their attempts to undo the work of Jackson and Van Buren, as regards the National Bank, ended in failure. Oregon and Texas. - Under Tyler's administration, questions of foreign policy, involving chances of war, again came into the foreground; but they were very different questions from those which had occupied our attention in the beginning of the century, and the mere statement of them gives a vivid impression of the enormous growth of the United States since the war of 1812. The northwestern corner of North America, down to the parallel of 54° 40', now known as the territory of Alaska, was then a kind of appendage to Siberia, and belonged to Russia. The region between Russian America and California, known as Oregon, was claimed by the United States, on the ground of the discoveries of Lewis and Clark. But Great Britain also had claims upon this region, and since 1818 it had been subject to the joint occupation of Great Britain and the United States. But by 1842 the American stream of westward migration, crossing the Rocky Mountains, had poured into Oregon, and it began to be a question how this vast territory should be divided. The Americans claimed everything, and the Democrats went into the next presidential campaign with the alliterative warcry, "Fifty-four forty or fight"; but popular interest in the question was not strong enough to sustain this bold policy. Great western statesmen, like Benton, appreciated the importance of Oregon much better than great eastern statesmen like Webster; but none were fully alive to its importance, and the southerners, represented by Calhoun, felt little interest in a territory which seemed quite unavailable for the making of slave states. Accordingly in 1846 the matter was compromised with Great Britain, and the territory was divided at the forty-ninth parallel, all above that line being British, all below American. If the feeling of national solidarity in the United States had been nearly as strong as it is to-day, we should probably have insisted upon our claim to the whole; in which case we should now, since our purchase of Alaska from Russia, possess the whole Pacific coast north of Mexico to Behring's Strait. It is perhaps to be regretted that such a bold policy was not pursued in 1846. It had many chances of success, for our available military strength, all things considered, was then probably not inferior to that of Great Britain. Very different was the popular feeling with regard to Texas. That magnificent country, greater in extent than any country of Europe except Russia, had been settled by emigrants from the United States, and in 1835 had rebelled against Mexican rule. In 1836 the American General Houston had defeated the Mexican General Santa Anna in the decisive battle of San Jacinto, and won the independence of Texas. After this the slave-holders of the southern states wished to annex Texas to the Union. Lying south of the parallel of 36° 30', it might become a slave state, and it was hoped that it might hereafter be divided into several states, so as to maintain the weight of the southerners in the United States Senate. After the admission of Arkansas in 1836, and Michigan to balance it in 1837, the South had no more room for expansion, unless it should acquire new territory; whereas the North had still a vast space westward at its command. It seemed likely that the North would presently gain a steady majority in the Senate; and in the House of Representatives, where strength depended on population, the North was constantly gaining, partly because the institution of slavery prevented the South from sharing in the advantages of the emigration from Europe, and partly for other reasons connected with the inferiority of slave labor to free labor. It was, therefore, probable that before long the North would come to control the action of Congress, and might then try to abolish slavery. This was a natural dread on the part of the South, and the abolitionist agitation tended to strengthen and exasperate it. The only safeguard for the South seemed to be the acquisition of fresh territory, and thus the annexation of Texas came now to furnish the burning question in politics, and to array the northern and southern states against each other in a contest for supremacy which could only be settled by an appeal to arms. In the presidential election of 1844, the Democratic candidate was James K. Polk, of Tennessee, and the Whig candidate was Henry Clay; and there was a third nomination, which determined the result of the election. The abolitionists had put forward James Birney as a presidential candidate in 1840, but had got very few votes; they now put him forward again. The contest was close. The success of the Whigs seemed probable, until the weakness of Clay's moral fibre ruined it, a lesson for American politicians, by which too few have had the good sense to profit. In the idle hope of catching Democratic votes, he published a letter favoring the annexation of Texas at some future time. This device met the failure which ought to follow all such flimsy manœuvres. It won no Democratic votes for Clay, but angered a great many anti-slavery Whigs, who threw away their votes upon Birney, and thus carried the state of New York over to Polk, and elected him President. It was the most closely contested election in our history, except those of 1800, 1876, and 1884. § 4. THE SLAVE POWER. War with Mexico.