Britain, and bring again into the Union the country west of the Sabine River, as a part of the Louisiana territory improperly conceded to Spain in the Florida treaty of 1819. With these as among the party cries in the campaign, Mr. Polk came to the presidency and delivered his inaugural address, in which he advocated the Oregon claim in its entirety.1

Mr. Buchanan, desirous of adjusting our differences with England before we entered upon the conflict with Mexico, early after assuming the duties of his department, opened negotiations with the British minister, and, regardless of the President's declaration in his inaugural, proposed as a compromise the forty-ninth parallel as the boundary. The British minister, doubtless nettled by the party cry and the President's declaration, rather tartly rejected the proposition, and argued for the line of the Columbia; whereupon Mr. Buchanan withdrew the proposition and set up our claim to the whole territory in dispute.

When Congress assembled in December, 1845, the President laid the correspondence before it, stated in his message that we had gone far enough in the spirit of concession, and asked Congress to consider what measures were necessary to protect our just title to the territory. His partisans at once took up the cry of "Fifty-four Forty or Fight," and a resolution was passed by Congress authorizing the President, in his discretion, to give notice, in accordance with the terms of the treaty, of the termination of the arrangement

1 4 Richardson's Messages, 381.

2 Ib. 392-398.

2

for joint occupation of the territory in dispute.1 Both countries by this action were thrown into a high state of excitement, but neither government was disposed to push the controversy to an open conflict; Mr. Buchanan caused the British government to be informed that he was prepared to renew his proposition for the line of the forty-ninth degree, and the response was that such a settlement would be considered; the Senate was confidentially consulted, and signified its willingness to ratify it; and just as our army in hostile in hostile array was entering upon Mexican territory on the south, a treaty composing our differences with our northern neighbor was signed June 15, 1846. The debate in the Senate was very acrimonious and heated, the par tisans of the line of 54° 40′ being led by Senator Cass, the next Democratic candidate for President, and afterwards Secretary of State; but it was apparent that the opposition was not supported by the more sober sentiment of the country, and the treaty was ratified by more than the two thirds vote required by the Constitution. Senator Benton facetiously criticised the war-cry of the opposition thus: "And this is the end of that great line! all gone - vanished - evaporated into thin air and the place where it was not to be found. Oh! mountain that was delivered of a mouse, thy name shall henceforth be fifty-four forty.": One of our most careful historians has said: "A

6 Stat. at Large, 109.

2 4 Richardson's Messages, 449; 2 Benton's View, 675, 676.

8 2 Benton's View, chaps. 156 to 159, for negotiations and discussion of Oregon question; 3 Writings of Gallatin (Adams), 491; for brief statement of both sides of question, Snow's Cases in International Law, 9.

candid student must recognize that the Oregon question, or the controversy over the line from the Rocky Mountains to the Pacific, did not embody claims on the part of any nation that were beyond dispute, and that it reasonably invited a settlement by compromise.'

Every addition of territory to the Union, with one exception, has encountered strenuous opposition from a large portion of our people, and awakened gloomy forebodings as to its influence on the future of the country. This single exception was in the case of Florida, the necessity and desirability of its acquisition being universally recognized after the purchase of Louisi

We have seen how even the authors of this last measure failed to recognize its need or its great benefit to the nation, and how its opponents predicted the dismemberment of the Union as a result of the vast extent of its territory. In the case of the annexation of Texas a very large minority, if not a majority, of the voters of the United States, as judged by the election of 1844, were opposed to the measure; and some of our wisest statesmen, such as John Quincy Adams, regarded the dissolution of the Union as a certain consequence of it.

In the case of Oregon our claim to the territory was recognized as well founded, and the government was supported by the country in its insistence upon a reasonable boundary, but there was a widespread and settled sentiment as to the unwisdom of extending our territory and sovereignty beyond the Rocky Mountains. Mr. Jefferson, even after he fully realized the impor17 Winsor's Critical and Narrative Hist. America, 555.

In a

tance of the Louisiana purchase, regarded it as extremely doubtful whether it would be possible to maintain one government over so great an extent of country, and spoke rather cheerfully of the contingency of an Atlantic and a Mississippi republic in friendly rivalry. As to Oregon, he was quite clear that it would be impracticable to extend our government over it. letter dated in 1812 to John Jacob Astor, who had given him a narrative of the difficulties he had encountered in establishing his fur-trading colony at Astoria, he writes encouragingly, and says he looks forward to the time when the descendants of the present settlers would have spread themselves through the whole length of the coast of Western America, as "free and independent Americans, unconnected with us but by the ties of blood and interest, and employing like us the rights of self-government."

Albert Gallatin, one of the most sagacious of our public men, writing at the time of the Oregon boundary controversy, referring to the words just quoted, said: "Viewed as an abstract proposition, Mr. Jefferson's opinion appears correct, that it will be best for both the Atlantic and Pacific nations, whilst entertaining the most friendly relations, to remain independent, rather than to be united under the same government." But he added, it was a question which posterity would have to settle.2

The most ardent champion of Western interests during the second quarter of the present century was Senator Benton of Missouri; but even he failed to realize 1 9 Writings of Jefferson, 351. 23 Writings of Gallatin, 533.

at the beginning of his career the great destiny which awaited his country beyond the Rocky Mountains. In discussing a bill before the Senate in 1825 for the occupation of the Columbia River, which he favored because it would be the nucleus of a new American republic on the Pacific and result in the frustration of the hostile schemes of Great Britain, he said: "This republic should have limits. The present occasion does not require me to say where these limits should be found on the north and south; but . . . westward we can speak without reserve, and the ridges of the Rocky Mountains may be named without offense, as presenting a convenient, natural, and everlasting boundary. Along the back of this ridge, the western limit of this republic should be drawn, and the statue of the fabled god, Terminus, should be raised upon its highest peak, never to be thrown down." Benton, however, lived to change his views on the subject, and in his compilation of the debates of Congress his speech of 1825 is revised and this portion omitted."

1

Daniel Webster, in discussing the annexation of Texas in 1845, expressed the opinion that the government was likely to be endangered by a further enlargement of territory, already so vast, and said: "Perhaps the time was not far distant when there would be established beyond the Rocky Mountains, and on the shores of the western sea, a great Pacific republic, of which San Francisco would be the capital."3 Robert C. Win

1 1 Debates in Congress (Gales and Seaton), 711.

2 8 Benton's Debates of Congress, 197.

3 5 Webster's Works, 387.