Daniel Webster (1782-1852) (photo credit 22.1) One might think that Maine's boundary would have been established in the treaty ending the American Revolution, thus defining the borders of this new nation England was relinquishing and recognizing. Americans thought it did, as the 1783 Treaty of Paris indeed devoted an entire section to boundaries. It divided Maine from Canada along "a line drawn due north from the source of St. Croix River to the highlands, along the said highlands which divide those rivers that empty themselves into the river St. Lawrence from those which fall into the Atlantic Ocean to the northwestern-most head of Connecticut River." Other than determining which rivers flow where, what was left to discuss?

Nothing ... until the War of 1812 caused England to rethink the line. The narrow strip of land it left between the American border and England's primary route into Canada, the St. Lawrence River, was highly vulnerable to attack-particularly in the winter when the river froze, closing off navigation.

Daniel Webster was a rookie congressman when England first sought to redefine Maine's boundary. In 1814, during negotiations to bring the War of 1812 to a close, British negotiators complained: With respect to the boundary of the District of Maine ... [we] regret that, although the American plenipotentiaries have acknowledged themselves to be instructed to discuss a revision of the boundary line, with a view to prevent uncertainty and dispute, yet by a.s.suming ... an exclusive right to determine what is or not a subject of uncertainty and dispute, they have rendered their powers nugatory.

It being wartime, the British had called Americans all kinds of things. But "nugatory" was below the belt, and the Americans let them know it: The proposal of the British plenipotentiaries was not to ascertain, but to vary those lines in such a manner as to secure a direct communication between Quebec and Halifax, an alteration which could not be effected without a cession by the United States to Great Britain of all that portion of [Maine] ... intervening between the provinces of New Brunswick and Quebec, although unquestionably included within the boundary line.

1783 treaty: border of Maine The Americans allowed that, if the British wanted the two nations to survey the as-yet-unmarked line through the spa.r.s.ely settled forests, any discrepancies could then be negotiated. Consequently, the line was surveyed in 1817, and indeed a discrepancy surfaced. The United States interpreted the 1783 treaty's phrase "highlands which divide those rivers that empty themselves into the river St. Lawrence from those which fall into the Atlantic" as the ridge separating the two watersheds. England interpreted the preceding phrase leading up to the word "highlands"-"a line drawn due north from the source of St. Croix River to the highlands"-as meaning a line due north to the highest land.2 The treaty ending the War of 1812 stipulated that boundary disputes could be arbitrated by a third nation agreeable to both sides. Most likely, the United States would have prevailed in arbitration, but it suddenly had cause to hesitate, owing to another glitch recently discovered elsewhere along the U.S.-Canadian border. "The line between New York and Canada on Lake Champlain," the National Intelligencer reported, "will leave Rouse's Point, on which the United States have expended between two and three hundred thousand dollars in fortifications, within the British province." The fort being built was located on a site long accepted as being on the south side of New York's border with Canada. But the surveys that followed the War of 1812 revealed the fort was actually on the border's north side.

"Fort Blunder," as it came to be called, was no minor military outpost. It commanded the northern entrance to Lake Champlain, a lake that extends far into New York and Vermont. The fort's importance for defense was equaled only by its importance as a danger if it were to end up in British hands. The Maine boundary negotiations were now profoundly changed. "A proposal has been discussed," the Intelligencer reported, "that the territory that would accrue to Maine be given as an offset for the fine military station on the Lake, which would be confirmed to New York. Our friends in Maine think the Commissioners have no right to run the line agreeably to the proposed compromise, and loudly protest against it."

