was elected, and rewarded the misplaced confidence by making Robert
J. Walker his Secretary of the Treasury, and, largely through that
great Free Trader's exertions, secured a repeal by Congress of the
Protective Tariff of 1842 and the enactment of the ruinous Free Trade
Tariff of 1846. Had Clay carried New York, his election was secure. As
it happened, Polk had a plurality in New York of but 5,106 in an immense
vote, and that slim plurality was given to him by the Abolitionists
throwing away some 15,000 on Birney. And thus also it curiously
happened that it was the Abolition vote which secured the election of
the candidate who favored immediate annexation and the extension of the
Slave Power!

Emboldened and apparently sustained by the result of the election, the
Slave Power could not await the inauguration of Mr. Polk, but proceeded
at once, under whip and spur, to drive the Texas annexation scheme
through Congress; and two days before the 4th of March, 1845, an Act
consenting to the admission of the Republic of Texas as a State of the
Union was approved by President Tyler.

In that Act it was provided that "New States of convenient size, not
exceeding four in number, in addition to the said State of Texas, and
having sufficient population, may hereafter, by the consent of said
State, be formed out of the territory thereof, which shall be entitled
to admission under the provisions of the Federal Constitution; and such
States as may be formed out of that portion of said territory lying
south of thirty-six degrees thirty minutes north latitude, commonly
known as the Missouri Compromise line, shall be admitted into the Union
with or without Slavery, as the people of each State asking admission
may desire. And in such State or States as shall be formed out of said
territory north of said Missouri Compromise line, Slavery or involuntary
servitude (except for crime) shall be prohibited." As has been lucidly
stated by another,--[Greeley's History]--"while seeming to curtail and
circumscribe Slavery north of the above parallel (that of 36 30' north
latitude), this measure really extended it northward to that parallel,
which it had not yet approached, under the flag of Texas, within
hundreds of miles. But the chief end of this sham Compromise was the
involving of Congress in an indirect indorsement of the claim of Texas
to the entire left bank of the Rio Grande, from its mouth to its source;
and this was effected."