ot been
encouraged and supported by a local interest which predominated in the
councils of the nation. With no desire to establish arbitrary power in
the person of the chief magistrate of the Union, the slave-holders of
the South instinctively perceived the identity of Jackson's interests
with their own, and gave zeal and intensity to his support. The
acquisition of the province of Texas, and its introduction into the
Union as a slave state, with the prospective design of forming out of
its territories four or five slave states, was a project in which they
knew Jackson's heart was deeply engaged, and for the advancement of
which he had peculiar qualifications.

Such was the true basis of that extraordinary show of popularity which
Jackson's second election as President indicated. Accordingly, his first
measures were directed to the acquisition of Texas. These, as Mr. Adams
said at the time, "were kept profoundly secret," but at this day they
are clear and evident. The Florida treaty was accepted with approbation
and joy by the government and people of the United States, under the
administration of Mr. Monroe. But the extension of its boundaries to the
Colorado, which had been hoped for during the negotiation of that treaty
between Mr. Adams and Onis, was not attained. Afterwards, during the
Presidency of Mr. Adams, when every engine in the South and West was set
at work to depreciate his character, and destroy his popularity, John
Floyd, of Virginia, in an address to his constituents, attributed the
relinquishment of our claim to Texas to him, and said he had thus
deprived the South of acquiring two or more slave states. The same
charge was brought against him by Thomas H. Benton, of Missouri, who
afterwards, when apprized of the facts, openly acknowledged, in the
Senate of the United States, that it was unjust, and an error. The
calumny had the effect for which it was fabricated; for Mr. Adams, out
of respect for those through whose constitutional influence he had
abandoned that claim, disdained to defend himself by publishing the
truth.

The facts were, that slavery not being then permitted in Mexico, and the
project of introducing it, by the annexation of Texas, not being yet
developed, Mr. Adams deemed the extension of the territory of the United
States to the Colorado so important, that when Onis absolutely refused
to accede, he declined further negotiation, declaring that he would not
renew it on any other groun