The Southern representatives, both Democrats and Whigs, and the Northern Democrats, sustained this extraordinary resolution, which became widely known as the 21st Rule of the House. The Northern Whigs, to their honor be it said, were steadily against it. The real design of the measure was to take from Mr. Adams the power of precipitating a discussion on the slavery question, but the most unskilled should have seen that in this it would fail. It resembled in its character the re-actionary and tyrannical edicts so frequently employed in absolute governments, and was unsuited to the temper, ran counter to the judgment, and proved offensive to the conscience, of the American people.

Profoundly opposed as were many citizens to a denial of the right of petition, very few wished to become identified with the cause of the Abolitionists. In truth it required no small degree of moral courage to take position in the ranks of that despised political sect forty-five years ago. Persecutions of a petty and social character were almost sure to follow, and not infrequently grievous wrongs were inflicted, for which, in the absence of a disposition among the people to see justice done, the law afforded no redress. Indeed, by an apparent contradiction not difficult to reconcile, many of those who fought bravely for the right of the Abolitionists to be heard in Congress by petition, were yet enraged with them for continually and, as they thought, causelessly, raising and pressing the issue. They were willing to fight for the right of the Abolitionists to do a certain thing, and then willing to fight the Abolitionists for aimlessly and uselessly doing it. The men who were governed by these complex motives were chiefly Whigs. They felt that an increase of popular strength to the Abolitionists must be at the expense of the party which, continuing to make Clay its idol, was about to make Harrison its candidate. The announcement, therefore, on the eve of the national contest of 1840, that the Abolitionists had nominated James G. Birney of Michigan for President, and Francis J. Le Moyne of Pennsylvania for Vice-President, was angrily received by the Whigs, and denunciations of the movement were loud and frequent. The support received by these candidates was unexpectedly small, and showed little ground, in the judgment of the Whigs, for the course taken by the Abolitionists. Their strength was almost wholly confined to New England, Western New York, and the Western Reserve of Ohio. It was plainly seen, that, in a large majority of the free States, the Abolitionists had as yet made no impression on public opinion.

THE COLONIZATION SOCIETY.

Any less earnest body of men would have been discouraged, but the Abolition party was composed of devotees possessing the true martyr spirit, and, instead of being appalled by defeat, they were inspired with fresh zeal, and incited to new effort. They had not failed to observe, that, while few were disposed to unite in extreme anti- slavery measures, there was a growing number whose conscience was aroused on the general subject of human bondage. The emancipation of negroes with a view to their settlement in Africa, as advocated by the Colonization Society, received the support of conservative opponents of slavery, the sympathy of the Churches, and the patronage of leading men among the slave-holders of the Border States. The National Government was repeatedly urged to give its aid to the scheme; and, during the excitement on the Missouri question, Congress appropriated $100,000, nominally for the return of Africans who had been unlawfully landed in the United States after the slave trade was prohibited, but really as an indirect mode of promoting the project of colonization. As a scheme for the destruction of domestic slavery it was ridiculed by the Abolitionists, who in the end violently opposed it as tending to deaden the public conscience to the more imperative duty of universal emancipation. The philanthropic efforts of the Society were abundantly rewarded, however, by the establishment of the Republic of Liberia, whose career has been eminently creditable and advantageous to the African race.

CHAPTER II.

Review of events before 1860 (continued).—Early Efforts to acquire Texas.—Course of President Tyler.—Mr. Calhoun appointed Secretary of State.—His Successful Management of the Texas Question. —His Hostility to Mr. Van Buren.—Letters of Mr. Clay and Mr. Van Buren opposing the Annexation of Texas.—Mr. Clay nominated as the Whig Candidate for the President in 1844.—Van Buren's Nomination defeated.—Mr. Polk selected as the Democratic Candidate.—Disquietude of Mr. Clay.—His Change of Ground.—His Defeat.—Prolonged Rivalry between Mr. Clay and General Jackson.—Texas formally annexed to the Union.

Soon after the failure of the Abolitionists to exhibit popular strength, the slavery question was forced upon public attention independently of their efforts, and by causes whose operation and effect were not distinctly forseen by those who set them in motion. The Americans who, in a spirit of adventure, migrated to Texas after that province had revolted from Mexico, became the controlling power in the young republic, and under the lead of General Sam Houston, in the month of April, 1836, won a memorable victory over the Mexican army at San Jacinto. Thenceforward, in differing degrees of earnestness, the annexation of Texas became a subject of consideration in the United States, but it was never incorporated in the creed of either of the great parties until the Presidential canvass of 1844. Not long after the death of President Harrison in April, 1841, his successor, John Tyler, had serious disagreements with the leading Whigs, both in his cabinet and in Congress, respecting the establishment of a national bank. Mr. Clay led the attack upon him openly and almost savagely, arraigning him as a traitor to the principles upon which he had been elected, and pursuing the quarrel so violently, that in September, five months after Tyler's accession, every member of his cabinet resigned except Mr. Webster. He lingered, unwelcome if not distrusted, until July, 1843, for the purpose of conducting the negotiations in regard to the North-eastern boundary, which he brought to a termination by the Ashburton Treaty. The new secretary of State, Abel P. Upshur of Virginia,—who had been at the head of the Navy Department for a few months,—was a man of strong parts and brilliant attainments, but not well known outside of his own commonwealth, and subject therefore to disparagement as the successor of a man so illustrious as Mr. Webster. He grasped his new duties, however, with the hand of a master, and actively and avowedly pursued the policy of acquiring Texas. His efforts were warmly seconded by the President, whose friends believed with all confidence that this question could be so presented as to make Mr. Tyler the Democratic candidate in the approaching Presidential election. What Mr. Upshur's success might have been in the difficult field of negotiation upon which he had entered, must be left to conjecture, for his life was suddenly destroyed by the terrible accident on board the United-States steamer "Princeton," in February, 1844, but little more than seven months after he had entered upon his important and engrossing duties.

ADMINISTRATION OF PRESIDENT TYLER.

Mr. Tyler's administration being now fully committed to the scheme of Texas annexation, the selection of a new secretary of State was a matter of extreme importance. The President had been finally separated from all sympathy with the party that elected him, when Mr. Webster left the cabinet the preceding summer. But he had not secured the confidence or the support of the Democracy. The members of that party were willing to fill his offices throughout the country, and to absorb the honors and emoluments of his administration; but the leaders of positive influence, men of the grade of Van Buren, Buchanan, Cass, Dallas, and Silas Wright, held aloof, and left the government to be guided by Democrats who had less to risk, and by Whigs of the type of Henry A. Wise of Virginia and Caleb Cushing of Massachusetts, who had revolted from the rule of Mr. Clay. It was the sagacity of Wise, rather than the judgment of Tyler, which indicated the immense advantage of securing Mr. Calhoun for the head of the cabinet. The great Southern leader was then in retirement, having resigned from the Senate the preceding year. By a coincidence worth nothing, Webster, Clay, and Calhoun were all at that moment absent from the Senate, each having voluntarily retired. In later life, chastened by political adversity, they returned to the chamber where, before their advent and since their departure, there have been no rivals to their fame.

Naturally, Mr. Calhoun would have been reluctant to take office under Tyler at any time, and especially for the brief remainder of an administration which had been continually under the ban of public opinion, and which had not the slightest prospect of renewal. With quick observation and keen insight, however, he perceived a great opportunity to serve the South, and to serve the South was with him not only a principle, but a passion. He realized, moreover, that the hour was at hand for an historic revenge which the noblest of minds might indulge. He saw intuitively that the Texas question was one of vast importance, with untold possibilities. He saw with equal clearness that it had never been presented in such manner as to appeal to the popular judgment, and become an active, aggressive issue in the struggle for the Presidency. A large section of the Democratic party had looked favorably upon annexation ever since 1836, but the leaders had dared not to include the scheme in the avowed designs of party policy. They had omitted it purposely in making up the issues for the Van Buren campaign of 1840, and, up to the hour when Mr. Calhoun entered the State Department, the intention of the managers was to omit it in the contest of 1844 against Mr. Clay. Mr. Tyler's advocacy of Texas annexation had injured rather than promoted it in the estimation of the Democratic party; but when Mr. Calhoun, with his astute management, and his large influence in the slave-holding States, espoused it, the whole tenor of Southern opinion was changed, and the Democracy of that section received a new inspiration.

