establishment
of that new and powerful Slave State which was the dream not only of the
Texan, but perhaps even more of the statesmen and leaders of the extreme
South. If Mexico became a powerful government, all the more would she be
an insuperable bar to such a project. However much, then, the Texans may
have desired a separate State existence, and however little they may
have liked the establishment of a great central power, their fear was
not so much that the strong government would oppress them as that it
might grow strong enough to force them to cease oppressing others.
There were Mexican laws which they never had obeyed, never intended to
obey, and which by the aid of State existence they had always succeeded
in evading. And now, when the progress of events and the strengthening
of the central authority threatened as never before the cherished
institution, like their compeers, they took their stand on the same
battle-ground of State Rights. We repeat, that other influences and real
wrongs no doubt helped them to this conclusion. What was the exact power
of each particular influence no one can tell. But, back of all
influences, a baneful spirit and motive, was the love of slavery and the
desire to perpetuate it. Their independence achieved, the Texans did not
know what to do with it. Few in numbers, burdened with debt, harassed on
the one side by the wild Camanches and Apaches, and on the other b