Inaugural Address of James Knox Polk TUESDAY, MARCH 4, 1845
The Republic of Texas has made known her desire to come into our Union, to form a part of our Confederacy and enjoy
with us the blessings of liberty secured and guaranteed by our Constitution. Texas was once a part of our country--was
unwisely ceded away to a foreign power--is now independent, and possesses an undoubted right to dispose of a part or the
whole of her territory and to merge her sovereignty as a separate and independent state in ours. I congratulate my country
that by an act of the late Congress of the United States the assent of this Government has been given to the reunion, and it
only remains for the two countries to agree upon the terms to consummate an object so important to both.
I regard the question of annexation as belonging exclusively to the United States and Texas. They are independent powers
competent to contract, and foreign nations have no right to interfere with them or to take exceptions to their reunion.
Foreign powers do not seem to appreciate the true character of our Government. Our Union is a confederation of
independent States, whose policy is peace with each other and all the world. To enlarge its limits is to extend the
dominions of peace over additional territories and increasing millions. The world has nothing to fear from military
ambition in our Government. While the Chief Magistrate and the popular branch of Congress are elected for short terms
by the suffrages of those millions who must in their own persons bear all the burdens and miseries of war, our
Government can not be otherwise than pacific. Foreign powers should therefore look on the annexation of Texas to the
United States not as the conquest of a nation seeking to extend her dominions by arms and violence, but as the peaceful
acquisition of a territory once her own, by adding another member to our confederation, with the consent of that member,
thereby diminishing the chances of war and opening to them new and ever-increasing markets for their products.
To Texas the reunion is important, because the strong protecting arm of our Government would be extended over her, and