The Massachusetts State Texas Committee: A Last Stand Against the Annexation of Texas

Abstract

X\/HEN on March 1, 1845, President John Tyler signed the joint resolution for annexation, most Americans assumed that the bitter controversy over the acquisition of Texas had ended. Some opponents of annexation, however, refused to consider the matter closed since the joint resolution provided for the admission of Texas only when the people of Texas had drawn up a constitution acceptable to Congress.' A group of anti-annexationists in Massachusetts organized the Massachusetts State Texas Committee to continue opposition in the hope that they would be able to persuade the northern majority in the House of Representatives to reject the proslavery Texas constitution and to defeat the Texas admission bill. The establishment and activities of this committee are significant in the social and political history of Massachusetts and in the political antislavery movement before the Civil War. Massachusetts had been one of the centers of the anti-annexation movement, and within that state the Whig party had led the opposition. But the Whigs were composed of two wings, each of which opposed annexation for fundamentally different reasons. The conservatives in the party, primarily merchants and cotton manufacturers, were led by Nathan Appleton and Abbott Lawrence. These Whigs opposed annexation for political and economic reasons: an increase of two or more southern Democratic votes in the Senate would jeopardize their economic program. Once majorities in both houses of Congress had approved annexation, however, the conservatives retreated. Throughout the Texas controversy they had been careful not to antagonize unduly the southern Whigs, and after