h by British and
American Governments upon grounds of prior exploration, into the merits
of which it is hardly necessary to enter here. Both claims were in fact
rather shadowy, but both claimants were quite convinced that theirs was
the stronger. For many years the dispute had been hung up without being
settled, the territory being policed jointly by the two Powers. Now,
however, there came from the Northern expansionists a loud demand for an
immediate settlement and one decidedly in their favour. All territory
south of latitude 47 deg. 40' must be acknowledged as American, or the
dispute must be left to the arbitrament of arms. "Forty-seven-forty or
fight!" was the almost unanimous cry of the Democracy of the North and
West.

The Secretary of State set himself against the Northern Jingoes, and
though his motives may have been sectional, his arguments were really
unanswerable. He pointed out that to fight England for Oregon at that
moment would be to fight her under every conceivable disadvantage. An
English army from India could be landed in Oregon in a few weeks. An
American army sent to meet it must either round Cape Horn and traverse
the Atlantic and Pacific oceans in the face of the most powerful navy in
the world or march through what was still an unmapped wilderness without
the possibility of communications or supports. If, on the other hand, the
question were allowed to remain in suspense, time would probably redress
the balance in favour of the United States. American expansion would in
time touch the borders of Oregon, and then the dispute could be taken up
and settled under much more favourable circumstances. It was a perfectly
just argument, but it did not convince the "forty-seven-forty-or-fighters,"
who roundly accused the Secretary--and not altogether unjustly--of caring
only for the expansion of his own section.

Calhoun was largely instrumental in averting a war with England, but he
did not otherwise conduct himself in such a manner as to conciliate
opinion in that country. England, possibly with the object of
strengthening her hand in bargaining for Oregon, had intervened
tentatively in relation to Texas. Lord Aberdeen, then Peel's Foreign
Secretary, took up that question from the Anti-Slavery standpoint, and
expressed the hope that the prohibition of Slavery by Mexico would not
be reversed if Texas became part of the American Union. The
intervention, perhaps, deserved a snub--for, after all, England