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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.

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."

Mr. Westcott of Florida, called Mr. Allen to order for asking for the opinions of the President through a senator. The President could only communicate his opinions to the Senate responsibly, by message. It would be a breach of privilege for any senator to undertake to report such opinions, and consequently a breach of order for any senator to call for them. In this Mr. Westcott was right, but the call to order did not prevent Mr. Allen from renewing his demand:

"I do not demand an answer as any personal right at all. I demand it as a public right. When a senator assumes to speak for the President, every senator possesses a public right to demand his authority for so doing. An avowal has been made that he is the exponent of the views of the President, upon a great national question. He has assumed to be that exponent. And I ask him whether he has the authority of the President for the assumption?"

Mr. Westcott renewed his call to order, but no question was taken upon the call, which must have been decided against Mr. Allen. Mr. Haywood said, he denied the right of any senator to put questions to him in that way, and said he had not assumed to speak by the authority of the President. Then, said Mr. Allen, the senator takes back his speech. Mr. Haywood: "Not at all; but I am glad to see my speech takes." Mr. Allen: "With the British." Mr. Hannegan then resumed:

"I do not deem it material whether the senator from North Carolina gives a direct answer to my question or not. It is entirely immaterial. He assumes – no, he says there is no assumption about it – that there is no meaning in language, no truth in man, if the President any where commits himself to 54° 40', as his flattering friends assume for him. Now, sir, there is no truth in man, there is no meaning in language, if the President is not committed to 54° 40' in as strong language as that which makes up the Holy Book. From a period antecedent to that in which he became the nominee of the Baltimore convention, down to this moment, to all the world he stands committed for 54° 40'. I go back to his declaration made in 1844, to a committee of citizens of Cincinnati, who addressed him in relation to the annexation of Texas, and he there uses this language being then before the country as the democratic candidate for the chair which he now fills.

"Mr. Crittenden. What is the date?

"Mr. Hannegan. It is dated the 23d of April.

[Mr. H. here read an extract from Mr. Polk's letter to the committee of the citizens of Cincinnati.]"

Mr. Hannegan then went on to quote from the President's message – the annual message at the commencement of the session – to show that, in withdrawing his proposition for a boundary on the 49th parallel, he had taken a position against ever resuming it. He read this paragraph:

"The extraordinary and wholly inadmissible demands of the British Government, and the rejection of the proposition made in deference alone to what had been done by my predecessors, and the implied obligation which their acts seemed to impose, afford satisfactory evidence that no compromise which the United States ought to accept can be effected. With this conviction, the proposition of compromise which had been made and rejected was, by my direction, subsequently withdrawn, and our title to the whole Oregon Territory asserted, and, as is believed, maintained by irrefragable facts and arguments."

Having read this paragraph, Mr. Hannegan proceeded to reply to it; and exclaimed —

"What does the President here claim? Up to 54° 40' – every inch of it. He has asserted that claim, and is, as he says, sustained by 'irrefragable facts and arguments.' But this is not all: I hold that the language of the Secretary of State is the language of the President of the United States; and has not Mr. Buchanan, in his last communication to Mr. Pakenham, named 54° 40' in so many words? He has. The President adopts this language as his own. He plants himself on 54° 40'."

Mr. Hannegan then proceeded to plant the whole democratic party upon the line of 54-40, and to show that Oregon to that extent, and Texas to her whole extent, were the watchwords of the party in the presidential election – that both were to be carried together; and Texas having been gained, Oregon, without treachery, could not be abandoned.

"The democratic party is thus bound to the whole of Oregon – every foot of it; and let the senator rise in his place who will tell me in what quarter of this Union – in what assembly of democrats in this Union, pending the presidential election, the names of Texas and Oregon did not fly together, side by side, on the democratic banners. Every where they were twins – every where they were united. Does the senator from North Carolina suppose that he, with his appeals to the democracy, can blind our eyes, as he thinks he tickled our ears? He is mistaken. 'Texas and Oregon' cannot be divided; they dwell together in the American heart. Even in Texas, I have been told the flag of the lone star had inscribed on it the name of Oregon. Then, it was all Oregon. Now, when you have got Texas, it means just so much of Oregon as you in your kindness and condescension think proper to give us. You little know us, if you think the mighty West will be trodden on in this way."