Mr. Van Buren, aspiring again to the Presidency, desired to avoid the Texas issue. Mr. Calhoun determined that he should meet it. He had every motive for distrusting, opposing, even hating, Van Buren. The contest between them had been long and unrelenting. When Van Buren, as secretary of State, was seized with the ambition to succeed Jackson, he saw Calhoun in the Vice-Presidency, strongly intrenched as heir-apparent; and he set to work to destroy the friendship and confidence that existed between him and the President. The rash course of Jackson in the Seminole campaign of 1818 had been severely criticised in the cabinet of Monroe, and Mr. Calhoun, as secretary of War, had talked of a court of inquiry. Nothing, however, was done and the mere suggestion had been ten years forgotten, when Jackson entered upon the Presidency, entertaining the strongest friendship, both personal and political, for Calhoun. But the damaging fact was unearthed and the jealousy of Jackson was aroused. Calhoun was driven into a deadly quarrel, resigned the Vice-Presidency, and went back to South Carolina to engage in the nullification contest. Van Buren quickly usurped his place in the regard and confidence of Jackson, and succeeded to the Presidency. Calhoun, denounced in every paper under the control of the administration, was threatened with prosecution, and robbed for a time of the confidence of the Democratic party. By the strangely and rapidly changing fortunes of politics, it was now in his power to inflict a just retribution upon Van Bren. He did not neglect the opportunity.

SECRETARY CALHOUN'S DIPLOMACY.

Mr. Calhoun urged the scheme of annexation with intense earnestness. Taking up the subject where Mr. Upshur had left it, he conducted the negotiation with zeal and skill. His diplomatic correspondence was able and exhaustive. It was practically a frank avowal that Texas must be incorporated in the Union. He feared that European influence might become dominant in the new republic, and, as a consequence, that anti-slavery ideas might take root, and thence injuriously affect the interests, and to some extent the safety, of the Southern States. In an instruction to William R. King, our minister at Paris, Mr. Calhoun called his attention to the fact that England regarded the defeat of annexation "as indispensable to the abolition of slavery in Texas." He believed that England was "too sagacious not to see what a fatal blow abolition in Texas would give to slavery in the United States." Then, contemplating the effect of the general abolition of slavery, he declared that "to this continent it would be calamitous beyond description." It would "destroy in a great measure the cultivation and production of the great tropical staples, amounting annually in value to nearly $300,000,000." It is a suggestive commentary on Mr. Calhoun's evil foreboding, that the great tropical staple of the South has steadily increased in growth under free labor, and that the development of Texas never fairly began until slavery was banished from her soil.

Discussing the right of Texas to independence, in an instruction to Wilson Shannon, our minister to Mexico, Mr. Calhoun averred that "Texas had never stood in relation to Mexico as a rebellious province struggling to obtain independence. The true relation between them is that of independent members of a federal government, the weaker of which has successfully resisted the attempts of the stronger to conquer and subject her to its power." This was applying to the constitution of Mexico the same construction which he had so long and so ably demanded for our own. It was, indeed, but a paraphrase of the State-sovereignty and State-rights theory, with which he had persistently indoctrinated the Southern mind. Ten years after Mr. Calhoun was in his grave, the same doctrine, in almost the same form of expression, became familiar to the country as the Southern justification for resorting to civil war.

The prompt result of Mr. Calhoun's efforts was a treaty of annexation which had been discussed but not concluded under Mr. Upshur. It was communicated to the Senate by the President on the 12th of April, 1844. The effect which this treaty produced on the political fortunes of two leading statesmen, one in each party, was extraordinary. Prior to its negotiation, the Democrats throughout the Union were apparently well united in support of Mr. Van Buren as their Presidential candidate. Mr. Clay was universally accepted by the Whigs,—his nomination by a national convention being indeed but a matter of form. Relations of personal courtesy and confidence, if not of intimate friendship, had always subsisted between Mr. Clay and Mr. Van Buren during their prolonged public service. It was now believed that they had come to an understanding, through the negotiation of friends, to eliminate the Texas question from the campaign of 1844 by defeating the Tyler-Calhoun treaty, and agreeing to a general postponement of the subject, on the ground that immediate annexation would plunge the country into war. Very soon after the treaty was sent to the Senate by the President, Mr. Clay published in the "National Intelligencer" his famous Raleigh letter against annexation. The "Globe" of the same day contained a more guarded communication from Mr. Van Buren, practically taking the same ground. Considering the widely different characteristics of the two men, the letters were singularly alike in argument and inference. This fact, in connection with the identical time of publication, strengthened the suspicion, if not the conclusion, that there was a pre-arranged understanding between the eminent authors.

The letter of Mr. Van Buren was fatal to his prospects. He was caught in the toils prepared by Mr. Calhoun's diplomacy. His disastrous defeat four years before by General Harrison had not injured him within the lines of his own party, or shorn him of his prestige in the nation. He still retained the undiminished confidence of his old adherents in the North, and a large support from the Southern Democracy outside of the States in which Mr. Calhoun's influence was dominant. But the leading Democrats of the South, now inflamed with the fever of annexation, determined upon Van Buren's defeat as soon as his letter opposing the acquisition of Texas appeared. They went to work industriously and skillfully to compass that end. It was not a light task. The force of New York, as has been so frequently and so signally demonstrated, is difficult to overcome in a Democratic National Convention; and New York was not only unanimously, but enthusiastically, for Mr. Van Buren. Hitherto New York and the South had been in alliance, and their joint decrees were the rule of action inside the Democratic party. They were now separated and hostile, and the trial of strength that ensued was one of the most interesting political contests ever witnessed in the country. The Democratic masses had so long followed Southern lead that they were bewildered by this new and unexpected development. From the organization of the Federal Government to that hour, a period of fifty-six years, Mr. Van Buren was the only Northern man whom the Democracy had supported for the Presidency; and Mr. Van Buren had been forced upon the party by General Jackson. His title to his political estate, therefore, came from the South. It remained strong because his supporters believed that Jackson was still behind him. One word from the great chief at the Hermitage would have compelled Mr. Van Buren to retire from the field. But the name of Jackson was powerful with the Democratic masses. Against all the deep plots laid for Van Buren's overthrow, he was still able, when the national convention assembled at Baltimore in May, 1844, to count a majority of the delegates in favor of his nomination.

VAN BUREN AND THE TWO-THIRDS RULE.

The Texas treaty of annexation was still pending in the Senate with a decided majority committed against its confirmation, both upon public and partisan grounds. The Whig senators and the friends of Van Buren had coalesced for its defeat after their respective chiefs had pronounced against it. Mr. Crittenden of Kentucky and Colonel Benton were the leaders under whose joint efforts the work of Calhoun was to be set at naught. But, in fact, the work of Calhoun had already been effectually done and he could afford to disregard the fate of the treaty. He had consolidated the Democratic delegates from the slave-holding States against Mr. Van Buren, and the decree had gone forth for his political destruction. Mr. Van Buren, with the aid of the more populous North, had indeed secured a majority of the convention, but an instrumentality was at hand to overcome this apparent advantage. In the two preceding national conventions of the Democratic party, the rule requiring a two-thirds vote of all the delegates to make a nomination had been adopted at the instance of Mr. Van Buren's friends in order to insure his victory. It was now to be used for his defeat. Forseeing the result, the same zealous and devoted friends of Mr. Van Buren resisted its adoption. Romulus M. Sanders of North Carolina introduced the rule, and was sustained with great vigor by Robert J. Walker of Mississippi, and George W. Hopkins of Virginia. The leading opponents of the rule were Marcus Morton of Massachusetts, Nathan Clifford of Maine, and Daniel S. Dickinson of New York. The discussion was conducted by Southern men on one side and by Northern men on the other,—the first division of the kind in the Democratic party. Slavery was the ominous cause! The South triumphed and the rule was fastened upon the convention.

Immediately after this action Mr. Van Buren received a majority of the votes on the first ballot, and it was not unnaturally charged that many of those supporting him must have been insincere, inasmuch as they had the full right, until self-restrained by the two-thirds rule, to declare him the nominee. But this conclusion does not necessarily follow. Mr. Van Buren had been nominated in the National Democratic Conventions of 1835 and 1839 with the two-thirds rule in operation; and now to force his nomination for a third time by a mere slender majority was, in the judgment of wise and considerate party leaders among his own friends, a dangerous experiment. They instinctively feared to disregard a powerful and aggressive minority stubbornly demanding that Mr. Van Buren should be subjected to the same test which his friends had enforced in previous conventions. Their argument was not satisfactorily answered, the rule was adopted, and Mr. Van Buren's fate was sealed.