Fort Montgomery, aka "Fort Blunder"

From this point on, the reality was that the U.S. government was no longer negotiating with England; it was negotiating with the District of Maine. And Maine (which gained statehood in 1820) wasn't budging. Indeed, Maine became more militant, as a report from New Brunswick "to the King's Most Excellent Majesty ... humbly sheweth." The report informed British authorities that "a senator of the state of Maine ... came into this province and seized and marked a quant.i.ty of pine timber lying in the river St. John ... as having been cut on the river Restook, in the territory of the United States.... In the last year, 1825 ... [Maine issued deeds] to the settlers in this territory ... [for] one hundred acres each of the land by them possessed."3 Maine, in response, further sought to force the federal government to intervene on its behalf by ridiculing New Brunswick's appeal to its mother country. "Our neighbors in New Brunswick," Maine's Thomaston Register wrote, "feel quite warlike on the subject of the northeastern boundary.... They appear to think their masters in England have no other interest to protect.... But [England] ... has nothing to gain and much to lose by another contest with us."

Angered by this taunting, New Brunswick bit the bait. "John Baker, the citizen of Maine who was lately seized by the British authorities and carried to Frederickton [New Brunswick], was indicted ... on two charges amounting to Treason against the king of England," Vermont's Burlington Messenger reported. The acts of treason the newspaper cited consisted of Baker having flown the American flag and "resisted a British officer."

The U.S. government did not bite the bait. "Some young, discreet lawyer should be sent into New Brunswick to see Baker," President John Quincy Adams wrote in his diary, aware that there was more to the story than reported in the press. Baker, Adams noted, had been imprisoned "for stopping the British mail from pa.s.sing over the land on which he was settled, within the disputed territory."

Baker wasn't the only American whose behavior was making life difficult for the president. The governor of Maine contributed, too, as Adams confided to this diary: [April 28, 1827] A letter from Enoch Lincoln, Governor of the State of Maine ... is querulous, testy, and suspicious.... The tendency of all this is to multiply the difficulties of the negotiation.

[November 26, 1827] Lincoln's letters are absurd and provoking; and he is deeply infected with a disease which many of the Governors of the States are apt to catch-wanton a.s.sailing of the General Government, overweening zeal for the interests of the State.

When Maine's governor then activated the state's militia, Adams finally had no choice but to respond, and dispatched U.S. troops to Maine.

But Adams simultaneously made movements in the other direction as well, using the crisis to justify allowing the king of Holland to arbitrate the dispute. In 1831 King William I specified a compromise line that sought to split the difference between the American and British positions.

Maine responded by changing its strategy. It now maintained its boundary claims were part of a larger national issue: states' rights.4 By aligning itself with slave states that were a.s.serting states' rights to resist federal restrictions on slavery, Maine succeeded in getting the Senate to reject the Dutch king's decision. Consequently, the situation continued to smolder. Seven years later the smolders began to flame. In March 1839 the Boston Atlas reported: A detachment of 26 [American] men, sent ... to break up a horde of trespa.s.sers on the Fish River has returned, having succeeded in their object.... [Maine] Gov. Fairfield is urging forward his militia with great zeal. In addition to the 700 enlisted men on the Aroostook, [militia] Gen. Hudson's brigade of 1000 men at Houlton, and Gen. Batchelder's brigade of 1000 who are on the march from Augusta, another 1000 are under orders to march.... It is rumored that 5000 British troops ... left Frederickton on the 23rd for the disputed territory.

Northern Maine: arbitration decision Through the skillful intervention of U.S. General Winfield Scott and his British counterpart, no one died in what has come to be known as the Aroostook War (or, more incongruously, the Pork and Beans War). It did, however, result in two indisputable facts. First, a verdict on the boundary could no longer be postponed. Second, getting Maine to agree on a verdict would require a courtroom magician. The United States had one: Daniel Webster.

During the years that Maine's boundary dispute had been simmering, Webster had been orating his way to an 1836 presidential bid. Americans found him spellbinding. "No man has been found tall enough to overshadow him," Washington, DC's National Intelligencer exclaimed. "No man has been able to attract or intercept from him the constant regard of the nation, for he has been so conspicuous, so prominent, that whatever he has done, and whatever he has said, has been watched and understood throughout the borders of the land."

