Petition from Bowdoinham, Maine, against the annexation of Texas, December 12, 1837

Residents of Maine petitioned Congress against the annexation of Texas, citing three reasons. First, Mexico did not recognize Texas’s independence, so annexation might provoke a war. Second, they opposed the expansion of slavery, which Texas allowed. Third, the vast area of Texas might be divided into smaller slaveholding states, upsetting congressional balance and thereby dissolving the Union.

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It being the avowed intention to continue it a slave-holding country, its annexation to the Union will give predominant power, in our national councils, to the slave-holding interest, and will reduce to complete subjection, the interests of the free States

Records of the U.S. House of Representatives, National Archives and Records Administration