CALHOUN DEFEATS VAN BUREN.

The Southern men who insisted upon the rule had the courage to use it. They had absolute control of more than one-third of the convention; and, whatever might come, they were determined that Mr. Van Buren should not be nominated. As the most effective mode of assailing his strength, they supported a Northern candidate against him, and gave a large vote for General Cass. This wrought the intended result. It demoralized the friends of Mr. Van Buren and prepared the way for a final concentration upon Mr. Polk, which from the first had been the secret design of the Southern managers. It was skillfully done, and was the direct result of the Texas policy which Mr. Calhoun had forced the Democratic party to adopt. To Mr. Van Buren it was a great blow, and some of his friends were indisposed to submit to a result which they considered unfair. For the first time in history of any convention, of either party, a candidate supported by a majority of the delegates failed to be nominated. The two-thirds rule, as Colonel Benton declared, had been originally framed, "not to thwart a majority, but to strengthen it." But it was remorselessly used to defeat the majority by men who intended, not only to force a Southern policy on the government, but to intrust that policy to the hands of a Southern President. The support of Cass was not sincere, but it served for the moment to embarrass the friends of Van Buren, to make the triumph of what Benton called the Texas conspiracy more easy and more sure, and in the end to lay up wrath against the day of wrath for General Cass himself. Calhoun's triumph was complete. Politically he had gained a great victory for the South. Personally he had inflicted upon Mr. Van Buren a most humiliating defeat, literally destroying him as a factor in the Democratic party, of which he had so long and so successfully been the leader.

The details of Mr. Van Buren's defeat are presented because of its large influence on the subsequent development of anti-slavery strength in the North. He was sacrificed because he was opposed to the immediate annexation of Texas. Had he taken ground in favor of annexation, he would in all probability have been nominated with a fair prospect of election; though the general judgment at that time was that Mr. Clay would have defeated him. The overthrow of Mr. Van Buren was a crisis in the history of the Democratic party, and implanted dissensions which rapidly ripened into disaster. The one leading feature, the forerunner of important political changes, was the division of delegates on the geographical line of North and South. Though receiving a clear majority of the entire convention on the first ballot, Mr. Van Buren had but nine votes from the slave States; and these votes, singularly enough, came from the northern side of the line of the Missouri Compromise. This division in a Democratic National Convention was, in many of its relations and aspects, more significant than a similar division in the two Houses of Congress.

Though cruelly wronged by the convention, as many of his supporters thought, Mr. Van Buren did not himself show resentment, but effectively sustained his successful competitor. His confidential friend, Silas Wright, had refused to go on the ticket with Mr. Polk, and George M. Dallas was substituted by the quick and competent management of Mr. Robert J. Walker. The refusal of Mr. Wright led the Whigs to hope for distraction in the ranks of the New-York Democracy; but that delusion was soon dispelled by Wright's acceptance of the nomination for governor, and his entrance into the canvass with unusual energy and spirit. It was widely believed that Jackson's great influence with Van Buren was actively exerted in aid of Polk's election. It would have cruelly embittered the few remaining days of the venerable ex-president to witness Clay's triumph, and Van Buren owed so much to Jackson that he could not be indifferent to Polk's success without showing ingratitude to the great benefactor who had made him his successor in the Executive chair. Motives of this kind evidently influenced Mr. Van Buren; for his course in after years showed how keenly he felt his defeat, and how unreconciled he was to the men chiefly engaged in compassing it. The cooler temperament which he inherited from his Dutch ancestry enabled him to bide his time more patiently than men of Scotch-Irish blood, like Calhoun; but subsequent events plainly showed that he was capable of nursing his anger, and of inflicting a revenge as significant and as fatal as that of which he had been made the victim,—a revenge which would have been perfect in its gratification had it included Mr. Calhoun personally, as it did politically, with General Cass.

Mr. Clay's letter opposing the annexation of Texas, unlike the letter of Mr. Van Buren, brought its author strength and prestige in the section upon which he chiefly relied for support in the election. He was nominated with unbounded manifestations of enthusiasm at Baltimore, on the first of May, with no platform except a brief extract from one of his own letters embraced in a single resolution, and containing no reference whatever to the Texas question. His prospects were considered most brilliant, and his supporters throughout the Union were absolutely confident of his election. But the nomination of Mr. Polk, four weeks later, surprised and disquieted Mr. Clay. More quickly than his ardent and blinded advocates, he perceived the danger to himself which the candidacy of Mr. Polk inevitably involved; and he at once became restless and dissatisfied with the drift and tendency of the campaign. The convention which nominated Mr. Polk took bold ground for the immediate re-annexation of Texas and re-occupation of Oregon. This peculiar form of expression was used to indicate that Texas had already belonged to us under the Louisiana purchase, and that Oregon had been wholly ours prior to the treaty of joint occupancy with Great Britain. It further declared, that our title to the whole of Oregon, up to 54 deg. 40' north latitude, was "clear and indisputable"; thus carrying our claim to the borders of the Russian possessions, and utterly denying and defying the pretension of Great Britain to the ownership of any territory bordering on the Pacific.

FATAL CHANGE IN MR. CLAY'S POSITION.

By this aggressive policy the Democratic party called forth the enthusiasm of the people, both North and South, in favor of territorial acquisition,—always popular with men of Anglo-Saxon blood, and appealing in an especial manner to the young, the brave, and the adventurous, in all sections of the country. Mr. Clay, a man of most generous and daring nature, suddenly discovered that he was on the timid side of all the prominent questions before the people,—a position occupied by him for the first time. He had led public sentiment in urging the war of 1812 against Great Britain; had served with distinction in negotiating the Treaty of Peace at Ghent; had forced the country into an early recognition of the South-American republics at the risk of war with Spain; had fiercely attacked the Florida Treaty of 1819, for surrendering our rightful claim to Texas as part of the Louisiana purchase; and had, when secretary of State, held high ground on the Oregon question in his correspondence with the British Government. With this splendid record of fearless policy throughout his long public career, a defensive position, suddenly thrust upon him by circumstances which he had not foreseen, betrayed him into anger, and thence naturally into imprudence. All his expectations had been based upon a contest with Mr. Van Buren. The issues he anticipated were those of national bank, of protective tariff, of internal improvements, and the distribution of the proceeds from the sale of the public lands,— on all of which he believed he would have the advantage before the people. The substitution of Mr. Polk changed the entire character of the contest, as the sagacious leaders of the Southern Democracy had foreseen. To extricate himself from the embarrassment into which he was thrown, Mr. Clay resorted to the dangerous experiment of modifying the position which he had so recently taken on the Texas question. Apparently underrating the hostility of the Northern Whigs to the scheme of annexation, he saw only the disadvantage in which the Southern Whigs were placed, especially in the Gulf region, and, in a less degree, in the northern tier of slave-holding States. Even in Kentucky—which had for years followed Mr. Clay with immense popular majorities—the contest grew animated and exciting as the Texas question was pressed. The State was to vote in August; and the gubernatorial canvass between Judge Owsley, the Whig candidate, and General William O. Butler, the nominee of the Democrats, was attracting the attention of the whole nation. This local contest not only enlisted Mr. Clay's interest, but aroused his deep personal feeling. In a private letter, since made public, he urged the editors of the Whig press "to lash Butler" for some political shortcoming which he pointed out. In a tone of unrestrained anger, he declared that "we should have a pretty time of it with one of Jackson's lieutenants at Washington, and another at Frankfort, and the old man in his dotage at the Hermitage dictating to both." To lose Kentucky was, for the Whigs, to lose every thing. To reduce the Whig majority in Mr. Clay's own State would be a great victory for the Democracy, and to that end the leaders of the party were straining every nerve.

