[Sidenote:  Oregon.]

[Sidenote:  Joint occupation by United States and Great Britain.]

338.  The Oregon Question.—­It was not only in the Southwest that boundaries were disputed; in the Northwest also there was a long controversy which was settled while Polk was President.  Oregon was the name given to the whole region, between Spanish and Mexican California and the Russian Alaska.  The United States and Great Britain each claimed to have the best right to Oregon.  As they could not agree as to their claims, they decided to occupy the region jointly.  As time went on American settlers and missionaries began to go over the mountains to Oregon.  In 1847 seven thousand Americans were living in the Northwest.

[Sidenote:  “All Oregon or none.”]

[Sidenote:  Division of Oregon, 1846.]

339.  The Oregon Treaty, 1846.—­The matter was now taken up in earnest.  “All Oregon or none,” “Fifty-four forty or fight,” became popular cries.  The United States gave notice of the ending of the joint occupation.  The British government suggested that Oregon should be divided between the two nations.  In 1818 he boundary between the United States and British North America had been fixed as the forty-ninth parallel from the Lake of the Woods to the Rocky Mountains.  It was now proposed to continue this line to the Pacific.  The British government, however, insisted that the western end of the line should follow the channel between Vancouver’s Island and the mainland so as to make that island entirely British.  The Mexican War was now coming on.  It would hardly do to have two wars at one time.  So the United States gave way and a treaty was signed in 1846.  Instead of “all Oregon,” the United States received about one-half.  But it was a splendid region and included not merely the present state of Oregon, but all the territory west of the Rocky Mountains between the forty-second and the forty-ninth parallels of latitude.

CHAPTER 33

THE COMPROMISE OF 1850

[Sidenote:  Should Oregon and Mexican cessions be free soil?]

[Sidenote:  The Wilmot Proviso. McMaster, 324.]

340.  The Wilmot Proviso, 1846.—­What should be done with Oregon and with the immense territory received from Mexico?  Should it be free soil or should it be slave soil?  To understand the history of the dispute which arose out of this question we must go back a bit and study the Wilmot Proviso.  Even before the Mexican War was fairly begun, this question came before Congress.  Every one admitted that Texas must be a slave state.  Most people were agreed that Oregon would be free soil.  For it was too far north for negroes to thrive.  But what should be done with California and with New Mexico?  David Wilmot of Pennsylvania thought that they should be free soil.  He was a member of the House of Representatives.  In 1846 he moved to add to a bill giving the President money to purchase land from Mexico a proviso that none of the territory to be acquired at the national expense should be open to slavery.  This proviso was finally defeated.  But the matter was one on which people held very strong opinions, and the question became the most important issue in the election of 1848.