of twelve months. This was referred to the committee on foreign affairs, which reported adversely, not wishing to disturb the course of international discussions by such a step. This did not prevent members from expressing their views with freedom, offering resolutions laying claim to the whole of Oregon, and declining to adjourn till a territory was organized in that region.
The second session of the 28th congress, 1844-5, opened with the Oregon Question, in the form of a resolution by Allen of Ohio, requesting the president to lay before the senate any instructions which had been given the American minister in England on the subject, since a former correspondence, which resolution was passed by a vote of twenty-four to sixteen, showing the progress of public sentiment among the most conservative class. The president, however, thought fit to make no response; and the senate endeavored to act with circumspection; when a bill for establishing a government was presented by Mr Atchison of Missouri, and referred to a select committee, which made a feint of opposing the measure by proposing to refer to the committee on foreign affairs, the attempt being defeated by a vote of twenty-four to twenty. The president himself, in his annual message, after informing congress that a negotiation had been formally entered upon between the secretary of state, Mr Calhoun, and the minister of Great Britain residing at Washington, renewed the recommendations in his previous messages that congress should take measures to facilitate immigration, by establishing military posts, "and make the provision of the existing convention for joint occupancy of the territory by subjects of Great Britain and citizens of the United States more available than heretofore to the latter." As at the former session, there were a number of petitions to congress from the citizens and legislatures of several of the states, asking[1] a territorial govern-
- ↑ Cong. Globe, 1844-5, 17, 155, 237, 277.