Mr. Clay realized that it was his position on the Texas question, as defined in the Raleigh letter, which was endangering his prestige in Kentucky. This fact, added to the pressure upon him from every other slave-holding State, precipitated him into the blunder which probably cost him his election. A few weeks after the nomination of Mr. Polk, on the first day of July, 1844, Mr. Clay, while resting quietly at Ashland, wrote to Stephen Miller of Tuscaloosa what has since been known as his Alabama letter. It was written to relieve the Southern Whigs, without anticipation of its effect upon the fortunes of Northern Whigs. Mr. Clay was surrounded by men of the South only, breathed their atmosphere, heard their arguments; and, unmindful of the unrepresented Northern sentiment, he took the fatal step. He declared, that, "far from having any personal objection to the annexation of Texas," he "would be glad to see it annexed, without dishonor, without war, with the common consent of the Union, and upon just and fair terms." This letter received the popular designation of Mr. Clay's political "death-warrant," from the disastrous effect it produced on his prospects in certain free States where before its appearance he had been considered irresistibly strong.

TRIUMPH OF POLK OVER CLAY.

The immediate and palpable effect of the Alabama letter in the North was an increase of power and numbers to the Abolitionists. To Mr. Clay this was its most destructive result. Prior to 1840 the Abolitionists had been so few and so scattered that they had not attempted a national organization, or taken any part in the political contests of the country. In that year, however, they named James G. Birney as their candidate for the Presidency, and cast for him only 6,745 votes out of a total of 2,410,778. In 1844 the Abolitionists again named Mr. Birney as their Presidential candidate; and, until the appearance of the Alabama letter, the general impression was that their vote would not be larger than in 1840. Indeed, so long as Mr. Clay held firmly to his opposition to Texas annexation, the tendency of the Abolitionists was to prefer him to Mr. Polk. But the moment the letter of surrender appeared thousands of anti-slavery Whigs who had loyally supported Mr. Clay went over at once to the Abolitionists. To the popular apprehension, Mr. Clay had changed his ground, and his new position really left little difference between himself and his opponent on the absorbing question of Texas annexation, but it still gave to Mr. Polk all the advantage of boldness. The latter was outspoken for the annexation of Texas, and the former, with a few timid qualifications, declared that he would be glad to see Texas annexed. Besides this, Mr. Polk's position on the Oregon question afforded some compensation by proposing to add a large area of free territory to offset the increase of slave territory in Texas. Under such arguments the Abolition party grew rapidly and steadily until, at the election, they polled for Mr. Birney 58,879 votes. This vast increase over the vote of 1840 was very largely at the expense of the Whig party, and its specific injury to Mr. Clay is almost a matter of mathematical demonstration. In New York the vote stood for Polk 237,588, for Clay 232,482, for Birney, 15,812. The plurality for Mr. Polk was only 5,106. In 1840 the vote for Mr. Birney in New York was 2,798.* But for the Alabama letter it has always been believed that Mr. Clay would have received a sufficient number of the Birney votes to give him a plurality. The election hinged on the result in New York. One hundred and thirty-eight electoral votes were necessary to a choice. With New York, Mr. Clay would have had a total of one hundred and forty-one. Mr. Polk, with New York added to his vote, received a total of one hundred and seventy, and was elected President of the United States.

No contest for the Presidency, either before or since, has been conducted with such intense energy and such deep feeling. Mr. Clay's followers were not ordinary political supporters. They had the profound personal attachment which is looked for only in hereditary governments, where loyalty becomes a passion, and is blind and unreasoning in its adherence and its devotion. The logical complement of such ardent fidelity is an opposition marked by unscrupulous rancor. This case proved no exception. The love of Mr. Clay's friends was equaled by the hatred of his foes. The zeal of his supporters did not surpass the zeal of his opponents. All the enmities and exasperations which began in the memorable contest for the Presidency when John Quincy Adams was chosen, and had grown into great proportions during the long intervening period, were fought out on the angry field of 1844. Mr. Polk, a moderate and amiable man, did not represent the acrimonious character of the controversy. He stood only as the passive representative of its principles. Behind him was Jackson, aged and infirm in body, but strong in mind, and unbroken in spirit. With him the struggle was not only one of principle, but of pride; not merely of judgment, but of temper; and he communicated to the legions throughout the country, who regarded him with reverence and gratitude, a full measure of his own animosity against Clay. In its progress the struggle absorbed the thought, the action, the passion, of the whole people. When its result was known, the Whigs regarded the defeat of Mr. Clay, not only as a calamity of untold magnitude to the country, but as a personal and profound grief, which touched the heart as deeply as the understanding. It was Jackson's final triumph over Clay. The iron-nerved old hero died in seven months after this crowning gratification of his life.

GENERAL JACKSON AND MR. CLAY.

For twenty years these two great, brave men headed the opposing political forces of the Union. Whoever might be candidates, they were the actual leaders. John Quincy Adams was more learned than either; Mr. Webster was stronger in logic and in speech; Calhoun more acute, refined, and philosophic; Van Buren better skilled in combining and directing political forces; but to no one of these was given the sublime attribute of leadership, the faculty of drawing men unto him. That is natural, not acquired. There was not in the whole country, during the long period of their rivalry, a single citizen of intelligence who was indifferent to Clay or to Jackson. For the one without qualification, against the other without reservation, was the rule of division from the northernmost township of New England to the mouths of the Mississippi. Both leaders had the highest courage; physical and moral, in equal degree. Clay held the advantage of a rare eloquence; but Jackson had a splendid military record, which spoke to the hearts of the people more effectively than words. Members for twenty years of the same party, they differed slightly, if at all, in political principles when the contest began; but Jackson enjoyed the prestige of a more lineal heirship to the creed of Jefferson, Madison, and Monroe; while Clay, by his imprudence in becoming secretary of State, incurred not only the odium of the "bargain and sale," but a share of the general unpopularity which at that time attached to the name of Adams. It is not in retrospect difficult to measure the advantages which Jackson possessed in the long contest, and to see clearly the reasons of his final triumph over the boldest of leaders, the noblest of foes. Still less is it difficult to see how largely the personality of the two men entered into the struggle, and how in the end the effect upon the politics and prosperity of the country would have been nearly the same had the winner and the loser exchanged places. In each of them patriotism was a passion. There never was a moment in their prolonged enmity and their rancorous contests when a real danger to the country would not have united them as heartily as in 1812, when Clay in the House and Jackson on the field co-operated in defending the national honor against the aggressions of Great Britain.

The election of Mr. Polk was an unquestionable verdict from the people in favor of the annexation of Texas. Mr. Clay and Mr. Van Buren had been able to defeat the treaty negotiated by Mr. Calhoun; but the popular vote overruled them, and pronounced in favor of the Democratic position after full and fair hearing. Mr. Tyler was anxious that the scheme so energetically initiated by him should be fully accomplished during his term. The short method of joint resolution was therefore devised by the ever fertile brain of Mr. Calhoun, and its passage through Congress intrusted to the skilful management of Robert J. Walker, then a senator from Mississippi, and already indicated for the portfolio of the Treasury in the new administration. Mr. Polk was in consultation with Mr. Tyler during the closing weeks of the latter's administration, and the annexation by joint resolution had his full concurrence. It was passed in season to receive the approval of President Tyler on the first day of March, three days before the eventful administration of Mr. Polk was installed in power. Its terms were promptly accepted by Texas, and at the next session of Congress, beginning December, 1845, the constitution of the new State was approved. Historic interest attached to the appearance of Sam Houston and Thomas J. Rusk as the first senators from the great State which they had torn from Mexico and added to the Union.

The lapse of forty years and the important events of intervening history give the opportunity for impartial judgment concerning the policy of acquiring Texas. We were not guiltless towards Mexico in originally permitting if not encouraging our citizens to join in the revolt of one of the States of that Republic. But Texas had passed definitely and finally beyond the control of Mexico, and the practical issue was, whether we should incorporate her in the Union or leave her to drift in uncertain currents—possibly to form European alliances which we should afterwards be compelled, in self-defense, to destroy. An astute statesman of that period summed up the whole case when he declared that it was wiser policy to annex Texas, and accept the issue of immediate war with Mexico, than to leave Texas in nominal independence to involve us probably in ultimate war with England. The entire history of subsequent events has vindicated the wisdom, the courage, and the statesmanship with which the Democratic party dealt with this question in 1844.

[* Total vote cast for James G. Birney, Abolition candidate for President, in 1840 and in 1844:—

1840. 1844. 1840. 1844. Connecticut . . . . 179 1,943 New York . . . . 2,798 15,812 Illinois . . . . . — 149 Ohio . . . . . . 903 8,050 Indiana . . . . . . — 2,106 Pennsylvania . . 343 3,138 Maine . . . . . . . 194 4,836 Rhode Island . . 42 107 Massachusetts . . . 1,621 10,860 Vermont . . . . 319 3,954 Michigan . . . . . 321 3,632 New Hampshire . . . 126 4,161 6,745 58,879 New Jersey . . . . 69 131 ]

CHAPTER III.

Review (continued).—Triumph of the Democratic Party.—Impending Troubles with Mexico.—Position of Parties.—Struggle for the Equality of Free and Slave States.—Character of the Southern Leaders.—Their Efforts to control the Government.—Conservative Course of Secretaries Buchanan and Marcy.—Reluctant to engage in War with Mexico.—The Oregon Question, 54 deg., 40', or 49 deg..—Critical Relations with the British Government.—Treaty of 1846.—Character of the Adjustment.—Our Probable Loss by Unwise Policy of the Democratic Party.

The annexation of Texas being accomplished, the next step was looked for with absorbing interest. In the spring of 1845 the Democratic party stood victor. Its policy had been approved by the people, its administration was in power. But success had brought heavy responsibilities, and imposed upon the statesmanship of Mr. Polk the severest of tasks. Texas came to us with undefined boundaries, and with a state of war at that moment existing between herself and Mexico. We had annexed a province that had indeed maintained a revolt for years against the central government of a neighboring republic; but its independence had never been conceded, the hope of its subjugation had never been abandoned. When Congress passed the joint resolution of annexation, the Mexican minister entered a formal protest against the proceeding, demanded his passports, and left the United States. By this course, Mexico placed herself in an unfriendly, though not necessarily hostile, attitude. The general apprehension however was that we should drift into war, and the first message of Mr. Polk aroused the country to the impending danger. He devoted a large space to the Texas question, informing Congress that "Mexico had been marshaling and organizing armies, issuing proclamations, and avowing the intention to make war on the United States, either by open declaration, or by invading Texas." He had therefore "deemed it proper, as a precautionary measure, to order a strong squadron to the coast of Mexico, and to concentrate an efficient military force on the western frontier of Texas." Every one could see what this condition of affairs portended, and there was at once great excitement throughout the country. In the North, the belief of a large majority of the people was that the administration intended to precipitate war, not merely to coerce Mexico into the acknowledgment of the Rio Grande as the boundary of Texas, but also to acquire further territory for the purpose of creating additional slave States. As soon as this impression, or suspicion, got abroad, the effect was an anti-slavery revival which enlisted the feelings and influenced the political action of many who had never sympathized with the Abolitionists, and of many who had steadily opposed them.

These men came from both the old political parties, but the larger number from the Whigs. Indeed, during almost the entire period of the anti-slavery agitation by the Abolitionists, there had existed a body of men in the Whig ranks who were profoundly impressed with the evils of slavery, and who yet thought they could be more influential in checking its progress by remaining in their old party, and, in many sections of the country, maintaining their control of it. Of these men, John Quincy Adams stood undeniably at the head; and with him were associated, in and out of Congress, Mr. Seward, Mr. Benjamin F. Wade, Mr. Fessenden, Mr. Giddings, Mr. Thaddeus Stevens, besides a large number of able and resolute men of less public distinction, but of equal earnestness, in all parts of the North. Subsequent events have led men to forget that Millard Fillmore, then a representative from New York, was one of Mr. Adams's early co-laborers in the anti-slavery cause, and that in the important debate on the admission of Arkansas, with a constitution making slavery perpetual, Caleb Cushing of Massachusetts led the radical free sentiment of New England. A large number of distinguished Democrats in the North also entertained the strongest anti-slavery convictions, and were determined, at the risk of separating from their party associates, to resist the spread of slavery into free territory. Among the most conspicuous of these were Salmon P. Chase, John P. Hale, Hannibal Hamlin, Preston King, John M. Niles, David Wilmot, David K. Cartter, and John Wentworth. They had many co-laborers and a band of determined and courageous followers. They were especially strong in the State of New York, and, under the name of Barnburners, wrought changes which affected the political history of the entire country.

The two great parties on the eve of the Mexican war were thus somewhat similarly situated. In the South all the members of both were, by the supposed necessity of their situation, upholders of slavery, though the Democrats were on this question more aggressive, more truculent, and more menacing, than the Whigs. The Southern Whigs, under the lead of Mr. Clay, had been taught that slavery was an evil, to be removed in some practicable way at some distant period, but not to be interfered with, in the States where it existed, by outside influence or force. The Democrats, under the head of Mr. Calhoun, defended the institution of slavery as right in itself, as scripturally authorized, as essential in the economy of labor, and as a blessing to both races. In the North both parties were divided on the question; each had its anti-slavery wing and its pro-slavery wing, with many local names to distinguish them. Between the two a relentless controversy began,—a controversy marked as much by epithet as by argument, and conducted with such exasperation of feeling as clearly foreshadowed a break of existing party lines, and the formation of new associations, through which, in the phrase of that day, "men who thought alike could act together."

THE ACQUISITION OF TERRITORY.

This being the condition of the two great parties which divided the country, it was evident that the acquisition of territory from Mexico must lead to an agitation of the slavery question, of which no man could measure the extent, or foresee the consequences. It was the old Missouri struggle renewed, with more numerous combatants, a stronger influence of the press, a mightier enginery of public opinion. It arose as suddenly as the agitation of 1820, but gave indications of deeper feeling and more prolonged controversy. The able and ambitious men who had come into power at the South were wielding the whole force of the national administration, and they wielded it with commanding ability and unflinching energy. The Free-soil sentiment which so largely pervaded the ranks of the Northern Democracy had no representative in the cabinet, and a man of pronounced anti-slavery views was as severely proscribed in Washington as a Roundhead was in London after the coronation of Charles II.

The policy of maintaining an equality of slave States with free States was to be pursued, as it had already been from the foundation of the government, with unceasing vigilance and untiring energy. The balancing of forces between the new States added to the Union had been so skillfully arranged, that for a long period two States were admitted at nearly the same time,—one from the South, and one from the North. Thus Kentucky and Vermont, Tennessee and Ohio, Mississippi and Indiana, Alabama and Illinois, Missouri and Maine, Arkansas and Michigan, Florida and Iowa, came into the Union in pairs, not indeed at precisely the same moment in every case, but always with reference each to the other in the order named. On the admission of Florida and Iowa, Colonel Benton remarked that "it seemed 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 very antagonisms —that is, the antagonistic provisions on the subject of slavery— made the conjunction, and gave to the two young States an inseparable admission." During the entire period from the formation of the Federal Government to the inauguration of Mr. Polk, the only variation from this twin birth of States—the one free, the other slave—was in the case of Louisiana, which was admitted in 1812, with no corresponding State from the North. Of the original Thirteen States, seven had become free, and six maintained slavery. Of the fifteen that were added to the Union, prior to the annexation of Texas, eight were slave, and seven were free; so that, when Mr. Polk took the oath of office, the Union consisted of twenty-eight States, equally divided between slave-holding and free. So nice an adjustment had certainly required constant watchfulness and the closest calculation of political forces. It was in pursuit of this adjustment that the admission of Louisiana was secured, as an evident compensation for the loss which had accrued to the slave- holding interest in the unequal though voluntary partition of the Old Thirteen between North and South.

The more rapid growth of the free States in population made the contest for the House of Representatives, or for a majority in the Electoral college, utterly hopeless to the South; but the constitutional equality of all the States in the Senate enabled the slave interest to defeat any hostile legislation, and to defeat also any nominations by the President of men who were offensive to the South by reason of their anti-slavery character. The courts of the United States, both supreme and district, throughout the Union, including the clerks and the marshals who summoned the juries and served the processes, were therefore filled with men acceptable to the South. Cabinets were constituted in the same way. Representatives of the government in foreign countries were necessarily taken from the class approved by the same power. Mr. Webster, speaking in his most conservative tone in the famous speech of March 7, 1850, declared that, from the formation of the Union to that hour, the South had monopolized three-fourths of the places of honor and emolument under the Federal Government. It was an accepted fact that the class interest of slavery, by holding a tie in the Senate, could defeat any measure or any nomination to which its leaders might be opposed; and thus, banded together by an absolutely cohesive political force, they could and did dictate terms. A tie-vote cannot carry measures, but it can always defeat them; and any combination of votes that possesses the negative power will in the end, if it can be firmly held, direct and control the positive action of the body to which it belongs. A strong minority, so disciplined that it cannot be divided, will, in the hands of competent leaders, annoy, distract, and often defeat, the majority of a parliamentary body. Much more can one absolute half of a legislative assembly, compactly united, succeed in dividing and controlling the other half, which has no class interest to consolidate it, and no tyrannical public opinion behind it, decreeing political death to any member who doubts or halts in his devotion to one supreme idea.

