influence which succeeded in making the Oregon question a feature of the resolutions. "Fifty-Four-Forty or Fight" was not, indeed, a plank in the platform, though it became in some quarters a campaign slogan; but when President Polk, in his inaugural address, declared his belief that our title to "the whole of Oregon was clear and unquestionable" the agitation had indeed reached its logical result. The government was now maintaining the extreme claims of the western expansionists, and without a moderating influence at London or at Washington, or at both capitals, war, seemingly, would have been inevitable. For, with a nation of Englishmen supporting Canning's doctrine that Oregon must be apportioned between the two nations by drawing a dividing line along the Columbia and the forty-ninth parallel, and an American nation advancing a claim to the entire country which previously it had offered to divide on the forty-ninth parallel the chances of a peaceable settlement of differences were not promising.
Britain's "unquestionable" rights asserted. Fortunately, before matters were pressed to extremity, each nation came to understand clearly that the other would go to war rather than make humiliating concessions, and good sense on both sides enabled them to avoid that calamity. The way in which the British Parliament and press treated President Polk's inaugural statement proved to our government that Great Britain would never consent to be ousted from the region west of the Rockies, whatever her historical rights
