Excerpt from An Address Delivered in the City of Galveston on the 22d of February, 1848, the Anniversary of the Birth Day of Washington, and of the Battle of Buena Vista

The assembling of American troops in the unoccupied territory, has seemed to some individuals to have brought on hostilities. It is a short sighted error. 1 have intimated its necessity for protecting our frontier towns. Besides, no nation ever suffered loss or damage by showing a prompt disposition to maintain its honor; no people ever avoided a war by exhrbiting themselves unprepared to meet it. It has been alleged that all the United States could have righteously done, and what we ought now to do, is to establish garrisons along our frontier, and to act purely on the defensive. I will not be detained to point out Objections to such policy z - its folly and madness appear when we reflect that it would have left Mexico Open to the introduction of munitions of war, and of European officers to drill and discipline their men and lead them in battle. And though the great results of the war would not have been materially changed, yet the prompt and decisive course of President Polk was the soundest policy dictated both by'humarrity and economy.

I have thus briefly vindicated our right to the soilof Texas, the justice of our claim to the Rio Grande, and the righteousness of the Mexican war. But our contemplation of this subject would be most incomplete if it stopped here. The Mexican war is a part of the mission, of the desti ny allotted to the Anglo Saxon race on this continent. It is our destiny, our mission to civilize, to Americanize this continent. No nation once degenerate has ever been regenerated but by foreign conquest and suchis the predestined fate of degenerate Mexico. The sword is the great civilizer, it clears the way for commerce, education, religion, and all the harmonizing influences of morality and humanity.

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