146 CLARK E. PERSINGER
a Southern Democratic intention of repudiating the "bargain of 1844" when the time should come to provide for the carry- ing out of that portion of the "bargain" relating to the re- occupation of Oregon. When the next session of Congress took up the Oregon question, the suspicions of these North- western men appeared to prove well founded. The Southern Democrats, under the leadership of Calhoun, opposed the claim to the "whole of Oregon ;" opposed giving notice to Great Britain of our intention to abrogate the joint-occupancy treaty of 1828 ; and opposed attempts to establish a free-soil territorial government over the portion of Oregon which we did succeed in obtaining. Accused of a "breach of faith" in carrying out the "bargain of 1844," the Southern Dem- ocrats denied altogether the existence of any such "bargain ;" or denied that they individually had had "any hand it it;" or else denied that it had applied to the "whole of Oregon." Betrayed and incensed by this "Punic faith," as they called it, of the Southern Democrats, the Northwestern Democrats in August of 1846 proposed the Wilmot proviso as the only means possible for the restoration of the traditional free-soil and slave-soil balance for protecting themselves against pos- sible future Southern Demorcratic "breach of faith," and for "saving the Democratic Party of the Northern States" after its betrayal and humiliation through the miscarriage of the "bargain of 1844."
