Abandonment of rich Territory 259 
T shall conform my action to their advice. Should the Senate, however, 
decline by such constitutional majority to give such advice or to express 
an opinion upon the subject, I will consider it my duty to reject the offer.’”’ 
In other words, President Polk, encompassed on the one hand 
by the plank in the platform on which he was elected, of “ Fifty- 
four forty or fight,” and on the other hand by the action of pre- 
ceding administrations in conflict with that proposition, his party 
leaders divided on the question, and the issue brought directly 
to the front by Great Britain, concluded to and did throw the 
whole responsibility on the Senate of the United States. Two 
days subsequently, June 12, 1846, the Senate adopted a resolu- 
tion advising the President to accept the proposal of the British 
government, and as a result the convention was finally agreed 
to June 15, 1846. 
So, although this memorable controversy had remained un- 
settled for nearly half a century, it is a remarkable historical fact 
that but nine days elapsed between the submission of the final 
proposition to compromise by Great Britain and the signing of 
the treaty. 
Notwithstanding the fact that one hundred and three years 
have elapsed since the discovery of Columbia river by Cap- 
tain Gray, ninety-two years since the cession of Louisiana, and 
seventy-six years since our cession from Spain, the settlement of 
our title to a certain portion of the territory of Oregon was held 
in abeyance until October 21, 1872, less than twenty-three years 
ago. That was the island of San Juan. The treaty of June 15, 
1846, between the United States and Great Britain, which was 
_ intended to settle all questions relating to our northern boundary, 
inadvertently left the question as to the title to this island an 
open one. The treaty in defining the northern boundary of the 
United States from a point in the Rocky mountains on the forty- 
ninth parallel, from which point eastward the boundary line had 
been fixed by the second article of the treaty of Washington, in 
1842, reads as follows: 
‘Shall be continued westward along said forty-ninth parallel of north 
latitude to the middle of the channel which separates the continent from 
Vancouver's island, and then southerly through the middle of said channel 
and of Fuca’s straits to the Pacific ocean.”’ 
This island is located in the “channel” mentioned in this 
treaty, and the question at once arose, and for a period of twenty- 
