evidence that the United States, in addition to the test imposed by
public law as the condition of the recognition of independence by a
neutral state (to wit, that the revolted state shall "constitute in fact
a body politic, having a government in substance as well as in name,
possessed of the elements of stability," and forming _de facto_,
"if left to itself, a state among the nations, reasonably capable of
discharging the duties of a state"), has imposed for its own governance
in dealing with cases like these the further condition that recognition
of independent statehood is not due to a revolted dependency until the
danger of its being again subjugated by the parent state has entirely
passed away.

This extreme test was, in fact, applied in the case of Texas.
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 chargé 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