Page:Oregon Historical Quarterly vol. 20.pdf/67

 FEDERAL RELATIONS OF OREGON

59

Ingersoll of Pennsylvania presented the majority report and Garett Davis of Mississippi the minority report on January fifth. The majority report was a simple resolution directing the President forthwith to cause notice to be given to Great

Britain that at the expiration of twelve

months the

joint occu-

The report which Davis presented was him and Truman Smith of Connecticut, both Whigs, by

pation should cease.

signed and Caleb Smith of Indiana, a Democrat. It raised the constitutional question of whether the House could act in the

matter; the treaty had been made by the President by and with the advice and consent of the Senate without any action

on the part of the House, hence, while the House might express an opinion by means of a resolution, it could not share in directing the

by a

President to

act.

"And why

violation of all propriety of form,

tive authority

over the subject, make

should the House, and without any effecitself a

party to this

proceeding ?"

The majority had recommended the first Monday in February as a time to take up its report, but the House would have no such delay a motion was made to refer both reports

to the

Union a

Committee of the Whole House on the State of the to be

Whig

made

the special order of the next day. Giddings, know if this did not open the

of Ohio, wished to

whole subject matter to discussion, and when the Speaker ruled that it did launched out into the only speech of the whole debate wherein the slavery issue was made prominent. He said he had previously voted against giving notice but now that Texas had been "reannexed" the South was willing to compromise on Oregon Texas had given the slave party the balance of power and now the North was bound hand and foot. The South feared a war with Great Britain for Oregon for it would mean the end of slavery when the blacks of the West Indies came and started a servile insurrection, and then the slave-holders would call upon the North to de;

fend them.

Gidding's violent speech and his speeches usuwere violent when slavery was the subject provoked a response from his Democratic colleague McDowell, who de-

ally