p367

Introduction to the Presidents
•
– A Whig, was elected in 1841 and John Tyler elected Vice-President
• Cabinet: Secretary of State—Daniel Webster
• Henry Clay spokesman in the Senate, the uncrowned king of the Whigs.
– Harrison’s election considered first full blown political campaign
– Harrison contacted pneumonia after giving 2 hr long inaugural address and dies only four months in office. By far the shortest administration in American history .

Introduction to the Presidents
•
• Vice President, the “Tyler too” party of the Whig ticket, assumes presidency
• His enemies accused him of being a Democrat in
Whig clothing
• He was stubbornly attached to principle; forsook the
Democrats for the Whigs because of “King Andrew”
• Was at odds with the majority of his adoptive Whigs

Introduction to the Presidents
•
•
– Henry Clay chosen by the Whigs at Baltimore
– James K. Polk of Tennessee chosen by the
Democrats—America’s first “dark horse”

Introduction to the Presidents
•
• “Dark Horse” Polk nipped Clay 170 to 105 votes in the
Electoral College
• 1,338,464 to 1,300,097 in the popular vote
• Clay would have won if he had not lost New York
State by a scant 5,000 votes:
– There the tiny antislavery Liberty Party absorbed nearly
16,000 votes that would have gone to Clay.

Introduction to the Presidents
– The Democrats campaign was an expression of
Manifest Destiny:
– Polk… in Jackson’s footsteps as an expansionist
Democrat:
• Strongly swayed by Manifest Destiny
• Platform:
– “All of Oregon or None” (The slogan “Fifty-four
forty or fight” was not coined until two years later)
– The Democrats proclaimed they received a mandate from the voters to take Texas.

Map 17-1 p363

Maine
•
– The St. Lawrence River, main waterway in land, is icebound several months of the year:
• As a defensive precaution the British wanted to build a road westward from the seaport Halifax to Quebec
• The road would go though disputed territory claimed by Maine
• The Aroostook War threatened to widen the dispute into a full-dress shooting war.

Maine
– Britain sent to Washington a nonprofessional diplomat, Lord Ashburton, who established cordial relations with Secretary Webster
• They finally agreed to compromise on the Maine boundary
• A split-the-difference arrangement, the Americans retained some 7,000 square miles of the 12,000 square miles of the wilderness in dispute
• Britain got less land but won the desired Halifax-
Quebec route.
• KEY: BEGINS PROCESS OF LONGEST CONTINOUS
UNGUARDED BOARDER IN THE WORLD

Map 17-1 p363

Map 17-2 p368

Oregon
•
– Geography
• From the Rockies to the Pacific Ocean, north of
California to the line of 54-40, the present southern tip of Alaska panhandle
• This land was claimed at one time or another by:
Spain, Russia, Britain, and the United States
• Two claimants dropped out of the scramble:
– Spain through the Florida Treaty of 1819
– Russia retreated to the 54-40 line by treaties of 1824 and
1825.

Oregon
– British claims to Oregon
• They were based on:
– Prior discovery and exploration
– Treaty rights
– Actual occupation
– Colonizing agency Hudson’s Bay Company
• Especially the portion north of the Columbia River

Oregon
• The famed Lewis and Clark expedition of 1804-1806
• Presence of missionaries and other settlers, some of whom reached the grassy Willamette River valley
– These men and women of God, in saving the soul of the
Indians, were instrumental in saving the soil of Oregon for the United States
– They stimulated interest in a faraway domain that countless
Americans had earlier assumed would not be settled for centuries.
• Scattered Americans and British pioneers continued to live peacefully side by side.

Oregon
– The Anglo-American Convention of 1818
• The United States sought to divide at the forty-ninth parallel
• The British wanted the Columbia River as the line
• A scheme for peaceful “joint occupation” was adopted, pending future settlement
• The handful of Americans in the Willamette Valley was multiplied in the early 1840s by the “Oregon fever”

Oregon Fever Populates Oregon
• Over the 2,000 mile Oregon Trail (1846) five thousand
Americans had settled south of the Columbia River
• The British could only muster seven hundred north of the Columbia River
– Actually only a relatively small segment was in controversy by 1845:
– The Americans offered the forty-ninth parallel
– The British repeated offering the line of the Columbia River
– The whole issue was now tossed into the presidential election of 1844, where it became overshadowed by the question of annexing Texas.

Oregon as Part of Polk’s Plan
•
1. To lower the tariff
• Secretary of the Treasure, Robert J. Walker, devised a tariff-for-revenue bill that reduced the average rates of the Tariff of 1842 from 32% to 25%
2. The restoration of the independent treasury:
• Pro-bank Whigs in Congress raised a storm of opposition, but victory at last rewarded the president’s effort in 1846.
3. Settlement of the Oregon dispute
4. Acquisition of California

Settling Oregon
•
• “Reoccupation” of the “whole” had been promised to northern Democrats in 1844 campaign
• 54’ 40 or fight!
• Southern Democrats, once Texas was annexed, cooled off
• Polk’s feeling bound by the three offers of his predecessor to London, proposed the compromise line of 49.
• Britain in 1846 proposed the line of 49 as antiexpansionists were now persuaded that the Columbia
River was not the St. Lawrence.

Map 17-3 p371

– Faced threats from Mexico….
• refused to recognize Texas’s independence
• regarded the “Lone Star Republic” as a province in revolt to be reconquered in the future
• threatened USA with war if it intervened
– Request for annexation into US snubbed
– Absence US annexations, it sought alliances with other foreign powers
• In 1839 and 1840, the Texans concluded a treaty with
France, Holland, and Belgium.

Texas as an Independent Country
– Britain was interested in an independent Texas
• Texas would serve as a check for Americans moving
South, possibly into British territory
• British abolitionists were busily intriguing for a foothold in Texas
• British manufacturers perceived the Texas plains for great cotton-producing in the future relieving Britain of chronic dependence on American fiber.

VI. The Belated Texas Nuptials
– Texas became a leading issue in the 1844 presidential campaign:
• The foes of expansion assailed annexation
• Southern hotheads cried, “Texas or Disunion”
• The pro-expansion Democrats under James K. Polk finally triumphed over the Whigs
• Lame duck president Tyler interpreted the narrow
Democratic victory as a “mandate” to acquire Texas.
• Tyler deserves credit for shepherding Texas into the fold.

VI. The Belated Texas Nuptials
(cont.)
• Tyler despaired of securing the needed 2/3 vote for a treaty in the Senate
• He arranged for annexation by a joint resolution
• After a spirited debate, the resolution passed in 1845 and Texas was formally invited to become the 28 th star on the American flag
• Mexico angrily charged that the Americans had despoiled it of Texas
• Mexico left the Texans dangling by denying their right to dispose of themselves as they chose

VI. The Belated Texas Nuptials
(cont.)
– By 1845 the Lone Star Republic had become a danger spot:
• Inviting foreign intrigue that menaced the American people
• The continued existence of Texas as an independent nation threatened to involve the United States in wars
• The United States can hardly be accused of haste in achieving annexation.