The new President, Mr. Polk, elected under that cry, came into office on the 4th of March, and acting upon it, put into his inaugural address a declaration that our title to the whole of Oregon (meaning up to 54-40), was clear and indisputable; and a further declaration that he meant to maintain that title. It was certainly an unusual thing—perhaps unprecedented in diplomacy—that, while negotiations were depending (which was still the case in this instance, for the last note of Mr. Calhoun in January, declining the arbitration, gave as a reason for it that he expected the question to be settled by negotiation), one of the parties should authoritatively declare its right to the whole matter in dispute, and show itself ready to maintain it by arms. The declaration in the inaugural had its natural effect in Great Britain. It roused the British spirit as high as that of the American. Their excited voice came thundering back, to be received with indignation by the great democracy; and war—"inevitable war"—was the cry through the land. The new administration felt itself to be in a dilemma. To stand upon 54-40 was to have war in reality: to recede from it, might be to incur the penalty laid down in the Baltimore platform. Mr. Buchanan, the new Secretary of State, did me the honor to consult me. I answered him promptly and frankly, that I held 49 to be the right line, and that, if the administration made a treaty upon that line, I should support it. This was early in April. The secretary seemed to expect some further proposition from the British government; but none came. The rebuff in the inaugural address had been too public, and too violent, to admit that government to take the initiative again. It said nothing: the war cry continued to rage: and at the end of four months our government found itself under the necessity to take the initiative, and recommence negotiations as the means of avoiding war. Accordingly, on the 22d of July, Mr. Buchanan (the direction of the President being always understood) addressed a note to Mr. Pakenham, resuming the negotiation at the point at which it had been left by Mr. Calhoun; and, conforming to the offer that he had made, and because he had made it, again proposed the line of 49 to the ocean. The British minister again refused that line, and inviting a "fairer" proposition. In the mean time the offer of 49 got wind. The democracy was in commotion. A storm was got up (foremost in raising which was the new administration organ, Mr. Ritchie's Daily Union), before which the administration quailed—recoiled—and withdrew its offer of 49. There was a dead pause in the negotiation again; and so the affair remained at the meeting of Congress, which came together under the loud cry of war, in which Mr. Cass was the leader, but followed by the body of the democracy, and backed and cheered on by the democratic press—some hundreds of papers. Of course the Oregon question occupied a place, and a prominent one, in the President's message—(which has been noticed)—and, on communicating the failure of the negotiation to Congress, he recommended strong measures for the security and assertion of our title. The delivery of the notice which was to abrogate the joint occupation of the country by the citizens of the two powers, was one of these recommendations, and the debate upon that question brought out the full expression of the opinions of Congress upon the whole subject, and took the management of the questions into the hands of the Senate and House of Representatives.
[CHAPTER CLVII.]
OREGON QUESTION: NOTICE TO ABROGATE THE ARTICLE IN THE TREATY FOR A JOINT OCCUPATION: THE PRESIDENT DENOUNCED IN THE SENATE FOR A SUPPOSED LEANING TO THE LINE OF FORTY-NINE.
The proposition for the line of 49 having been withdrawn by the American government on its non-acceptance by the British, had appeased the democratic storm which had been got up against the President; and his recommendation for strong measures to assert and secure our title was entirely satisfactory to those who now came to be called the Fifty-Four Forties. The debate was advancing well upon this question of notice, when a sinister rumor—only sinister to the extreme party—began to spread, that the British government would propose 49, and that the President was favorable to it. This rumor was true, and by way of preparing the public mind for it, Mr. William H. Haywood, a senator from North Carolina, both personally and politically friendly to the President, undertook to show, not so much that the line of 49 was right in itself, but that the President was not so far committed against it as that he could not yet form a treaty upon it. In this sense he—
"Took a view of the course which had been pursued by the President, approving of the offer of the parallel of 49° to Great Britain, and maintaining that there was nothing in the language of the President to render it improper in him to negotiate hereafter on that basis, notwithstanding this rejection. He regarded the negotiation as still open; and he would not do the President so much wrong as to suppose that, if we passed the notice, and thus put into his hand a great moral weapon, that he could be guilty of so miserable a trick as to use it to the dishonor of his country on the one hand, or to the reckless provocation of a war on the other. Believing that the administration stood committed to accept an offer of a division of the territory on the parallel of 49°—or substantially that—he should sustain the Executive in that position. He expressed his conviction that, whatever might be his individual opinions, the President—as General Washington did in 1796—would fulfil his obligations to the country; that, whenever the interests of the country required it, he would sacrifice his own opinions to the sense of his official duty. He rebuked the cry which