President Andrew Jackson believed that the acquisition of Texas was “necessary for the security of the great emporium of the West,” New Orleans, and that the “God of the Universe had intended this great [Mississippi] valley to belong to one nation,” the United States. Jackson’s envoy to Mexico, Anthony Butler, described the acquisition of Texas to President Martin Van Buren as “the object so interesting to our government.”

Anthony Butler replaced Joel Poinsett after the Mexican government demanded Poinsett’s recall for his extensive meddling in internal Mexican affairs. But Butler was cut from the same cloth as Poinsett, and he intensified American efforts to persuade Mexico to cede the Texas territory to the United States. Both Joel Poinsett and Anthony Butler were convinced that British agents had bought the loyalty of Mexican officials, and Butler was determined to use the same tactics to sway them to the American side.

Throughout the time Butler represented the United States in Mexico (1829–35) he kept the president abreast of the techniques he employed, much to Jackson’s distress. Yet Jackson seems to have been less concerned about the use of bribery than the fact that Butler wrote openly about the tactic and seemed to lack any sense of discretion. By not sending his dispatches in code, Butler was undermining Jackson’s prospect of invoking “plausible deniability” (denying any authorization for or awareness of the activities of a supposedly “rogue” agent should he be discovered) with his frank updates of his tactics.

At one point Butler informed the president that of a $5 million government appropriation he had been given to acquire Texas, he expected to use $1 million to “purchase” various Mexican officials. Jackson and some of his sympathetic biographers later claimed that he disapproved of Butler’s bribery schemes, but the fact that Jackson left Butler in place for six years, all the while keeping Jackson and his various secretaries of state fully apprised of his tactics, makes that claim difficult to accept.

Before Butler set off for Mexico in 1829, President Jackson spoke bluntly with his new envoy, observing, “I scarcely ever knew a Spaniard who was not the slave of avarice, and it is not improbable that this weakness may be worth a great deal to us, in this case.” Jackson’s instructions sometimes included instructions to “burn” this letter. The tactics utilized by Joel Poinsett and Anthony Butler, and of course the Mexican War, led to resentment in Mexico that persists to this day and led to criticism in the United States from those who believed the use of bribery and bullying an affront to American ideals.