On the last day of the session congress appropriated money for the salary of a minister to Mexico, to be appointed "whenever, in the opinion of the president, circumstances will permit a renewal of diplomatic intercourse honorably with that power." The president, though nothing had occurred since December to invite a renewal of relations, appointed a minister, Powhatan Ellis, himself, being the individual chosen.[1] It was pretended that they wished to conciliate Mexico, and so they sent thither her most unprincipled enemy. He was not, however, despatched at once to his destination. A messenger or courier of the department of state went in his stead with a budget of grievances, old and new, now swelled to fifty-seven, which he was to place in the hands of the Mexican minister of foreign affairs, allowing him one week[2] in which to study their merits and return an answer.[3]
The Mexican congress, however, had anticipated such a step. Knowing only of the eighteen claims presented by Minister Ellis, it had passed an act authorizing the executive to submit those claims to the award of a friendly power. The foreign office, on the 29th of July, 1837, replied, giving assurances of the desire of the Mexican government to settle the claims upon the principles of justice and equity.[4]
- ↑ J. Q. Adams said: 'And who was this minister of peace to be sent with the last drooping twig of olive to be replanted and revivified in the genial soil of Mexico? It was no other than Powhatan Ellis of Mississippi, famishing for Texas, and just returned in anger and resentment from an abortive and abruptly terminated mission to the same government. His very name must have tasted like wormwood to the Mexican palate.'
- ↑ The messenger was instructed to remain in Mexico one week. Rep. of Cong., Cong. 29, Ses. 1, iv.
- ↑ The courier reached Mexico July 20, 1837. As a specimen of the new claims, I give the following: In 1829, as the reader knows, a Spanish army under Brigadier Barradas invaded the republic of Mexico at Tampico. It destroyed a printing-press said to be the property of an American citizen. Eight years after Mexico was for the first time told that she was held responsible for what her enemies had done in time of war.
- ↑ The anxiety of the Mexican government was 'not to delay the moment of that final and equitable adjustment which is to terminate the existing difficulties
given; for goods seized on being imported contrary to a Mexican law of which the claimant pretended ignorance J. E. Dudley and J. C. Wilson, for property robbed from them by Comanches on their return from a trading expedition to Mexico; sum not stated. U. S. Govt, Cong. 24, Ses. 2, H. Ex. Doc. 139, in Mex. Treaties, ii. no. 1.
