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 FEDERAL RELATIONS OF OREGON 327 From Nashville such an item was significant especially when it is recalled that just a month before there had appeared in some papers an open letter from Mr. Polk to S. P. Chase, Thomas Heaton and others wherein he said, 27 . . . "Let Texas be reannexed, and the authority and laws of the United States be established and main- tained within her limits, as also in the Oregon territory, and let the fixed policy of our government be, not to per- mit Great Britain or any other foreign power to plant a colony or hold dominion over any portion of the people or territory of either. These are my opinions. . . ." Making due allowance in the matter of cordiality and har- mony the prophesy of the Union was carried out to the letter. Van Buren's name was withdrawn from before the convention after several ballots and there was a rush to the standard of Polk whereon was inscribed the sentiment of his April letter: "Resolved, That our title to the whole of the territory of Oregon is clear and unquestionable; that no portion of the same ought to be ceded to England or any other power; and that the re-occupation of Oregon and the re- annexation of Texas at the earliest practicable period are great American measures, which this convention recom- mends to the cordial support of the democracy of the union." Astonishment is too feeble a term to indicate the feeling with which the news of Folk's nomination was received in the country. The National Intelligencer's comment, given with the quotation from the Nashville Union, shows the general atti- tude: 28 "This is the first, last, and only information which we remember to have seen from any quarter, prior to the Baltimore convention, of the probability, or possibility, of Mr. FOLK'S being a candidate for the presidency. The inference is irresistible that the arrangement for with- drawing Mr. VAN BUREN and bringing forward Mr. POLK, was made at Nashville, or in the neighborhood of that city." 27 See Niles' Register, 8 June. Stan wood, History of the Presidency, ch. XVII. See also the story of how Folk's name was brought before the Baltimore conven- tion by Bancroft, Bancroft to Polk, July 6, 1844, in Howe, Life and Letters of George Bancroft, I, 252-5. 28 4 June, 1844.