[CHAPTER CLV.]
ADMISSION OF FLORIDA AND IOWA.
At this time were admitted into the Union, and by a single bill, two States, which seem to have but few things in common to put them together—one the oldest, the other the newest territory—one in the extreme northwest of the Union, the other in the extreme southeast—one the land of evergreens and perpetual flowers, the other the climate of long and rigorous winter—one maintaining, the other repulsing slavery. It would seem strange that two territories so different in age, so distant from each other, so antagonistic in natural features and political institutions, should ripen into States at the same time, and come into the Union by a single act; but these antagonisms—that is, the antagonistic provisions on the subject of slavery—made the conjunction, and gave to the two young States an inseparable admission. It happened that the slave and free States had long before become equal in number, and a feeling of jealousy, or a calculation of policy operated to keep them so; and for that purpose to admit one of each character at the same time. Thus balancing and neutralizing each other, the bill for their admission was passed without a struggle, and furnished but little beyond the yeas and nays—these latter a scant minority in either House—to show the disposition of members. In the Senate the negatives were 9 to 36 yeas: in the House 48 to 144. Numerically the free and the slave States were thus kept even: in political power a vast inequality was going on—the increase of population being so much greater in the northern than in the southern region.
[CHAPTER CLVI.]
OREGON TREATY: NEGOTIATIONS COMMENCED, AND BROKEN OFF.
This was a pretermitted subject in the general negotiations which led to the Ashburton treaty: it was now taken up as a question for separate settlement. The British government moved in it, Mr. Henry S. Fox, the British minister in Washington, being instructed to propose the negotiation. This was done in November, 1842, and Mr. Webster, then Secretary of State under Mr. Tyler, immediately replied, accepting the proposal, and declaring it to be the desire of his government to have this territorial question immediately settled. But the movement stopped there. Nothing further took place between Mr. Webster and Fox, and the question slumbered till 1844, when Mr. (since Sir) Richard Pakenham, arrived in the United States as British minister, and renewed the proposition for opening the negotiation to Mr. Upshur, then Secretary of State. This was February 24th, 1844. Mr. Upshur replied promptly, that is to say, on the 26th of the same month, accepting the proposal, and naming an early day for receiving Mr. Pakenham to begin the negotiation. Before that day came he had perished in the disastrous explosion of the great gun on board the Princeton man-of-war. The subject again slumbered six months, and at the end of that time, July 22d, was again brought to the notice of the American government by a note from the British minister to Mr. Calhoun, successor to Mr. Upshur in the Department of State. Referring to the note received from Mr. Upshur the day before his death, he said:
"The lamented death of Mr. Upshur, which occurred within a few days after the date of that note, the interval which took place between that event and the appointment of a successor, and the urgency and importance of various matters which offered themselves to your attention immediately after your accession to office, sufficiently explain why it has not hitherto been in the power of your government, sir, to attend to the important matters to which I refer. But, the session of Congress having been brought to a close, and the present being the season of the year when the least possible business is usually transacted, it occurs to me that you may now feel at leisure to proceed to the consideration of that subject. At all events it becomes my duty to recall it to your recollection, and to repeat the earnest desire of her majesty's government, that a question, on which so much interest is felt in both countries, should be disposed of at the earliest moment consistent with the convenience of the government of the United States."
Mr. Calhoun answered the 22d of August declaring his readiness to begin the negotiation and fixing the next day for taking up the subject. It was taken up accordingly, and conducted in the approved and safe way of conducting such negotiations, that is to say, a protocol of every conference signed by the two negotiators before they separated, and the propositions submitted by each always reduced to writing. This was the proper and satisfactory mode of proceeding, the neglect and total omission of which had constituted so just and so loud a complaint against the manner in which Mr. Webster and Lord Ashburton had conducted their conferences. Mr. Calhoun and Mr. Pakenham met seven times, exchanged arguments and propositions, and came to a balk, which suspended their labors. Mr. Calhoun, rejecting the usual arts of diplomacy, which holds in reserve the ultimate and true offer while putting forward fictitious ones for experiment, went at once to his ultimatum, and proposed the continuation of the parallel of the 49th degree of north latitude, which, after the acquisition of Louisiana, had been adopted by Great Britain and the United States as the dividing line between their possessions, from the Lake of the Woods (fixed as a land-mark under the treaty of Utrecht), to the summit of the Rocky Mountains—the United States insisting at the same time to continue that line to the Pacific Ocean under the terms of the same treaty. Mr. Pakenham declined this proposition in the part that carried the line to the ocean, but offered to continue it from the summit of the mountains, to the Columbia River, a distance of some three hundred miles; and then follow the river to the ocean. This was refused by Mr. Calhoun; and the ultimatum having been delivered on one hand, and no instructions being possessed on the other to yield any thing, the negotiations, after continuing through the month of September, came to a stand. At the end of four months (January 1845) Mr. Pakenham, by the direction of his government, proposed to leave the question to arbitration, which was declined by the American secretary, and very properly; for, while arbitrament is the commendable mode of settling minor questions, and especially those which arise from the construction of existing treaties, yet the boundaries of a country are of too much gravity to be so submitted.
Mr. Calhoun showed a manly spirit in proposing the line of 49, as the dominant party in the United States, and the one to which he belonged, were then in a high state of exultation for the boundary of 54 degrees 40 minutes, and the presidential canvass, on the democratic side, was raging upon that cry. The Baltimore presidential convention had followed a pernicious practice, of recent invention, in laying down a platform of principles on which the canvass was to be conducted, and 54-40 for the northern boundary of Oregon, had been made a canon of political faith, from which there was to be no departure except upon the penalty of political damnation. Mr. Calhoun had braved this penalty, and in doing so had acted up to his public and responsible duty.