How the States Got Their Shapes Too_ The People Behind the Borderlines - Mark Stein [79]
Meaning what? Britain, again having to contemplate this perplexing president, did nothing. One month later, Polk turned up the heat: the treaty of joint occupancy could be terminated twelve months after either nation served notice, and he urged Congress to serve notice.
The British Parliament was not the only legislature trying to figure out Polk. So was the U.S. Senate. If the clock ran out, what did the president plan to do? During a two-day period, Polk noted in his diary:
[March 4, 1846] Senator Hanegan of Indiana called.… He spoke of Mr. Haywood’s speech in the Senate that day, in which he had undertaken to expound my views on the Oregon question, and seemed, without asking the direct question, to desire to know whether he was authorized to do so. I told him no one spoke ex cathedra for me, that my views were given in the annual message of the 2nd of December.… On going into my office I found Mr. Yulee & Mr. Lewis there and, as I anticipated, they had called to see me on the subject of Oregon. Unlike Mr. Hanegan, they expressed themselves to be greatly delighted at Mr. Haywood’s speech in the Senate.… I repeated … that my views were contained in my message of the 2nd of December.
[March 5, 1846] Senator Cass called this evening.… I told him my opinions on the Oregon question were contained in my annual message.
Louisiana Senator Alexander Barrow was among those who expressed befuddlement. To his fellow senators he declared:
We have before us a most extraordinary and, I must say, humiliating public spectacle.… We sit here as part of that great National Council which, along with the Executive, directs the affairs of this people.… Amongst us [the president] has a decided party majority, anxious to afford him support in all his measures. And yet … his real purposes in the momentous questions before us … are an enigma to his very adherents here, who cannot, for their lives, settle between them his true meaning and intention!
Like Prime Minister Peel, Polk had to outfox the leadership of his nation’s militant faction. But for Polk that faction was in his own political party. Hence this move of asking Congress to start the clock ticking, while keeping them guessing his intentions if time ran out. As his White House encounters revealed, both sides assumed his ambiguity meant he was leaning toward them. On April 23 the Senate joined the House in voting to end the joint occupancy agreement.
It was not a moment too soon. Two days later, sixteen American soldiers were killed in a skirmish with Mexican troops. In early May Polk sent Congress a declaration of war.
The next move was Britain’s. Which way would it go? The answer arrived on June 3. Britain would agree to the 49th parallel, but only from the Rockies to the main channel of the Juan de Fuca Strait, and only if the Hudson’s Bay Company retained navigational rights to the Columbia River until the expiration of its charter in 1859.
Polk, as he’d promised, sent the proposal to the Senate but yet again flummoxed them by saying he planned to reject the proposal unless two-thirds of the Senate voted in its favor.4 Polk then said nothing more on the subject, leaving the Senate to guess what that meant.
Militants in the Senate continued to oppose the proposed compromise, and those who had been opposed to war supported it. The critical votes would be from those less committed. Some, because of Polk’s having just entered into a war with Mexico, voted for compromise, not wanting to fight two wars at once. Others opted for compromise, anticipating that Polk’s silence and two-thirds request would tilt the field. The proposal thereby ended up being passed 37 to 12. Within weeks it became a treaty, which the Senate ratified 41 to 14.
Polk had not acquired all the Oregon territory his party had advocated in its campaign platform. But he had acquired all the territory that the previous president, also from his party, had unsuccessfully sought.
The Mexican War was brought to conclusion when