THE POLITICAL LEADERS OF THE SOUTH.

With one-half of the Senate under the control of the slave-holding States, and with the Constitution declaring that no amendment to it should ever destroy the equality of the States in the Senate, the Southern leaders occupied a commanding position. Those leaders constituted a remarkable body of men. Having before them the example of Jefferson, of Madison, and of George Mason in Virginia, of Nathaniel Macon in North Carolina, and of the Pinckneys and Rutledges in South Carolina, they gave deep study to the science of government. They were admirably trained as debaters, and they became highly skilled in the management of parliamentary bodies. As a rule, they were liberally educated, many of them graduates of Northern colleges, a still larger number taking their degrees at Transylvania in Kentucky, at Chapel Hill in North Carolina, and at Mr. Jefferson's peculiar but admirable institution in Virginia. Their secluded life on the plantation gave them leisure for reading and reflection. They took pride in their libraries, pursued the law so far as it increased their equipment for a public career, and devoted themselves to political affairs with an absorbing ambition. Their domestic relations imparted manners that were haughty and sometimes offensive; they were quick to take affront, and they not infrequently brought needless personal disputation into the discussion of public questions; but they were, almost without exception, men of high integrity, and they were especially and jealously careful of the public money. Too often ruinously lavish in their personal expenditures, they believed in an economical government, and, throughout the long period of their domination, they guarded the Treasury with rigid and unceasing vigilance against every attempt at extravagance, and against every form of corruption.

Looking into the future, the Southern men took alarm lest the equality of their section should be lost in the Senate, and their long control of the Federal Government ended. Even with Texas added to the Union, this equality was barely maintained, for Wisconsin was already seeking admission; and the clause in the articles of annexation providing that four new States might be carved out of the territory of Texas whenever she asked it, gave no promise of speedy help to the South. Its operation would, in any event, be distant, and subject to contingencies which could not be accurately measured. There was not another foot of territory south of 36 deg. 30', save that which was devoted to the Indians by solemn compact, from which another slave State could be formed. North of 36 deg. 30' the Missouri Compromise had dedicated the entire country to freedom. In extent it was, to the Southern view, alarmingly great, including at least a million square miles of territory. Except along its river boundaries it was little known. Its value was underrated, and a large portion of it was designated on our maps as the Great American Desert. At the time Texas was annexed, and for several years afterwards, not a single foot of that vast area was organized under any form of civil government. Had the Southern statesmen foreseen the immense wealth, population, and value of this imperial domain in the five great States and four Territories into which it is to-day divided, they would have abandoned the struggle for equality. But the most that was hoped, even in the North, within any near period, was one State north of Iowa, one west of Missouri, and one from the Oregon country. The remainder, in the popular judgment, was divided among mountain gorges, the arid plains of the middle, and the uninviting region in the north, which the French voyaguers had classed under the comprehensive and significant title of mauvaises terres. With only three States anticipated from the great area of the north-west, it was the evident expectation of the Southern men who then had control of the government, that, if war with Mexico should ensue, the result would inevitably be the acquisition of sufficient territory to form slave States south of the line of the Missouri Compromise as rapidly as free States could be formed north of it; and that in this way the ancient equality between North and South could be maintained.

OUR RELATIONS WITH MEXICO.

But the scheme of war did not develop as rapidly as was desired by the hot advocates of territorial expansion. A show of negotiation for peace was kept up by dispatching Mr. John Slidell as minister to Mexico upon the hint that that government might be willing to renew diplomatic relations. When Mr. Slidell reached the city of Mexico he found a violent contest raging over the Presidency of the republic, the principal issue being between the war and anti- war parties. Mr. Slidell was not received. The Mexican Government declared, with somewhat of reason and consistency, that they had been willing to listen to a special envoy who would treat singly and promptly of the grave questions between the two republics, but they would not accept a minister plenipotentiary who would sit down near their government in a leisurely manner, as if friendly relations existed, and select his own time for negotiation,—urging or postponing, threatening or temporizing, as the pressure of political interests in the United States might suggest. Mr. Slidell returned home; but still the conflict of arms, though so imminent, was not immediately precipitated. Mr. Polk's cautious and somewhat timid course represented the resultant between the aggressive Democrat of the South who was for war regardless of consequences, and the Free-soil Democrat of the North who was for peace regardless of consequences; the one feeling sure that war would strengthen the institution of slavery, the other confident that peace would favor the growth of freedom. As not infrequently happens in the evolution of human events, each was mistaken in the final issue. The war, undertaken for the extension of slavery, led in the end to its destruction.

The leading influence in Mr. Polk's cabinet was divided between Mr. Buchanan, secretary of State, and Mr. Marcy, secretary of War. Both were men of conservative minds, of acute judgment in political affairs of long experience in public life; and each was ambitious for the succession to the Presidency. Neither could afford to disregard the dominant opinion of the Southern Democracy; still less could either countenance a reckless policy, which might seriously embarrass our foreign affairs, and precipitate a dangerous crisis in our relations with England. These eminent statesmen quickly perceived that the long-standing issue touching our north- western boundary, commonly known as the Oregon question, was surrounded with embarrassments which, by mismanagement, might rapidly develop into perils of great magnitude in connection with the impending war with Mexico.

The Oregon question, which now became associated, if not complicated, with the Texas question, originated many years before. By our treaty with Spain in 1819, the southern boundary of our possessions on the Pacific had been accurately defined. Our northern boundary was still unadjusted, and had been matter of dispute with Great Britain ever since we acquired the country. By the treaty of Oct. 20, 1818, the 49th parallel of north latitude was established as the boundary between the United States and British America, from the Lake of the Woods to the Stony Mountains, as the Rocky Mountains were then termed. In the same treaty it was agreed that any country claimed by either the United States or Great Britain westward of the Stony Mountains should, with its harbors, bays, and rivers, be open for the term of ten years to the vessels, citizens, and subjects of either power. This agreement was entered into solely for the purpose of preventing disputes pending final settlement, and was not to be construed to the prejudice of either party. This was the beginning of the joint occupancy of the Oregon country, England having with prompt and characteristic enterprise forced her way across the continent after she had acquired Canada in 1763. Stimulated by certain alleged discoveries of her navigators on the north-west coast, Great Britain urged and maintained her title to a frontage on the Pacific, and made a bold claim to sovereignty, as far south as the mouth of the Columbia River, nearly, indeed, to the northern border of California.

OUR CLAIM TO THE OREGON COUNTRY.

Nothing had been done towards an adjustment during the ten years of joint occupancy, and when the term was about to expire, the arrangement was renewed by special convention in 1827, for an indefinite period,—each power reserving the right to terminate the convention by giving twelve-months' notice to the other. The President, John Quincy Adams, made the briefest possible reference to the subject in his message to Congress, December, 1827; speaking of it as a temporary compromise of the respective rights and claims of Great Britain and the United States to territory westward of the Rocky Mountains. For many years thereafter, the subject, though languidly pursued in our diplomatic correspondence, was not alluded to in a President's message, or discussed in Congress. The contracting parties rested content with the power to join issue and try titles at any time by simply giving the required notice. The subject was also overshadowed by more urgent disputes between Great Britain and the United States, especially that relating to the North-eastern boundary, and that touching the suppression of the African slave-trade. The latter involved the old question of the right of search. The two governments came to an agreement on these differences in 1842 by the negotiation of the convention known as the Ashburton Treaty. In transmitting the treaty to Congress, President Tyler made, for the first time since the agreement for a joint occupancy was renewed in 1827, a specific reference to the Oregon question. He informed Congress, that the territory of the United States commonly called the Oregon country was beginning to attract the attention of our fellow-citizens, and that "the tide of our population, having reclaimed from the wilderness the more contiguous regions, was preparing to flow over those vast districts which stretch from the Rocky Mountains to the Pacific Ocean;" that Great Britain "laid claim to a portion of the country and that the question could not be well included in the recent treaty without postponing other more pressing matters." He significantly added, that though the difficulty might not for several years involve the peace of the two countries, yet he should urge upon Great Britain the importance of its early settlement.

