fied by the Senate after an acrimonious debate. "Oh!
mountain that was delivered of a mouse," exclaimed Senator Benton, "thy
name shall be fifty-four forty!" Thirteen years later, the southern part
of the territory was admitted to the union as the state of Oregon,
leaving the northern and eastern sections in the status of a territory.

=California.=--With the growth of the northwestern empire, dedicated by
nature to freedom, the planting interests might have been content, had
fortune not wrested from them the fair country of California. Upon this
huge territory they had set their hearts. The mild climate and fertile
soil seemed well suited to slavery and the planters expected to extend
their sway to the entire domain. California was a state of more than
155,000 square miles--about seventy times the size of the state of
Delaware. It could readily be divided into five or six large states, if
that became necessary to preserve the Southern balance of power.

_Early American Relations with California._--Time and tide, it seems,
were not on the side of the planters. Already Americans of a far
different type were invading the Pacific slope. Long before Polk ever
dreamed of California, the Yankee with his cargo of notions had been
around the Horn. Daring skippers had sailed out of New England harbors
with a variety of goods, bent their course around South America to
California, on to China and around the world, trading as they went and
leaving pots, pans, woolen cloth, guns, boots, shoes, salt fish, naval
stores, and rum in their wake. "Home from Californy!" rang the cry in
many a New England port as a good captain let go his anchor on his
return from the long trading voyage in the Pacific.

[Illustration: THE OVERLAND TRAILS]

_The Overland Trails._--Not to be outdone by the mariners of the deep,
western scouts searched for overland routes to the Pacific. Zebulon
Pike, explorer and pathfinder, by his expedition into the Southwest
during Jefferson's administration, had discovered the resources of New
Spain and had shown his countrymen how easy it was to reach Santa Fe
from the upper waters of the Arkansas River. Not long afterward, traders
laid open the route, making Franklin, Missouri, and later Fort
Leavenworth the starting point. Along the trail, once surveyed, poured
caravans heavily guarded by armed men against marauding Indians. Sand
storms often wiped out all signs of the route; hunger and thirst did
many a band of wa