"Untitled," Telegraph and Texas Register, December 25, 1839

Summary: The editor made some comments about the relationship between Texas and Florida. Quoted speeches from Henry Clay, who said it was deplorable that the United States kept Florida while giving up Texas. Cited how the situation in Florida dragged out for years and cost millions of dollars while Texas could have easily belonged to the U.S. through the Louisiana Purchase but the government failed to follow through(here he alluded to the Adams-Onis Treaty). Also said that Texas should never belong to a foreign power and should instead be peopled by Americans to spread American institutions and values.

From the Commercial Bulletin.

FLORIDA vs. TEXAS.

More than twenty years ago, Gen. Jackson wrote home from the Sowannee that the "Florida war was ended.'--Ever since this we have been contending with a few half-clad, half starved, wretched Seminoles and fugitive slaves, carrying on, as Mr. Clay long since said, "an inglorious war," inglorious as regards the renown or laurels won in it. And every year the same cry is echoed at Washington and through the land, "The Florida war is ended."--From the first moment of deception, when foreign colors were hoisted upon the mast, from which the stars and stripes alone should have floated," and the poor Indian cheated and decoyed, and ensnared, and cauelly[sic] massacred, up to the time when the invincible but the heart-broken Oseola was entrapped by a flag of truce, and basely, nay inhumanly kept in bondage until the hour of his death, the cry is re-echoed "and the Florida war is ended." And even now, when a handful of poor captive Indians are passing through our city to that undiscovered country from whose bourne no traveller returns,' 'and when blood hounds are to be imported from Cuba to ferret out the remainder, the same flattering unction is laid upon the soul of this economical and magnanimous administration that 'the Florida war is ended"

How prophetic is that language of Mr. Clay, in his speech on the Spanish treaty, delivered in the House of Representatives of the United States, in 1820, in which, after incidentally proving that Texas was a part of Louisiana, and of right belonged to her, and that our title to it was as well founded as it was to the island of Orleans, he makes the following important conclusions, in which it will be seen that independent of Texas, which was never given for Florida, and from the first purchase to the end of the war. Florida will have cost this temporizing government upwards of one hundred millions of dollars--[illegible word] glorious purchased admirable diplomacy! Yet with all this 'pomp and circumstance," the cry is still "they come; they come"

"It results, then," says Mr. Clay, "that we have given for Florida, charged and encumbered as it is, 1st, unencumbered Texas, 2d, five millions of dollars, 3d, a surrender of all our claims upon Spain not included in the 5 millions and 4th, about a million of acres of the best unsuited lands in Louisiana, worth perhaps two millions of dollars" Now worth 25 millions.

In the course of his speech, Mr. Clay said it was in his opinion, inexpedient to cede Texas to any foreign power. It constituted a [illegible word] inheritance of posterity, and ought to be preserved unimpaired. He wished it were a fundamental and inviolable law of the land, that it should be inalienable to any foreign power. It was quite evident that it was in the order of Providence, that it was an inevitable result of the principle of population, that the whole of this continent, including Texas, was to be peopled in process of time. The question was by what race shall it be peopled? In our hands it will be peopled by freemen, and the sons of freemen, carrying with them our language, our laws, and our liberties, establishing on the prairies of Texas temples dedicated to the simple and devout mode of worship of God, incident to our religion and temples dedicated to that Freedom which we adore next to Him. In the hands of others it may become the habitation of despots and of slaves, subject to the dominion of the inquisition and the reign of superstition.

If Texas after being peopled by us, and grappling with us should at some distant day break off, she will carry along with her a noble crew, consisting of our children's children"

Source Copy Consulted: "Untitled," Telegraph and Texas Register, December 25, 1839, p. 2