Union came, not from slavery, but from abolitionism. This misconception was no doubt nourished by the attacks made upon him by the abolitionists, and he in turn made every possible effort to discredit them with the Northern people. There is among his preserved correspondence a curious letter in which he suggested to a pamphleteer, arguments to be addressed to the laboring men of the North, — how immediate emancipation would bring the labor of the blacks into competition with the labor of the whites; how it would degrade labor generally; and how the tendency would be toward the social intermingling and intermarrying of white and black laboring people, and so on. While he made such preposterous attempts to stem the current, the great event which, in its consequences, was to bring the slavery question to its final crisis, and which finally opened Clay's eyes too as to the true source of danger, was pressing toward its consummation.
In 1837 the Texan government proposed to Van Buren the annexation of Texas to the United States, but Van Buren declined. Eight Northern legislatures formally protested against annexation. For the settlement of the claims against Mexico an arbitration treaty was concluded in 1839; but when in 1842 the term of the arbitration commission expired, many claims were still unadjusted. It was suspected that they were purposely kept an open sore.
The annexation of Texas became one of Tyler's
