A month passed before Douglas had occasion to call at the White House. He was in no genial temper, for aside from personal grievances in the Oregon affair, he had been disappointed in the President's recent appointments to office in Illinois. The President marked his unfriendly air, and suspecting the cause, took pains to justify his course not only in the matter of the appointments, but in the Oregon affair. If not convinced, Douglas was at least willing to let bygones be bygones. Upon taking his departure, he assured the President that he would continue to support the administration. The President responded graciously that Mr. Douglas could lead the Democratic party in the House if he chose to do so.[[219]]
When President Polk announced to Congress the conclusion of the Oregon treaty with Great Britain, he recommended the organization of a territorial government for the newly acquired country, at the earliest practicable moment. Hardly had the President's message been read, when Douglas offered a bill of this tenor, stating that it had been prepared before the terms of the treaty had been made public. His committee had not named the boundaries of the new Territory in the bill, for obvious reasons. He also stated, parenthetically, that he felt so keenly the humiliation of writing down the boundary of 49°, that he preferred to leave that duty to those who had consented to compromise our claims. In drafting the bill, he had kept in mind the provisional government adopted by the people of Oregon: as they had in turn borrowed nearly all the statutes of Iowa, it was to be presumed that the people knew their own needs better than Congress.[[220]]
Before the bill passed the House it was amended at one notable point. Neither slavery nor involuntary servitude should ever exist in the Territory, following the provision in the Ordinance of 1787 for the Northwest Territory. Presumably Douglas was not opposed to this amendment,[[221]] though he voted against the famous Wilmot Proviso two days later. Already Douglas showed a disposition to escape the toils of the slavery question by a laissez faire policy, which was compounded of indifference to the institution itself and of a strong attachment to states-rights. When Florida applied for admission into the Union with a constitution that forbade the emancipation of slaves and permitted the exclusion of free negroes, he denied the right of Congress to refuse to receive the new State. The framers of the Federal Constitution never intended that Congress should pass upon the propriety or expediency of each clause in the constitutions of States applying for admission. The great diversity of opinion resulting from diversity of climate, soil, pursuits, and customs, made uniformity impossible. The people of each State were to form their constitution in their own way, subject to the single restriction that it should be republican in character. "They are subject to the jurisdiction and control of Congress during their infancy, their minority; but when they obtain their majority and obtain admission into the Union, they are free from all restraints ... except such as the Constitution of the United States has imposed."[[222]]
The absorbing interest of Douglas at this point in his career is perfectly clear. To span the continent with States and Territories, to create an ocean-bound republic, has often seemed a gross, materialistic ideal. Has a nation no higher destiny than mere territorial bigness? Must an intensive culture with spiritual aims be sacrificed to a vulgar exploitation of physical resources? Yet the ends which this strenuous Westerner had in view were not wholly gross and materialistic. To create the body of a great American Commonwealth by removing barriers to its continental expansion, so that the soul of Liberty might dwell within it, was no vulgar ambition. The conquest of the continent must be accounted one of the really great achievements of the century. In this dramatic exploit Douglas was at times an irresponsible, but never a weak nor a false actor.
The session ended where it had begun, so far as Oregon was concerned. The Senate failed to act upon the bill to establish a territorial government; the earlier bill to protect American settlers also failed of adoption; and thus American caravans continued to cross the plains unprotected and ignored. But Congress had annexed a war.
FOOTNOTES:
[186] Message of December 3, 1844.
[187] Globe, 28 Cong., 2 Sess., p. 85.
[188] Globe, 28 Cong., 2 Sess., App., p. 65.