US Presidency
1845

As early as the 6th of February, 1837, the President of the United States declared in a message to Congress that The length of time since some of the injuries have been committed, the repeated and unavailing applications for redress, the wanton character of some of the outrages upon the property and persons of our citizens, upon the officers and flag of the United States, independent of recent insults to this Government and people by the late extraordinary Mexican minister, would justify in the eyes of all nations immediate war. He did not, however, recommend an immediate resort to this extreme measure, which, he declared, should not be used by just and generous nations, confiding in their strength for injuries committed, if it can be honorably avoided, but, in a spirit of forbearance, proposed that another demand be made on Mexico for that redress which had been so long and unjustly withheld. In these views committees of the two Houses of Congress, in reports made to their respective bodies, concurred.