Page:Oregon Historical Quarterly vol. 20.pdf/205

 THE FEDERAL RELATIONS

OF OREGON

195

duty to assert and maintain, by all constitutional means, the right of the United States to that portion of our territory which lies beyond the Rocky Mountains. Our title to the country

Oregon is 'clear and unquestionable' and already our people are preparing to perfect that title by occupying it with their The world beholds the peaceful wives and children. of



.

.

.

triumphs of the industry of our emigrants. To us belongs the duty of protecting them adequately wherever they may be upon our soil. The jurisdiction and the benefits of our republican institutions, should be extended over them in the distant regions they have selected for their homes." Certainly no one can blame the westerner from reading in this a con-

firmation of his belief that all of

upon, and

all

meant up

to 54

Oregon was

The same impression was forced upon sible for the declaration of the

to be insisted

40'.

others,

more respon-

Democratic party

at Baltimore.

John C. Calhoun as Secretary of State was telling Mr. Pakenham, the British minister, that the parallel of 49 North Latitude was the lowest line the United States would accept, although he hinted that perhaps the United States might not insist upon the tip of Vancouver's Island. At the same time the popular understanding in the country at large

was

that the

Democratic party would never accept anything less than the Russian line. Calhoun, while not on the surface an active worker in the preliminaries of the Baltimore convention, was the leader of his party in the South and was not unacquainted with the causes which led to the nomination of President Polk.

Yet Calhoun, in May, 1845, when writing his daughter about not being in the newly-formed cabinet, declared that with Folk's "imprudent declaration in the (Inaugural Address) in reference to the Oregon question, I could not have remained in it had he invited me. I did my best in a conversation I had with him, a week or ten days before he delivered his inaugural,

him against the course he took in reference to Oreogn, but it seems in vain." He went on to say that he had had the negotiation in such a state that he saw his way through and would have laid the results before Congress at the last session, to guard