Page:Oregon Historical Quarterly vol. 19.djvu/325

 CHAPTER VI. OREGON AND THE POLITICAL GAME: 1843-4. The fairly strict party lines drawn in the poll of the Senate on the Linn bill early in 1843 cast a bit of illumination upon the situation which was already developing for the presidential campaign of 1844. Many factors entered into this situation and it will be necessary to point out the relative importance of the Oregon Question among them all, for it did not stand alone, nor yet was it the paramount issue before the people. Upon it could be founded a slogan which would draw votes in certain quarters and repel them in others; hence it was a problem for political managers to weigh the merits of Oregon as a political plank in the platforms of a national campaign. It is not denied that there were men in public life who acted solely from motives influenced by the merits of the question itself; some either viewed as unquestionable the rights of the United States to all or part of the region, and believed sin- cerely that further delay in settlement would be inimical if not disastrous. Others held that a very grave doubt existed as to the secure foundation of the most extensive claim, and many of these continued to think that there was no need for imme- diate action in any case. So, too, were men who voted for presidential electors and for members of Congress divided in their opinions, in so far as they bestowed thought upon the issue. Throughout the West there was the feeling, pretty widely entertained, that the settlement of the Oregon Ques- tion on terms favorable to the United States involved the most vital factors of the nation's welfare. In the South Oregon paled into insignificance before Texas, and in the manufactur- ing and commercial centers of the North and East, Texas was a synonym for the extension of slavery, and Oregon but an- other of those wild as well as dangerous imaginings of a rude frontier people. These elements, indifferent or keenly interested as the case might be, were ready for the hand of the political leaders who