A History of the American People

1,299,062). Clay, having been an expansionist all his life, refused, for reasons which are still
mysterious, to back the annexation of Texas. That was the main reason he lost. It was obvious
the bulk of the nation, even the North, wanted Texas in the Union, whether or not it was a slave
state. Tyler, still president, decided to outsmart Polk by gathering to himself the kudos for Texas'
admission. His Secretary of State, Calhoun, had failed to get an annexation treaty approved by
the necessary two-thirds vote of the Senate. (Two-thirds, overwhelmingly Northerners, voted
against it.) Now Tyler, using the verdict' of the election as his justification, recommended that Texas be admitted by a joint resolution of both Houses, for which a simple majority was enough. This was done, February 28, 1845, and on his last day in the White House Tyler dispatched a courier to President Houston inviting Texas to become the twenty-eighth state. Frustrated over Texas, Polk determined to add the riches and immensities of California to the Union and get the credit for it. And as a makeweight he wanted Oregon too. Polk came from North Carolina and was an expert mathematician. He had migrated to Tennessee, served in Congress, had four years as speaker, and two terms as governor. He was a lawyer, planter, and slave-owner and, now that Van Buren was dead politically, Jackson's heir, known as Young Hickory. But he had nothing in common with Jackson other than determination. He was a sour, stiff, elderly-looking man, with a sad, unsmiling face, who did nothing but work-eighteen hours a day in the White House, it was said. He was the first president killed by the office, though the choice was his. Like J. Q. Adams, whom he resembled, he kept a diary, though not such a nasty and interesting one. It is curious that he was despised in his lifetime and later underrated by historians. Within his self-set limits, he has a claim to be considered one of the most successful presidents. He did exactly what he said he would do. He said he would serve only one term, and he did. He said that, in that one term, he would do four things: settle the Oregon question, acquire California, reduce the tariff, and reestablish Van Buren's Independent Treasury, which the Whigs had abolished. He did all these things. He also got America into war with Mexico and won it in record time. But first, knowing war with Mexico was likely, he and his Secretary of State, James Buchanan (1791-1868), determined to settle the Oregon question. It had a complicated history and involved an enormous mass of territory, only partly explored and mapped, beginning in the northern Rockies and ending on the Pacific coast. Most people did not even have a name for it until 'Oregon'-presumably of Indian origin-was popularized in a poem, 'Thanatopsis,' published by William Cullen Bryant (1794- 1878) in 1817- Since the Treaty of 1814 the British and the Americans had agreed to leave the precise longitudinal frontier between Canada and the United States unresolved. President Monroe had assumed that the best solution was simply to extend the 49th parallel to the Pacific. All subsequent presidents had taken the same line. The area was largely the territory of the ancient Anglo-Canadian Hudson's Bay Company, and they had been operating south of the parallel for generations. On the other hand, American pioneers had been boring into the region and staking claims. Now, in theRoaring Forties,' with Americans whipping themselves into a
nationalistic frenzy over Manifest Destiny, with Oregon Fever' taking settlers into the region by the thousand, with a government formed, a governor appointed, and a state capital, Oregon City, mapped out, the cry wasAll of Oregon or None,' supplemented by a bit of demotic geography,
Fifty-Four-Forty or Fight.' This last latitude would have shoved the US frontier right into what is now western Canada and given America the matchless harbor of Vancouver. Polk did not want, or expect, to get so much. He talked big. He told Congress thatthe American title to the country [he carefully did
not say the whole of it] is clear and unquestionable.' He gave the Monroe Doctrine a new twist: