US Presidency
1898

The Congress to whom President Jackson referred the question as one probably leading to war, and therefore a proper subject for a previous understanding with that body by whom war can alone be declared and by whom all the provisions for sustaining its perils must be furnished, left the matter of the recognition of Texas to the discretion of the Executive, providing merely for the sending of a diplomatic agent when the President should be satisfied that the Republic of Texas had become an independent State. It was so recognized by President Van Buren, who commissioned a charge d'affaires March 7, 1837, after Mexico had abandoned an attempt to reconquer the Texan territory, and when there was at the time no bona fide contest going on between the insurgent province and its former Sovereign. I said in my message of December last, It is to be seriously considered whether the Cuban insurrection possesses beyond dispute the attributes of statehood which alone can demand the recognition of belligerency in its favor.