Image of the Day

April 25, 1838

Proclamation Ratifying the Boundary Convention Between the United States and the Republic of Texas, 1838. Courtesy of the Texas State Library and Archives Commission.

On April 25, 1838, the United States, represented by John Forsythe, and the Republic of Texas, represented by Memucan Hunt, agreed to a treaty establishing the boundary between Texas and Louisiana along the Sabine River. President Sam Houston had sent Hunt to Washington primarily to work on a plan to annex the Republic of Texas into the United States, but the border issue, which had been the subject of controversy during French and Spanish settlements, needed to be settled "in order to prevent future disputes and collisions between the United States and Texas in regard to the boundary between the two countries."

The boundary treaty was ratified by the Texas Senate on May 23, 1838. On October 4, 1838, Sam Houston issued a proclamation accepting the treaty. The treaty required that

Each of the contracting parties shall appoint a commissioner and surveyor, who shall meet, before the termination of twelve months from the exchange of the ratifications of this convention, at New Orleans, and proceed to run and mark that portion of the said boundary which extends from the mouth of the Sabine, where that river enters the Gulph of Mexico, to the Red River.

In May 1839, Memucan Hunt became the Texas representative on the joint United States-Texas boundary commission. Hunt had, on several occasions, suggested that the northern boundary of Texas should be extended out to the Pacific Ocean, presumably to make Texas a more attractive prospect for annexation by the United States. The joint commission to survey the boundary eventually confined itself to only the Texas-Louisiana border, however, and mapped boundary as the western bank of the Sabine River from its mouth to the 32nd parallel, just north of Logan’s Ferry. From there, the boundary ran due north to the Red River. The survey team placed two granite markers to indicate the north-south meridian; one of those, placed where the Sabine River met the 32nd parallel, has been lost, but a second, further north, still exists and is thought to be the only original international boundary marker within the contiguous U.S.

Links

• "Boundaries" from the Handbook of Texas Online, Texas State Historical Association.
• "Hunt, Memucan" from the Handbook of Texas Online, Texas State Historical Association.
• "International Boundary Marker" from the Texas Historic Sites Atlas, Texas Historical Commission.
• "Texas-American Boundary Convention : April 25, 1838," from the Avalon Project at Yale Law School: Documents in Law, History and Diplomacy.
• Marshall, Thomas Maitland, "The Southwestern Boundary of Texas, 1821-1840", Southwestern Historical Quarterly Online, Volume 014, Number 4, Page 277 - 293.