JOHN TYLER | Against the backdrop of continuing boundary negotiations with Mexico and Texas, President Tyler offers assistance to a young relative of Chief Justice Roger Taney

JOHN TYLER

AUTOGRAPH LETTER SIGNED ("JOHN TYLER") AS TENTH PRESIDENT, TO CHIEF JUSTICE ROGER B. TANEY, REGARDING A RELATIVE OF TANEY'S IMPRISONED IN MEXICO

2 pages (9 7/8 x 8 in.; 250 x 202 mm) on a bifolium, Washington, 2 October 1843, file docket on verso of second leaf; one spot of ink erosion costing a few letters.

Chief Justice Taney had asked the President to intervene on behalf of a relative who had been caught up in the continuing skirmishing between Texas and Mexico. The young man had evidently been captured by Mexican authorities while Texas tried to fix its boundaries with Mexico while at the same time seeking annexation to the United States.

President Tyler was at the same time trying to achieve a tripartite pact that would finally settle the Oregon boundary dispute allow for the Mexican cession of the Alta California. (The United States minister to Mexico, Waddy Thompson Jr., believed upper California was a much more desirable acquisition than Texas, and Great Britain had her sights set on the territory as well.) Against this diplomatic entanglement, Tyler assures Taney that he will do what he can to assist him.

"Your letter of the 30th Sep. reached me last night, and I delay not to furnish the assurance that Mr. Thompson our minister at Mexico shall be immediately apprized on the situation of Mr. John Taney. He has long since been instructed to interpose his good offices in behalf of the unfortunate prisoners in Mexico as far as he can do so without carrying his interference beyond the point actioned by the usages of Nations. I doubt not that he will be prompt in doing all in his power to obtain the release of your young kinsman. Mexico and Texas are about to negociate the preliminaries of their principal negociation, and I am led to hope that the most prominent of those preliminaries will stipulate for the discharge of all prisoners on both sides.

"When I had the pleasure to be with you at the Ewings we had some conversation, on the subject of Englands agency in that negociation. Lord Aberdeen, in the recent debate in Parliament, has opened to us a knowledge of his intentions much earlier and more boldly than I had anticipated. Our eyes are fixed upon the movements of G. Britain and she will not be very likely to accomplish her purposes without some impediments being thrown in her way."