I made some answer, half jest, half earnest, in a mood of mocking
bitterness, which, perhaps, more truly accorded with the temper of
both of us. He did not perceive the bitterness, however.
"You jest, but mine is not altogether jest. Half-serious glimpses
of what I tell you float certainly before my eyes. Such things
may happen yet, and the southwest is the world in which you are yet
to see many wondrous things. The time must come when Texas shall
stretch to Mexico. These miserable slaves and reptiles--mongrel
Spaniards and mongrel Indians--can not very long bedevil that great
country. It must fall into other hands. It must be ours; and who,
when that time comes, will carry into the field more thorough claims
than mine. Master of myself, fearing nothing, caring for nothing;
with a gallant steed that knows my voice, and answers with whinny
and pricked ears to my encouragement; with a rifle that can clip
a Mexican--dollar or man--at a hundred yards, and a heart that can
defy the devil over his own dish, and with but one spoon between
us--and who so likely to win his principality as myself? Look to
see it, Clifford, I shall be a prince in Mexico; and when you hear
of the prince Sans Souci be assured you know the man. Seek me then,
and ask what you will. You have CARTE BLANCHE from this moment."
"I shall certainly keep it in mind, prince."
"Do so: laugh as you please; it is only becoming that you should
laugh in the presence of Sans Souci; but do not laugh in token
of irreverence. You must not be too skeptical. It does not follow
because I am a dare-devil that I am a thoughtless one. I have been
so, perhaps, but from this moment I go to work! I shall be fettered
by fortune no longer. Thank Heaven, that is now done--gone--lost;
I am free from its incumbrance! I feel myself a prince, indeed; a
man, every inch of me. This night I devote as a fitting finish to
my old lifeless existence.
"Hear me!" he continued; "you laugh again, Clifford--very good!
Laugh on, but hear me. You shall hear more of me in time to come.
I fancy I shall be a fellow of considerable importance, not in Texas
simply, or in Mexico, but here--here in your own self-opinionated
United States. Suppose a few things, and go along with me while I
speak them. That Texas must stretch to Mexico I hold to be certain.
A very few years will do that. It needs only thirty thousand more
men from our southern and southwestern States, and the brave old
English tongue shall arouse the best echoes in the city of Montezuma!
That done, and floods of people pour in from all quarters. It
needs nothing but a feeling of security and peace--a conviction
that property will be tolerably safe, under a tolerably stable
government--in other words, an Anglo-Saxon government--to tempt
millions of discontented emigrants from all quarters of the world.
Will this result have no results of its own, think you? Will the
immense resources of Mexico and Texas, represented, as they then
will be, by a stern, pressing, performing people, have no effect
upon these states of yours? They will have the greatest; nay, they
will become essential to balance your own federal weight, and keep
you all in equilibrio. For look you, the first hubbub with Great
Britain gives you Canada, at the expense of some of your coast-towns,
a few millions of treasure, and the loss of fifty thousand men.
A bad exchange for the south; for Canada will make six ponderous
states, the policy and character of which will be New England
all over. To balance this you will have your Florida territory,
[Footnote: Florida, since admittied, but unhappily, as a single
state.] of which two feeble states may be made. Not enough for your
purposes. But the same war with England will render it necessary
that your fleet should take possession of Cuba; which, after a civil
apology to Spain for taking such a liberty with her possessions,
and, perhaps, a few million by way of hush money, you carve into two
more states, and, in this manner, try to bolster up your federal
relations. How many of her West India islands Great Britain will
be able to keep after such a war, is another problem, the solution
of which will depend upon the relative strength of fleets and
success of seamanship. These islands, which should of right be
ours, and without which we can never be sure against any maritime
power so great and so arrogant as England, once conquered by
our arms, find their natural, moral, and social affinities in the
southern states entirely; and, so far, contribute to strengthen
you in your congressional conflicts. But these are not enough, for
the simple reason that the population of states, purely agricultural,
never makes that progress which is made in this respect by a
commercial and manufacturing people. With the command of the gulf,
the possession of an independent fleet by the Texans, the political
characteristics of the states of Carolina, Georgia, Florida, Alabama,
Mississippi, Louisiana, and Arkansas, must undergo certain marked
changes, which can only be neutralized by the adoption, on the part
of these states, of a new policy corresponding with their change
of interests. How far the cultivation of cotton by Texas will lead
to its abandonment in Carolina and Georgia, is a question which the
next ten years must solve. That they will be compelled to abandon
it is inevitable, unless they can succeed in raising the article
at six cents; a probability which no cotton-planter in either of
these states will be willing to contemplate now for an instant.
Meanwhile, Texas is spreading herself right and left. She conquers
the Cumanches, subdues the native mongrel Mexicans. Her Hoestons and
Lamars are succeeded by other and abler men, under whose control
the evils of government, which followed the sway of such small
animals as the Guerreros, and the Bolivars, the Bustamentes,
and Sant' Annas, are very soon eradicated; and the country, the
noblest that God ever gave to man in the hands of men, becomes a
country!--a great and glorious country--stretching from the gulf
to the Pacific, and providing the natural balance, which, in a few
years, the southern state of this Union will inevitably need, by
which alone your great confederacy will be kept together. You see,
therefore, why I speed to Texas. Should I not, with my philosophy,
my horse and my rifle--not to speak of stout heart and hand--reasonably
aspire to the principality of Sans Souci? Laugh, if you please, but
be not irreverent. You shall have carte blanche then if you will
have a becoming faith now, on the word of a prince. I say it, It
is written--Sans Souci." [Footnote: All these speculations were
written in 1840-'41. I need not remark upon those which have since
been verified.] "Altissimo, excellentissimo, serenissimo!"