dministration had been adverse to annexation,
and rumour credited him with unabated hostility. To force him into the
open, therefore, William H. Hammit, a member of Congress from
Mississippi, addressed him a letter on the 27th of March, 1844. "I am
an unpledged delegate to the Baltimore convention," wrote Hammit, "and
it is believed that a full and frank declaration of your opinion as to
the constitutionality and expediency of immediately annexing Texas
will be of great service to the cause, at a moment so critical of its
destiny."[327] Van Buren held this letter until the 20th of April,
thirty-seven days before the meeting of the convention. When he did
reply he recalled the fact that in 1837, after an exhaustive
consideration of the question, his administration had decided against
annexation, and that nothing had since occurred to change the
situation; but that if, after the subject had been fully discussed, a
Congress chosen with reference to the question showed that the popular
will favoured it, he would yield. It was a letter of great length,
elaborately discussing every point directly or indirectly relating to
the subject.

[Footnote 327: Jabez D. Hammond, _Political History of New York_, Vol.
3, p. 441.]

Van Buren deeply desired the nomination, and if the South supported
him he was practically certain of it. It was in view of the necessity
of such support that Van Buren's letter has been pronounced by a
recent biographer "one of the finest and bravest pieces of political
courage, and deserves from Americans a long admiration."[328] Such
eulogy is worthily bestowed if Van Buren, at the time of the Hammit
letter, fully appreciated the gravity of the situation; but there is
no evidence that he understood the secret and hostile purpose which
led up to the Hammit inquiry, and the letter itself is evidence that
he sought to conciliate the Southern wing of his party. Charles Jared
Ingersoll of Pennsylvania, in his diary of May 6, 1844, declares that
nearly all of Van Buren's admirers and most of the Democratic press
were even then committed to annexation. Nevertheless, Van Buren and
his trusted advisers could not have known of the secret plotting of
Buchanan's and Cass's followers, or of the deception shrewdly
practised by Cave Johnson of Tennessee, ostensibly a confidential
friend, but really a leader in the plot to defeat Van Buren.[329]
Besides, the sentiment of the country unmistakably recognised that
powerful a