Whigs of the Old Northwest and Texas Annexation, 1836April, 1844

TLDR: In this paper, the authors focus on four states of the United States: Ohio, Indiana, Illinois, and Michigan, focusing on the reaction of the Whig Party to the proposed annexation of Texas.

Abstract: Following congressional rejection of the Texas annexation treaty in the spring of 1844, the question of the accession of Texas became one of many campaign issues, and arguments pro and con were ab sorbed into the rhetoric of the quadrennial presidential race. An nexation proposals prior to the presentation of the Tyler treaty in April, 1844, and the responses to them, however, form a unity which merit examination apart from the events surrounding and subsequent to the treaty itself.1 This study of these prior proposals is limited geographically to four states of the Old Northwest: Ohio, Indiana, Illinois, and Michigan. Chronologically, it covers the period 1836 to April, 1844, from President Andrew Jackson's first attempt to ac quire Texas to President John Tyler's presentation to the United States Senate of a formal treaty. Topically, it focuses upon Whig reactions in these states and the rhetoric and actions as expressed by their journalists, members of state legislatures, and congressmen. The first section of this study treats of annexation attempts prior to January, 1838, when South Carolina Democratic Senator William Preston presented an annexation resolution to the Senate. Then re actions to the Preston resolution in the Old Northwest, culminating in the Senate vote on Preston's measure, which was taken in June, 1838, are discussed. Lastly, renewed agitation in the early 1840s, following a hiatus of such activity from 1838 to 1842, is studied with a view to seeing what form antiannexation activity took from 1842 until the spring of 1844, and how Whigs of the Old Northwest tended to align themselves on the question. Except in Ohio and to a lesser extent in Michigan, journalists and politicians of the Old Northwest did not join the debate over Texas annexation until the early 1840s. The Ohio State Journal, a Whig organ at Columbus, admitted as early as 1829 that the acquisition of the territory would be very popular in Ohio. Though the editor rabidly dissented with this viewpoint, he attributed such sentiment to fear that Texas might "soon pass into other hands either by treaty or