Tyler Begins Secret Texas Annexation Talks to Strengthen Slave Power

Face-to-face negotiations for Texas annexation secretly commenced on October 16, 1843, between Secretary of State Abel P. Upshur and Texas minister to the United States Isaac Van Zandt, following President John Tyler’s order to open secret talks on September 18. Tyler, politically isolated after being expelled from the Whig Party in September 1841, independently pursued annexation as a bid to build a political base for election to a full term in 1844. Unaligned with any political party, Tyler “emerged as a states’ rights advocate committed to slavery expansion in defiance of Whig principles” and aligned himself with a small faction of Texas annexationists seeking to strengthen slavery interests.

Tyler’s official motivation was to outmaneuver suspected British diplomatic efforts toward emancipation in Texas, which would “undermine slavery in the United States.” However, the administration presented the issue deceptively as a national security concern rather than explicitly acknowledging its true purpose of slavery expansion. Evidence suggests Tyler’s own administration manufactured and spread rumors about Britain’s supposed plot to end slavery in America, using fabricated external threats to drum up domestic support for what was fundamentally a pro-slavery territorial acquisition scheme. Tyler was “deeply concerned with preserving slavery, and saw the annexation of Texas as a means to strengthen slave interests in the U.S.”

The secret negotiations represented systematic executive overreach and institutional capture by the Slave Power. Tyler conducted major foreign policy initiatives in secret without congressional authorization, then attempted to pressure Congress through manufactured crises. The talks would eventually produce a treaty that Tyler submitted to the Senate in 1844, which was soundly rejected after Tyler’s successor John C. Calhoun exposed the slavery expansion motivation in the Packenham Letter. The episode demonstrated how the Slave Power had captured the executive branch to pursue territorial expansion serving slavery interests, using national security pretexts to conceal its true agenda from northern voters and their representatives in Congress.