As this paragraph was undoubtedly suggested and probably written by Mr. Webster, it attracted wide attention on both sides of the Atlantic; and from that moment, in varying degrees of interest and urgency, the Oregon question became an active political issue. Before the next annual meeting of Congress, Mr. Upshur had succeeded Mr. Webster in the State department; and the message of the President took still more advanced ground respecting Oregon. For political reasons, there was an obvious desire to keep the action of the government on this issue well abreast of its aggressive movements in the matter of acquiring Texas. Emboldened by Mr. Webster's position of the preceding year, Mr. Upshur, with younger blood, and with more reason for a demonstrative course, was evidently disposed to force the discussion of the question with the British Government. Under his influence and advice, President Tyler declared, in his message of December, 1843, that "after the most rigid, and, as far as practicable, unbiased, examination of the subject, the United States have always contended that their rights appertain to the entire region of country lying on the Pacific, and embraced between latitude 42 deg. and 54 deg. 40'." Mr. Edward Everett, at that time our minister in London, was instructed to present these views to the British Government.

Before the President could send another annual message to Congress, Mr. Calhoun had been for several months at the head of the State Department, engaged in promoting, with singular skill and ability, his scheme for the annexation of Texas. With his quick perception, he discerned that if the policy apparently indicated by Mr. Webster and aggressively pursued by Mr. Upshur, on the Oregon question, should be followed, and that issue sharply pressed upon Great Britain, complications of a most embarrassing nature might arise, involving in their sweep the plans, already well matured, for acquiring Texas. In order to avert all danger of that kind, Mr. Calhoun opened a negotiation with the British minister in Washington, conducting it himself, for the settlement of the Oregon question; and at the very moment when the Democratic National Convention which nominated Mr. Polk was declaring our title to the whole of Oregon as far as 54 deg. 40' to be "clear and unquestionable," the Democratic secretary of State was proposing to Her Majesty's representative to settle the entire controversy by the adoption of the 49th parallel as the boundary!

The negotiation was very nearly completed, and was suspended only by some dispute in regard to the right of navigating the Columbia River. It is not improbable that Mr. Calhoun, after disclosing to the British Government his willingness to accept the 49th parallel as our northern boundary, was anxious to have the negotiation temporarily postponed. If the treaty had been concluded at that time, it would have seriously interfered with the success of Mr. Polk's candidacy by destroying the prestige of the "Fifty-four forties," as Colonel Benton termed them. In Mr. Polk's election, Mr. Calhoun was deeply and indeed doubly interested; first, because of his earnest desire to defeat Mr. Clay, with whom he was at swords' points on all public issues; and again, because, having assumed the responsibility of defeating the nomination of Mr. Van Buren, he was naturally desirous that his judgment should be vindicated by the election of the candidate whom his Southern friends had put forward. Urgently solicitous for the annexation of Texas, those friends were indifferent to the fate of the Oregon question, though willing that it should be made a leading issue in the North, where it was presented with popular effect. The patriotic spirit of the country was appealed to, and to a considerable extent aroused and inflamed by the ardent and energetic declaration of our title to the whole of Oregon. "Fifty-four forty or fight" became a Democratic watchword; and the Whigs who attempted to argue against the extravagance or inexpediency of the claim continually lost ground, and were branded as cowards who were awed into silence by the fear of British power. All the prejudice against the British Government which had descended from the Revolution and from the war of 1812 was successfully evoked by the Democratic party, and they gained immeasurably by keeping an issue before the people which many of their leaders knew would be abandoned when the pressure of actual negotiation should be felt by our government.

PRESIDENT POLK ON THE OREGON QUESTION.

Mr. Polk, however, in his Inaugural address, carefully re-examined the position respecting Oregon which his party had taken in the national canvass, and quoted part of the phrase used in the platform put forth by the convention which nominated him. The issue had been made so broadly, that it must be squarely met, and finally adjusted. The Democrats in their eagerness had left no road for honorable retreat, and had cut themselves off from the resources and convenient postponements of diplomacy. Dangerous as it was to the new administration to confront the issue, it would have been still more dangerous to attempt to avoid it. The decisive step, in the policy to which the administration was committed, was to give formal notice to Great Britain that the joint occupancy of the Oregon country under the treaty of 1827 must cease. A certain degree of moral strength was unexpectedly imparted to the Democratic position by the fact that the venerable John Quincy Adams was decidedly in favor of the notice, and ably supported, in a unique and powerful speech in the House of Representatives, our title to the country up to 54 deg. 40'. The first convention for joint occupancy had been negotiated while Mr. Adams was secretary of State, and the second while he was President; so that, in addition to the weight of authority with which he always spoke, his words seemed entitled to special confidence on a question with which he was necessarily so familiar. His great influence brought many Whigs to the support of the resolution; and on the 9th of February, 1846, the House, by the large vote of 163 to 54, declared in favor of giving the treaty notice to Great Britain.

The country at once became alarmed by the growing rumors that the resolution of the House was a direct challenge to Great Britain for a trial of strength as to the superior title to the Oregon country, and it was soon apparent that the Senate would proceed with more circumspection and conservatism. Events were rapidly tending toward hostilities with Mexico, and the aggrandizement of territory likely to result from a war with that country was not viewed with a friendly eye, either by Great Britain or France. Indeed, the annexation of Texas, which had been accomplished the preceding year, was known to be distasteful to those governments. They desired that Texas might remain an independent republic, under more liberal trade relations than could be secured from the United States with its steady policy of fostering and advancing its own manufacturing interests. The directors of the administration saw therefore more and more clearly that, if a war with Mexico were impeding, it would be sheer madness to open a quarrel with Great Britain, and force her into an alliance against us. Mr. Adams and those who voted with him did not believe that the notice to the British Government would provoke a war, but that firmness on our part, in the negotiation which should ensue, would induce England to yield her pretensions to any part of Oregon; to which Mr. Adams maintained, with elaboration of argument and demonstration, she had no shadow of right.

Mr. Adams was opposed to war with Mexico, and therefore did not draw his conclusions from the premises laid down by those who were charged with the policy of the administration. They naturally argued that a war with Great Britain might end in our losing the whole of Oregon, without acquiring any territory on our south- western border. The bare possibility of such a result would defeat the policy which they were seeking to uphold, and would at the same time destroy their party. In short, it became apparent that what might be termed the Texas policy of the administration, and what might be termed the Oregon policy, could not both be carried out. It required no prophet to foresee which would be maintained and which would be abandoned. "Fifty-four forty or fight" had been a good cry for the political campaign; but, when the fight was to be with Great Britain, the issue became too serious to be settled by such international law as is dispensed on the stump.

COMPROMISE ON THE OREGON QUESTION.

A very bitter controversy over the question began in the Senate as soon as the House resolution was received. But from the outset it was apparent that those who adhered to the 54 deg. 40' policy, on which Mr. Polk had been elected, were in a small minority. That minority was led by General Cass; but its most brilliant advocate in debate was Edward A. Hannegan, Democratic senator from Indiana, who angrily reproached his party for playing false to the pledges on which it had won a victory over the greatest political leader of the country. He measured the situation accurately, read with discrimination the motives which underlay the change of policy on the part of the administration and its Southern supporters, and stated the whole case in a quick and curt reply to an interruption from a pro-slavery senator,—"If Oregon were good for the production of sugar and cotton, it would not have encountered this opposition. Its possession would have been at once secured." The change in the Democratic position was greatly aided by the attitude of the Whig senators, who almost unanimously opposed the resolution of notice to Great Britain, as passed by the House. Mr. Webster, for the first if not the only time in his senatorial career, read a carefully prepared speech, in which he did not argue the question of rightful boundary, but urged that a settlement on the line of the 49th parallel would be honorable to both countries, would avert hostile feeling, and restore amity and harmony. Mr. Berrien of Georgia made an exhaustive speech, inquiring into the rightfulness of title, and urged the line of 49 deg.. Mr. Crittenden followed in the same vein, and in a reply to Senator William Allen of Ohio, chairman of Foreign Affairs, made a speech abounding in sarcasm and ridicule. The Whigs having in the campaign taken no part in the boastful demand for 54 deg. 40', were not subjected to the humiliation of retracing imprudent steps and retracting unwise declarations.

