ight over tariff, slavery, and expansion in
1840-44.

While the South was coming to one opinion on the great question of
slavery, the West had been reviving her old ambitions and claims for
more lands. So long as there was plenty of free lands and wide
wildernesses, the Westerner felt that the American Republic was a free
country; but when these began to fail he imagined himself hemmed in and
stifled. In 1812 he had demanded Canada and Florida. He secured only the
latter in 1819, and that after giving up Texas. The ink was hardly dry
on the parchment of the treaty of that year before leading Westerners
began their campaign for the "reannexation" of Texas. Stephen Austin,
who settled in Texas, and Sam Houston, who deserted his wife for a home
on the distant Southwestern frontier, kept the question alive. Thousands
of Southerners and Westerners poured into the new cotton region between
1828 and 1836, and in the latter year they fought with the Mexicans the
battle of San Jacinto, which gave Texas her freedom. A new American
Republic with a pro-slavery constitution was speedily organized. Though
Van Buren evaded the issue, Calhoun and the South urged immediate
annexation.

There was thus a Southern call to the isolated President in 1842 to take
up the Texas problem. Moreover, Virginia under the apportionment of 1841
lost five Representatives in the National House; South Carolina's number
fell from nine to seven. North Carolina, Tennessee, Kentucky, and
Georgia barely held their own. The older South was distinctly losing in
the national race, despite the three-fifths rule on slavery. The
Southwest gained some members, but the Northwest was growing faster. It
was time for the South to act if she was to maintain her position in the
country. In making up his Cabinet in the autumn of 1841, and again in
filling the vacancies that occurred from time to time, the President
selected men who favored expansion in the Southwest. The leaders of the
Administration in the House of Representatives were ex-Governor Gilmer
and Henry A. Wise, of Virginia, and the spokesmen of the South generally
joined these in demanding the immediate annexation of Texas as a
Southern measure. Calhoun, though not speaking so often, was the real
leader of this cause in the Senate, and he constantly urged upon his
friends the necessity of this acquisition as a distinct aid to his
section.

Nearly all the West favored this Southern proposition; but an equally