had been set up by some of the friends of the President, which placed him in the position of being the mere organ of the Baltimore convention, and declared that, if he could believe that the Executive would permit the resolution of that convention to overrule his duty to his country, he would turn his back upon him. Mr. H. then proceeded to deduce, from the language and acts of the Executive, that he had not put himself in a position which imposed on him the necessity of refusing to negotiate on the parallel of 49°, should negotiation be resumed on that basis. In this respect, the President did not occupy that attitude in which some of his friends wished to place him. It ought to be borne in mind that Great Britain had held occupancy for above forty years; and it was absurd to suppose, that, if we turn suddenly upon her and tell her she must quit, that she will not make resistance. And he asked what our government would be likely to do if placed in a similar position and reduced to the same alternative. No one could contend for a moment that the rejection of the offer of 49° by Great Britain released the President from the obligation to accept that offer whenever it should again be made. The question was to be settled by compromise; and, on this principle, the negotiation was still pending. It was not to be expected that a negotiation of this kind could be carried through hastily. Time must be given for communication with the British government, for proper consideration and consultation; and true politeness requires that ample time should be given for this purpose. It is obvious that Great Britain does not consider the negotiation terminated, as she would have recalled her minister; and the President cannot deem it closed, or he would have made a communication to Congress to that effect. The acts of the President were not such as to justify any apprehensions of a rupture; and from that, he did not ask for the notice in order that he might draw the sword and throw away the scabbard. The falsehood of any such charge is proved by the fact that he has asked for no enlargement of the annual appropriations; on the other hand, his estimates are rather diminished. Knowing him to be honest, he (Mr. H.) would acquit him of any such imputation of moral treason, which would subject him to the reprobation of man and the anger of his God. Mr. H. then referred to the divisions which had sprung up in the democratic party, the tendency of which is, to destroy the party, by cutting off its heads. This question of Oregon had been turned into a party question, for the purpose of President-making. He repudiated any submission to the commands of factious meetings, got up by demagogues, for the purpose of dictating to the Senate how to make a treaty, and felt thankful that North Carolina had never taken this course. He did not regard such proceedings as indicative of that true democracy which, like a potato, grew at the root, and did not, like the spurious democracy, show itself from the blossom. The creed of the Baltimore convention directs the party to re-annex Texas and to re-occupy Oregon. Texas had been re-annexed, and now we are to go for the re-occupation of Oregon. Now, Old Oregon, embracing all the territory on which American foot ever trod, comprised merely the valley of Willamette, which did not extend above 49°; and consequently this portion was all which could be contemplated in the expression "re-occupation," as it would involve an absurdity to speak of re-occupying what we had never occupied. Referring to the history of the annexation of Texas, he cited the impossibility of getting Texas through, until the two questions had been made twin sisters by the Baltimore convention. Then Texas passed the House, and came into the Senate, followed so closely by Oregon, that they seemed to be akin."
In all this Mr. Haywood spoke the sentiments of the President, personally confided to him, and to prepare the way for his action in conformity to them. The extreme party suspected this, and had their plan arranged to storm it down, and to force the President to repulse the British offer of 49, if now it should be made, as he had been stormed into a withdrawal of his own offer of that line by his own newspapers and party in the recess of Congress. This task fell upon Mr. Hannegan of Indiana, and Mr. William Allen of Ohio, whose temperaments were better adapted to the work than that of their chief, Mr. Cass. Mr. Hannegan began:
"I must apologize to the Senate for obtruding myself upon your attention at this advanced period of the day, particularly as I have already occupied your attention on several occasions in the course of this debate. My remarks now, however, will be very brief. Before I proceed to make any reply to the speech of the senator from North Carolina—the most extraordinary speech which I have ever listened to in the whole course of my life—I desire, through the Vice President, to put a question to him, which I have committed to writing. It is this: I ask him if he has the authority of the President, directly or indirectly, for saying to the Senate that it is his (the President's) wish to terminate the Oregon question by compromising with Great Britain on the 49th degree of north latitude?"
To this categorical demand, Mr. Haywood replied that it would be unwise and impolitic for the President to authorize any senator to make such a declaration as that implied in the question of Mr. Hannegan. Mr. Allen, of Ohio, then took up the demand for the answer, and said:
"I put the question, and demand an answer to it as a public right. The senator here has assumed to speak for the President. His speech goes to the world; and I demand, as a public right, that he answer the question; and if he won't answer it, I stand ready to deny that he has expressed the views of the President."