rivers. This actual exercise of jurisdiction is the very class or quality
of evidence we want. It is excellent so far as it goes; but does it go
far enough? He tells us it went beyond the Nueces, but he does not tell
us it went to the Rio Grande. He tells us jurisdiction was exercised
between the two rivers, but he does not tell us it was exercised over all
the territory between them. Some simple-minded people think it is
possible to cross one river and go beyond it without going all the way to
the next, that jurisdiction may be exercised between two rivers without
covering all the country between them. I know a man, not very unlike
myself, who exercises jurisdiction over a piece of land between the
Wabash and the Mississippi; and yet so far is this from being all there
is between those rivers that it is just one hundred and fifty-two feet
long by fifty feet wide, and no part of it much within a hundred miles of
either. He has a neighbor between him and the Mississippi--that is, just
across the street, in that direction--whom I am sure he could neither
persuade nor force to give up his habitation; but which nevertheless he
could certainly annex, if it were to be done by merely standing on his
own side of the street and claiming it, or even sitting down and writing
a deed for it.

But next the President tells us the Congress of the United States
understood the State of Texas they admitted into the Union to extend
beyond the Nueces. Well, I suppose they did. I certainly so understood
it. But how far beyond? That Congress did not understand it to extend
clear to the Rio Grande is quite certain, by the fact of their joint
resolutions for admission expressly leaving all questions of boundary to
future adjustment. And it may be added that Texas herself is proven to
have had the same understanding of it that our Congress had, by the fact
of the exact conformity of her new constitution to those resolutions.