This was distinct enough and belligerent enough. The Abolitionists and anti-slavery Whigs, who had been twitting the Administration with indifference about Oregon, now that Texas had been secured, could certainly find no fault with the President's attitude toward the question. At any rate, it was a challenge to them which could not be ignored.
| The debate upon the President's recommendation. |
Both Houses entered immediately upon the discussion of the question of giving the notice. As the debate progressed the war fever became allayed, and the conviction grew that the claim to the line of fifty-four forty was extravagant. The majority, at least, saw that the claim by occupation and settlement was the right basis for the determination of the dispute, and that this claim would give the United States the territory only to the line of the northern watershed of the Columbia.
This line does, indeed, reach at points above the forty-ninth parallel, but the fact that this parallel was already the divisional line between the possessions of the two Powers from the Great Lakes to the Rockies, and that the United States had already proposed to Great Britain the continuation of this line to the Pacific, produced the general feeling that the United States should be satisfied with the forty-ninth parallel as the northern boundary of Oregon, rather than risk war for the more northern line. Still, the opponents of the Administration had been so quick to charge the President with indifference to the acquisition of territory, upon which non-slaveholding Commonwealths would be established, that they were now fairly ashamed to lag behind him.
| The conclusion reached by Congress. |
Owing to the course taken by the Senate, Congress did not, however, come to any conclusion upon the recommendation of the President until April 23rd, 1846, and then, in the resolution finally passed, it almost emasculated the President's proposition. It empowered the President to give the notice, but explained that the purpose of the same was to direct the attention of the two Governments toward the adoption of more earnest measures for the amicable settlement of the question, and it threw upon the President the responsibility as to the time of giving the notice, by placing that matter entirely within his discretion.
| The President's retort upon Congress. |