-The Democratic party, thus reinstated, was quite different from the Democratic party which had elected Jackson and Van Buren. Its policy was now shaped mainly by the followers of Calhoun, the representatives of slavery and nullification, though the latter political heresy was not likely to assert itself, so long as they could control the Federal government. With the election of Polk, the North and South are finally arrayed in opposition to each other; the question as to slavery comes to the front, and stays there until the Civil War. In 1845 Texas was admitted to the Union, with the understanding that it might hereafter be divided, so as to make several slave states. Mexico was offended, but no occasion for war arose until it was furnished by boundary troubles, due to that peculiar craving for territory which at this moment possessed the minds of the slave-holders. The boundary between Texas and Mexico was a matter of dispute; and early in 1846, Mr. Polk ordered General Taylor to march in and take possession of the disputed territory. This action was resented by Mexico, and led to a war, which lasted nearly eighteen months. In the course of it California was conquered by Fremont, New Mexico by Kearney, and the northern portion of Mexico by Taylor; while Scott, landing at Vera Cruz, advanced and captured the city of Mexico. The United States soldiers vanquished the Mexicans wherever they found them, and whatsoever the disparity of numbers. Thus at Buena Vista, Feb. 22, 1847, Taylor routed a Mexican army outnumbering him more than four to one; and some of the exploits of Doniphan in his march to Chihuahua, remind us of the Greeks at Cunaxa or Arbela. Many incidents of the war were quite romantic, and it is interesting to the student of history as having been the school in which most of the great generals of our Civil War were trained to their work. In February, 1848, a treaty was made, in which Mexico gave up to the United States a territory almost as extensive as that which Jefferson had obtained from Napoleon. It brought the map of the United States very nearly to what it is to-day, except for the acquisition of Alaska. Wilmot Proviso. - This immense acquisition of territory was a most fortunate event for everybody concerned in it; but its immediate effect upon our politics was far more disturbing than anything which had occurred since 1820. The anti-slavery party looked upon the war with strong disfavor, and their sentiments found expression in the most remarkable political poems of modern times, the first series of Biglow Papers by James Russell Lowell. There was a renewal of the sectional strife which had been quieted for a time by the Missouri Compromise. Slavery had been prohibited in the new territory by Mexican law, and the North wished to have this prohibition kept in force, but the South would not consent. To some the simplest solution seemed to be to prolong the Missouri Compromise line from the Rocky Mountains to the Pacific, but neither party was willing to give up so much to the other. Opposition to slavery had greatly increased at the North since 1820, and this had naturally increased the obstinacy of the South, so that it was becoming difficult to make compromises. In 1846 David Wilmot, a Democratic member of Congress from Pennsylvania, laid down the principle upon which, though not adopted at the time, the North was destined finally to take its stand and march to victory. By the famous Wilmot Proviso, slavery was to be forever prohibited in the whole of the territory acquired from Mexico. The proviso was not adopted in Congress, but in 1848 it called into existence the Free-Soil party, formed by the union of anti-slavery Democrats and Whigs with the abolitionists. This party nominated Martin Van Buren for President, and Charles Francis Adams for Vice-President. The Democrats nominated Lewis Cass, of Michigan, and the Whigs nominated the military hero, Taylor; and neither of these two parties dared in its platform to say a word about the one burning question of the day, the question of slavery in the new territory. The FreeSoilers decided the election by drawing from the Democratic vote in New York, and so Taylor became President. Taylor was by far the ablest of the Presidents between Jackson and Lincoln; he was brave, honest, and shrewd ; and though a Louisiana slave-owner, he was unflinching in his devotion to the Union. He received warm support from the great Missouri senator, Thomas Benton, the most eminent in ability of the Jacksonian Democrats. The political struggle during Taylor's administration related chiefly to the admission of California as a state in the Union. California. - Hitherto the westward migration had gone on at a steady pace, filling up one area after another as it went along. In 1846 Iowa was admitted to the Union, the first free state west of the Mississippi; in 1848 the admission of Wisconsin at last filled up the region east of that river; and the two states served as a counterweight in the Senate to Florida and Texas. Now the immigration took a sudden leap to the Pacific coast. In 1848 gold was discovered in California, and people rushed thither from all points of the compass, in quest of sudden riches. Within a year the population had become large enough to entitle it to admission to the Union, and there was need of a strong government to hold in check the numerous ruffians who had flocked in along with honest people. In 1849 the people of California agreed upon a state constitution forbidding slavery, and applied for admission to the Union. The southern members of Congress hotly opposed this, and threats of secession began to be heard. The controversy went on for a year, until it was settled by a group of compromise |