Under the influences at work in the Senate, events developed rapidly. The House resolution of notice was defeated; and the Senate passed a substitute of a less aggressive type, in which the House, through the instrumentality of a conference committee, substantially concurred. The resolution as finally adopted authorized the President "at his discretion" to give notice for the termination of the treaty to Great Britain. The preamble further softened the action of Congress by declaring that the notice was given in order that "the attention of the governments of both countries may be the more earnestly directed to the adoption of all proper measures for a speedy and amicable adjustment of the differences and disputes in regard to said territory."

The Southern Democrats in the House receded from their action, and the modified resolution was carried by nearly as large a vote as had been the previous one for decided and peremptory notice. In short, the great mass of the Southern Democrats in both Houses precipitately threw the Oregon issue aside. They had not failed to perceive that the hesitation of the administration in forcing an issue with Mexico was due to the apprehension of trouble with Great Britain, and they made haste to promote schemes of territorial acquisition in the South-West by withdrawing the pretensions so imprudently put forth in regard to our claims in the North-West. Only forty-six votes were given in the House against what was termed a disgraceful surrender. These were almost entirely from Northern Democrats, though a few Southern Democrats refused to recede. Among those who thus remained firm were Andrew Johnson, Stephen A. Douglas, Howell Cobb, Preston King, and Allen G. Thurman.

The passage of the modified and friendly resolution of notice dispelled all danger of trouble with Great Britain, and restored a sense of security in the United States. Immediately after its adoption, Mr. Buchanan, Secretary of State, under direction of the President, concluded a treaty with the British minister on the basis discussed by Mr. Calhoun two years before. The 49th parallel was agreed upon as the boundary between the two countries, with certain concessions for a defined period, touching the rights of the Hudson-bay Company, and the navigation of the Columbia River by the British. This treaty was promptly confirmed by the Senate, and the long controversy over the Oregon question was at rest. It had created a deep and wide-spread excitement in the country, and came very near precipitating hostilities with Great Britain. There is no doubt whatever that the English Government would have gone to war rather than surrender the territory north of the 49th parallel. This fact had made the winter and early spring of 1846 one of profound anxiety to all the people of the United States, and more especially to those who were interested in the large mercantile marine which then sailed under the American flag.

UNWISE AGITATION OF THE QUESTION.

In simple truth, the country was not prepared to go to war with Great Britain in support of "our clear and unquestionable title" to the whole of Oregon. With her strong naval force on the Pacific, and her military force in Australasia, Great Britain could more readily and more easily take possession of the country in dispute than could the United States. We had no way of reaching Oregon except by doubling Cape Horn, and making a dangerous sea-voyage of many thousand miles. We could communicate across the continent only by the emigrant trail over rugged mountains and almost trackless plains. Our railway system was in its infancy in 1846. New-York City did not have a continuous road to Buffalo. Philadelphia was not connected with Pittsburg. Baltimore's projected line to the Ohio had only reached Cumberland, among the eastern foot-hills of the Alleghanies. The entire Union had but five thousand miles of railway. There was scarcely a spot on the globe, outside of the United Kingdom, where we could not have fought England with greater advantage than on the north-west coast of America at that time. The war-cry of the Presidential campaign of 1844 was, therefore, in any event, absurd; and it proved to be mischievous. It is not improbable, that, if the Oregon question had been allowed to rest for the time under the provisions of the treaty of 1827, the whole country would ultimately have fallen into our hands, and the American flag might to-day be waving over British Columbia. The course of events and the lapse of time were working steadily to our advantage. In 1826 Great Britain declined to accept the 49th parallel, but demanded the Columbia River as the boundary. Twenty years afterwards she accepted the line previously rejected. American settlers had forced her back. With the sweep of our emigration and civilization to the Pacific coast two years after the treaty of 1846, when gold was discovered in California, the tendency would have been still more strongly in our favor. Time, as Mr. Calhoun said, "would have effected every thing for us" if we could only have been patient and peaceful.

Taking the question, however, as it stood in 1846, the settlement must, upon full consideration and review, be adjudged honorable to both countries. Wise statesmen of that day felt, as wise statesmen of subsequent years have more and more realized, that a war between Great Britain and the United States would not only be a terrible calamity to both nations, but that it would stay the progress of civilization throughout the world. Future generations would hold the governing power in both countries guilty of a crime if war should ever be permitted except upon the failure of every other arbitrament. The harmless laugh of one political party at the expense of the other forty years ago, the somewhat awkward receding from pretensions which could not be maintained by the Executive of the nation, have passed into oblivion. But a striking and useful lesson would be lost if it should be forgotten that the country was brought to the verge of war by the proclamation of a policy which could not be, and was not intended to be, enforced. It was originated as a cry to catch votes; and except with the ignorant, and the few whose judgment was carried away by enthusiasm, it was from the first thoroughly insincere. If the punishment could have fallen only upon those who raised the cry, perfect justice would have been done. But the entire country suffered, and probably endured a serious and permanent loss, from the false step taken by men who claimed what they could not defend and did not mean to defend.

The Secretary of State, Mr. Buchanan, gained much credit for his conduct of the Oregon question, both diplomatically and politically. His correspondence with Mr. Pakenham, the British minister at Washington, was conspicuously able. It strengthened Mr. Buchanan at home, and gave him an enviable reputation in Europe. His political management of the question was especially adroit. His party was in sore trouble over the issue, and naturally looked to him for relief and escape. To extricate the Administration from the embarrassment caused by its ill-timed and boastful pretensions to the line of 54 deg. 40' was a difficult and delicate task. To accomplish it, Mr. Buchanan had recourse to the original and long disused habit of asking the Senate's advice in advance of negotiating the treaty, instead of taking the ordinary but at that time perilous responsibility of first negotiating the treaty, and then submitting it to the Senate for approval. As a leading Northern Democrat, with an established reputation and a promising future, Mr. Buchanan was instinctively reluctant to take the lead in surrendering the position which his party had so defiantly maintained during the canvass for the Presidency in 1844, and which he had, as Secretary of State, re-affirmed in a diplomatic paper of marked ability. When the necessity came to retreat, Mr. Buchanan was anxious that the duty of publicly lowering the colors should not be left to him. His device, therefore, shifted the burden from his own shoulders, and placed it on the broader ones of the Senate.

Political management could not have been more clever. It saved Mr. Buchanan in large degree from the opprobrium visited on so many leading Democrats for their precipitate retreat on the Oregon question, and commended him at the same time to a class of Democrats who had never before been his supporters. General Cass, in order to save himself as a senator from the responsibility of surrendering our claim to 54 deg. 40', assumed a very warlike attitude, erroneously supposing that popularity might be gained by the advocacy of a rupture with England. Mr. Buchanan was wiser. He held the middle course. He had ably sustained our claim to the whole of Oregon, and now, in the interest of peace, gracefully yielded to a compromise which the Senate, after mature deliberation, had advised. His course saved the administration, not indeed from a mortifying position, but from a continually increasing embarrassment which seemed to force upon the country the cruel alternatives of war or dishonor.

THE PRESIDENT AND MR. BUCHANAN.

Mr. Polk was, from some cause, incapable of judging Mr. Buchanan generously. He seems to have regarded his Secretary of State as always willing to save himself at the expense of others. He did not fail to perceive that Mr. Buchanan had come out of the Oregon trouble with more credit, at least with less loss, than any other man prominently identified with its agitation and settlement. This was not pleasing to the President. He had evidently not concealed his distrust from the outset, and had cumbered his offer of a cabinet position with conditions which seemed derogatory to the dignity of Mr. Buchanan,—conditions which a man of spirit might well have resented. He informed Mr. Buchanan that, as he should "take no part himself between gentlemen of the Democratic party who might become aspirants to the Presidency," he desired that "no member of the cabinet should do so." He indeed expressed himself to Mr. Buchanan in a manner so peremptory as to be offensive: "Should any member of my cabinet become a candidate for the Presidency or Vice-Presidency of the United States, it will be expected on the happening of such an event that he will retire from the cabinet." Remembering that Madison, Monroe and John Quincy Adams had each been nominated for the Presidency while holding the position of Secretary of State in the cabinet of his predecessor, Mr. Polk was attaching a new and degrading condition to the incumbency of that office.