Summary of Remarks on the Annexation of Texas, 22 May 18441
May 22, 1844A meeting was held at the State House on Wednesday evening, the 22d ult. for the purpose
of considering the letters of Mr. Clay, Mr. Van Buren and Mr. Benton upon the question of immediate Annexation.2 The meeting was addressed by Mr. Lincoln, who briefly reviewed the grounds taken by those distinguished gentlemen, concurring
with them in the opinion, that Annexation at this time upon the terms agreed upon
by John Tyler was altogether inexpedient. . . .3
1No extant version of the Sangamo Journal for June 6, 1844, has been located. This transcription is taken from the earliest
published transcription of the document, in Roy P. Basler’s The Collected Works of Abraham Lincoln.
2Secretary of State John C. Calhoun submitted to the U.S. Senate a treaty for the annexation of Texas on April 22, 1844. Henry Clay, Martin Van Buren, and Thomas Hart Benton all wrote
public letters rejecting annexation, which were widely published in the press.
Amy S. Greenberg, A Wicked War: Polk, Clay, Lincoln, and the 1846 U.S. Invasion of Mexico (New York: Vintage Books, 2013), 18-19; Sangamo Journal (Springfield, IL), 16 May 1844, 2:7, 3:1-3; 30 May 1844, 2:6-7.
Printed Document, 1 page(s), Roy P. Basler, ed., The Collected Works of Abraham Lincoln (New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press, 1953).