258 John H. Mitchell— Oregon 
were matters of discussion in all political circles. Public senti- 
ment was wrought up to the highest pitch, so much so that the 
democratic national convention which met at Baltimore in 1344 
had, as one of its planks, “ Fifty-four forty or fight,” and on this 
platform the Polk administration came into power. The em- 
barrassments with which it was surrounded, however, growing 
out of the Oregon question and this particular plank in the 
platform, were great. 
The President found that preceding negotiations during the 
administrations of his predecessors, Monroe, Adams, and Tyler, 
had not proceeded on the part of the United States on the 
theory of our right to fifty-four forty; that the negotiations pro- 
ceeded rather on the idea that they should treat the respective 
claims of the two countries in the Oregon territory with a view 
to establishing a permanent boundary between them west of the 
Rocky mountains to the Pacific ocean, and in this compromising 
spirit these administrations had proposed to fix the boundary 
on the forty-ninth parallel. To add to the embarrassment, many 
leading democratic senators, including Benton. of Missouri, 
scouted at the idea that our rights extended to fifty-four forty, 
and insisted that we had no rights extending farther northward 
than the forty-ninth parallel. To add still further to the em- 
barrassment of the situation, Great Britain, through her min- 
ister, on June 6, 1846, before the administration of Mr Polk was 
clearly launched, submitted a proposition, the same that was 
finally agreed on, of the forty-ninth parallel, and coupled with 
it the suggestion that it must be accepted at once, and with- 
out delay, if atall. In this great political dilemma President 
Polk resorted to a course which, though adopted a few times in 
the earlier years of our government, had not been resorted to 
for nearly half a century—that is, of seeking the advice of the 
Senate of the United States in advance of action on the part of 
the executive. 
Consequently on. June 10, 1846, the President transmitted to 
the Senate the proposal in the form of the convention presented 
to the Secretary of State on the sixth of that month by the British 
envoy, for its advice. Mr Polk’s message transmitting this con- 
vention concluded as follows: 
‘“Should the Senate by the constitutional majority required for the 
ratification of treaties advise the acceptance of this proposition or advise 
it with such modifications as they may upon full deliberation deem proper, 