Mr. Hannegan then undertook to disclaim for the President the sentiments attributed to him by Mr. Haywood, and to pronounce an anathema upon him if the attribution was right.

"The senator in his defence of the President, put language into his mouth which I undertake to say the President will repudiate, and I am not the President's champion. I wish not to be his champion. I would not be the champion of power. I defend the right, and the right only. But, for the President, I deny the intentions which the senator from North Carolina attributes to him – intentions, which, if really entertained by him, would make him an infamous man – ay, an infamous man. He [Mr. Haywood] told the Senate yesterday – unless I grossly misunderstood him, along with several friends around me – 'that the President had occasionally stickings-in, parenthetically, to gratify – what? – the ultraisms of the country and of party; whilst he reposed in the White House with no intentions of carrying out these parenthetical stickings-in.' In plain words, he represents the President as parenthetically sticking in a few hollow and false words to cajole the 'ultraisms of the country?' What is this, need I ask, but charging upon the President conduct the most vile and infamous? If this allegation be true, these intentions of the President must sooner or later come to light, and when brought to light, what must follow but irretrievable disgrace? So long as one human eye remains to linger on the page of history, the story of his abasement will be read, sending him and his name together to an infamy so profound, a damnation so deep, that the hand of resurrection will never be able to drag him forth."

Mr. Mangum called Mr. Hannegan to order: Mr. Haywood desired that he might be permitted to proceed, which he did, disclaiming all disrespect to Mr. Haywood, and concluded with saying; that, "so far as the whole tone, spirit, and meaning of the remarks of the senator from North Carolina is concerned, if they speak the language of James K. Polk, then James K. Polk has spoken words of falsehood with the tongue of a serpent."

Mr. Reverdy Johnson came to the relief of the President and Mr. Haywood in a temperate and well-considered speech, in which he showed he had had great apprehension of war – that this apprehension was becoming less, and that he deemed it probable, and right and honorable in itself, that the President should meet the British on the line of 49 if they should come to it; and that line would save the territorial rights of the United States, and the peace and honor of the country.

"It is with unaffected embarrassment I rise to address the Senate on the subject now under consideration; but its great importance and the momentous issues involved in its final settlement are such as compel me, notwithstanding my distrust of my own ability to be useful to my country, to make the attempt. We have all felt that, at one time at least (I trust that time is now past), we were in imminent danger of war. From the moment the President of the United States deemed it right and becoming, in the outset of his official career, to announce to the world that our title to Oregon was clear and unquestionable, down to the period of his message to Congress in December last, when he reiterated the declaration, I could not see how it was possible that war should be averted. That apprehension was rendered much more intense from the character of the debates elsewhere, as well as from the speeches of some of the President's political friends within this chamber. I could not but listen with alarm and dismay to what fell from the very distinguished and experienced senator from Michigan (Mr. Cass) at an early period of this debate; to what I heard from the senator from Indiana (Mr. Hannegan); and, above all, to what was said by the senator from Ohio (Mr. Allen), the chairman of the Committee on Foreign Relations, who, in my simplicity, I supposed must necessarily be apprised of the views of the government in regard to the foreign concerns of the country. Supposing the condition of the country to be what it was represented to be by each and all of the three senators, I could not imagine how it could be possible that the most direful of all human calamities, war, was to be avoided; and I was accordingly prepared to say, on the hypothesis of the fact assumed by the senator from Michigan, that war was inevitable; – to use his own paraphrase of his own term, which, it would appear, has got out of favor with himself – 'war must come.'

"What did they represent to be the condition of the nation? I speak now more particularly of the last two senators, from Indiana and Ohio. They told us that negotiation was at an end; that we were now thrown back on our original rights; that, by these original rights, as had been officially announced, our title to the whole country was beyond all question: and that the national honor must be forfeited, if that title should not be maintained by force of arms. I felt that he must have been a careless and a profitless reader of English history who could indulge the hope that, if such was to be the course and conduct of this country, war was not inevitable. Then, in addition to my own opinion, when I heard it admitted by the honorable senator from Michigan, with that perfect candor which always distinguishes him on this floor, that, in his opinion, England would never recede, I felt that war was inevitable.

