Forever to their honor be it remembered that a few of the Southern Democrats refused to retreat from their first position—among them, Stephen A. Douglas. Senator Hannegan reproached his party for breaking the pledges on which it had marched to victory.
The passage of the milk-and-water resolution restored to the timid of the country a feeling of relief and security; but to the others, and to the generations to come after them, helpless anger and undying shame.
The country yielded was ours. We gave it up solely because to retain it we must fight, and we were not in a position at that time to fight Great Britain.
When the Oregon Treaty, as it was called, was concluded by Secretary Buchanan and Minister Pakenham, we lost the splendid country now known as British Columbia, which, after our purchase of Alaska from Russia, would have given us an unbroken frontage on the Pacific Ocean from Southern California to Behring Strait, and almost to the mouth of the Mackenzie River on the Frozen Ocean.
Many reasons have been assigned by historians for the retreat of the Southern Democrats from their former bold and flaunting position; but in the end the simple truth will be admitted—that they might brag, but were not in a position to fight. They were like Lieutenant Whidbey, whom Vancouver sent out to explore Lynn Canal in a small boat. Mr. Whidbey was ever ready and eager, when he deemed it necessary, to fire upon a small party of Indians; but when they met him, full front, in formidable numbers and with couched spears, he instantly fell into a panic and deemed it more "humane" to avoid a conflict with those poor, ignorant people.
Copyright by E. A. Hegg, Juneau
Courtesy of Webster & Stevens, Seattle
A Phantom Ship
The Southern Democrats who betrayed their country in 1846 were the Whidbeys of the United States. For no better reason than that of "humanity," they gave nearly four hundred thousand square miles of magnificent country to Great Britain.
Another problem in this famous boundary settlement question has interested American historians for sixty years: Why England yielded so much valuable territory to the United States, after protecting what she claimed as her rights so boldly and so unflinchingly for so many years.