Excerpt: ... people. The few inhabitants of that vast realm were mostly Americans, who had occupied and subdued a vacant wilderness. The heroic defense of the Alamo had been made by Travis, Bowie, and David Crockett, whose exploits and death form one of the most brilliant pages of our border history. Fannin and his men, four hundred strong, when they laid down their lives at Goliad Transcriber's Note: Lengthy footnote relocated to chapter end. had carried mourning into every South-western State; and when, a few days later, Samuel Houston and his eight hundred raw levies defeated and destroyed the Mexican army at San Jacinto, captured Santa Anna, the Mexican president, and with American thrift, instead of giving him the death he merited for his cruel murder of unarmed prisoners, saved him to make a treaty with, the whole people recognized something of kinship in the unaffected valor with which these borderers died and the humorous shrewdness with which they bargained, and felt as if the victory over the Mexicans were their own. The schemes of the Southern statesmen who were working for the extension of slavery were not defensible, and we have no disposition to defend them; but it may be doubted whether there is a government on the face of the earth which, under similar circumstances, would not have yielded to the same temptation. Under these conditions, the annexation, sooner or later, was inevitable. No man and no party could oppose it except at serious cost. It is not true that schemes of annexation are always popular. Several administrations have lost heavily by proposing them. Grant failed with Santo Domingo; Seward with St. Thomas; and it required all his skill and influence to accomplish the ratification of the Alaska purchase. There is no general desire among Americans for acquiring outlying territory, however intrinsically valuable it may be; their land-hunger is confined within the limits of that of a Western farmer once quoted by Mr. Lincoln, who used...