Webster
took in regard to it.
The Ashburton treaty was open to one just criticism. It did not go far
enough. It did not settle the northwestern as it did the northeastern
boundary. Mr. Webster, as has been said, made an effort to deal with the
former as well as the latter, but he met with no encouragement, and as he
was then preparing to retire from office, the matter dropped. In regard to
the northwestern boundary Mr. Webster agreed with the opinion of Mr.
Monroe's cabinet, that the forty-ninth parallel was a fair and proper line;
but the British undertook to claim the line of the Columbia River, and this
excited corresponding claims on our side. The Democracy for political
purposes became especially warlike and patriotic. They declared in their
platform that we must have the whole of Oregon and reoccupy it at once. Mr.
Polk embodied this view in his message, together with the assertion that
our rights extended to the line of 54 deg. 40' north, and a shout of
"fifty-four-forty or fight" went through the land from the enthusiastic
Democracy. If this attitude meant anything it meant war, inasmuch as our
proposal for the forty-ninth parallel, and the free navigation of the
Columbia River, made in the autumn of 1845, had been rejected by England,
and then withdrawn by us.
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