Beschreibung:

JACKSON, ANDREW, President . Autograph letter signed ("Andrew Jackson") to Secretary of the Navy John Y. Mason in Washington, D.C.; Hermitage, 5 March 1844. 2 1/2 pages, 4to, address panel on page 4 in Jackson's hand. Fine condition. JACKSON AND "MANIFEST DESTINY": "OREGON IS OURS...TEXAS...OUGHT TO BE SEIZED WITH PROMPTITUDE" An apparently unpublished letter of very considerable interest. Writing in hopes of obtaining a midshipman's appointment for an orphan boy, the old General and former President expresses characteristically vehement opinions on the question of the annexation of Texas, the United States' claim to the Oregon Territory, and the vulnerability of New Orleans and the Misissippi should hostilities ensue with his old enemy, Great Britain. "Seeing from the public prints [newspapers], that you have taken charge of the Navy Department [Mason's appointment was confirmed on 14 March], I beg leave to congratulate you & our common country on this occasion - it gives great pleasure to the democracy [the people] of our union as far as I hear & believe. From our present attitude with England , the Oregon question to settle, and the annexation of Texas, it was prudent of the President [John Tyler] to place at the head of that Department a man [Mason] of energy, vigilance, & talents sufficient to look at things as they are, & be prepared with that arm of our national defence. Oregon is ours - Texas ought to have been & now must be, or the safety of the South & West is jeopardised, New Orleans insecure, and our revenue destroyed, by smuggling, & in a war with England, her & Texas united, a British force might in ten days...make a lodgement on the Mississippi...possess herself of the command of the navigation of Red River, raise a servile war [a slave insurrection], capture New Orleans, excite our Indians placed on our western borders to hostilities against us. With these..., and her armies from Canada uniting on our west, How much blood & treasure would it take to regain New Orleans, put down the servile & Indian War thus created and supported by Great Britain. There is not an American heart & eyes, that should not now be opened to the great security Texas will give to the United States & it ought to be seized with the greatest promptitude. I am very feeble and the theme has hurried me on untill my strength is ex[h]austed. "I have been an applicant for a poor orphan boy, the son of a worthy Lady, made a widow & reduced to poverty by a dissipated husband who...brought himself to a premature death, leaving a widow & three children perfectly destitute. John Adams (no relation to John Q. Adams) is a fine youth, of good moral habits, now 14 years...old, and well advanced in education. I had the promise of your precdecessor, Mr. Henslow [check cabinet list], that he should have the first vacancy that occurred. I bring this orphan boy to your notice for a midshipman's warrant - it is all the favor I ask of the Government - and I solicity it for the orphan. He is a fine material for the Navy & at the age that he must be employed, for indolence begets evil. Will you please say to me can he be employed as a midshipman & when...." Apparently unpublished, not in . The concept of "manifest destiny," a phrase first used by the journalist John L. O'Sullivan in the summer of 1845, referred specifically to the annexation of Texas, but came to suggest the inevitable territorial expansion of the nation, particularly in the controversy with Great Britain over Oregon. It became a primary political tenet of Jackson's Democratic Party, but had widespread adherents of a variety of political persuasions (including later Republicans like William H. Seward and his party in the 1890s. The question of Texas became one of the major issues of the 1845 campaign. Tyler introduced an annexation bill in April l844, but it failed to pass, in June. The Democratic Party then nominated James K. Polk for President, with a platform pledging the immediate annexat