"I now rejoice in hoping and believing, from what I have subsequently heard, that the fears of the Senate, as well as my own apprehensions, were, as I think, unfounded. Since then, the statesmanlike view taken by the senator from New York who first addressed us (Mr. Dix), and by the senator from Missouri (Mr. Benton), to whom this whole question is as familiar as a household term – and the spirit of peace which breathed in their every word – have fully satisfied me that, so far as depends upon them, a fair and liberal compromise of our difficulties would not be in want of willing and zealous advocates.

"And this hope has been yet more strengthened by the recent speech of the senator from North Carolina (Mr. Haywood), not now in his place. Knowing, as I thought I did, the intimate relations, both personal and political, which that senator bore to the Chief Magistrate – knowing, too, that, as chairman of the Committee on Commerce, it was his special duty to become informed in regard to all matters having a bearing on the foreign relations of the country; I did not doubt, and I do not now doubt, that in every thing he said as to the determination of the President to accept, if offered by the British government, the same terms which he had himself proposed in July last, the reasonable inference was, that such an offer, if made, would be accepted. I do not mean to say, because I did not so understand the senator, that, in addressing this body with regard to the opinions or purposes of the President, he spoke by any express or delegated authority. But I do mean to say, that I have no doubt, from his knowledge of the general views of the President, as expressed in his message, taken in connection with certain omissions on the part of the Executive, that when he announced to us that the President would feel himself in honor bound to accept his own offer, if now reciprocated by Great Britain, he spoke that which he knew to be true. And this opinion was yet more strengthened and confirmed by what I found to be the effect of his speech on the two senators I have named – the leaders, if they will permit me to call them so, of the ultraists on this subject – I mean the senator from Indiana (Mr. Hannegan), and the senator from Ohio (Mr. Allen). He was an undiscerning witness of the scene which took place in this chamber immediately after the speech of the senator from North Carolina (Mr. Haywood), who must not have seen that those two senators had consulted together with the view of ascertaining how far the senator from North Carolina spoke by authority, and that the result of their consultation was a determination to catechise that senator; and the better to avoid all mistake, that they reduced their interrogatory to writing, in order that it might be propounded to him by the senator from Indiana (Mr. Hannegan); and if it was not answered, that it was then to be held as constructively answered by the senator from Ohio (Mr. Allen). What the result of the manœuvre was I leave it to the Senate to decide; but this I will venture to say, that in the keen encounter of wits, to which their colloquy led, the two senators who commenced it got rather the worst of the contest. My hope and belief has been yet further strengthened by what has NOT since happened; I mean my belief in the pacific views of the Chief Magistrate. The speech of the senator from North Carolina was made on Thursday, and though a week has nearly elapsed since that time, notwithstanding the anxious solicitude of both those senators, and their evident desire to set the public right on that subject, we have, from that day to this, heard from neither of the gentlemen the slightest intimation that the construction given to the message by the senator from North Carolina was not a true one."

Mr. Johnson continued his speech on the merits of the question – the true line which should divide the British and American possessions beyond the Rocky Mountains; and placed it on the parallel of 49° according to the treaty of Utrecht, and in conformity with the opinions and diplomatic instructions of Mr. Jefferson, who had acquired Louisiana and sent an expedition of discovery to the Pacific Ocean, and had well studied the whole question of our territorial rights in that quarter. Mr. Benton did not speak in this incidental debate, but he knew that Mr. Haywood spoke with a knowledge of the President's sentiments, and according to his wishes, and to prepare the country for a treaty upon 49°. He knew this, because he was in consultation with the President, and was to speak for the same purpose, and was urged by him to speak immediately in consequence of the attempt to crush Mr. Haywood – the first of his friends who had given any intimation of his views. Mr. Benton, therefore, at an early day, spoke at large upon the question when it took another form – that of a bill to establish a territorial government for Oregon; some extracts from which constitute the next chapter.