Webster's flair for speaking, however, was a component of an exuberant personality that also resulted in rumors of excessive drinking, of large sums of money having been given to him by wealthy merchants and bankers, and of womanizing.5 Running in a field of five presidential candidates, Webster wound up with less than 3 percent of the vote.

In the next presidential election, candidate William Henry Harrison offered candidate Webster the vice presidency, in an effort to consolidate his bid. Webster declined, stating "I do not propose to be buried until I am really dead."6 Still, rather than fruitlessly oppose Harrison in the 1840 election, Webster accepted the popular general's alternate offer of secretary of state. (Had Webster accepted the vice presidency, he would have become the president when Harrison died thirty-two days after his inauguration.) In the wake of the 1839 Aroostook War, Maine's boundary with Canada became one of Secretary Webster's top priorities. England, equally anxious to end the dispute, sent Lord Ashburton to Washington as its negotiator. It was as shrewd a choice on England's part as Webster would prove to be on the American side. Lord Ashburton's family owned Barings Bank. Webster had performed legal services for Barings. The two men knew each other and liked each other. So informally did they proceed that, when the treaty they created was sent to Senate for ratification, Senator Thomas Hart Benton complained that he had never before seen a treaty accompanied by so little doc.u.mentation.7 The dearth of supporting doc.u.ments, however, was not the result of a cozy relationship. Rather, it resulted from the fact that Webster was negotiating primarily with Maine-invisibly.

To tilt public opinion, Webster began with the press. The State Department budget set aside $17,000 for "secret service" regarding the boundary negotiations.8 The money was used to fund a public relations campaign aimed at placing stories in newspapers and other publications.

It worked. In December 1841, as the nation awaited the arrival of Lord Ashburton, the Christian Mirror proposed a possible compromise that was extraordinarily detailed. After laying out what was purportedly its own proposal, the article pointedly concluded, "Is there a citizen of Maine who will not, upon careful meditation, p.r.o.nounce such a compromise honorable to both parties, advantageous to both parties, and founded in a just regard for the wants and rights of the respective parties?"

The National Intelligencer, whose coverage of political events in Washington was often picked up by newspapers nationwide, published numerous editorials favoring a compromise. These editorials were rumored to have been written by Webster himself, a close friend of one of the paper's publishers. One such editorial, quite likely written by Webster, appeared in July 1842: Rumors are afloat concerning the supposed terms of adjustment of the Northeastern Boundary question which we rather think-indeed, we may almost say we know-are calculated to mislead the public mind.... It is not unlikely, we learn, that the line which the Dutch arbiter decided for ... will be agreed to. But then Maine gets what the Dutch king did not give her, the navigation of the [St. John] River, and this trebles the value of all her tall pine trees.

The editorial went on to detail other trade-offs, including: England takes a tract of mountain land, untimbered and of no earthly value but as a boundary, and she relinquishes to the United States Rouse's Point, the key of Lake Champlain, and a large territory heretofore supposed to belong to New York and Vermont, but which turns out to lie north of the 45th degree of lat.i.tude and is therefore a part of Canada.

From the newspaper's point of view, it got a scoop. Webster got to dish it out.

In time, even Maine's Augusta Age, while remaining ardently opposed to any boundary compromise, was now conceding, "We do not deny that very many candid and honest men are numbered among the friends of the treaty; men, too, of the highest intelligence, and every way ent.i.tled to respect."

To persuade Maine itself, Webster employed a different approach: cartographic blackmail. Webster learned of two maps on which red lines had been drawn that conformed to the British interpretation of the Treaty of Paris. The lines had purportedly been drawn by Benjamin Franklin and John Jay, two of the key American negotiators. While questions could be raised as to whether Franklin and Jay had personally drawn the red lines, there was no question as to the maps' authenticity. One had belonged to Friedrich von Steuben, the Prussian general who had provided invaluable a.s.sistance to the Americans in the Revolutionary War; the other was in a French archive, also a nation allied with the Americans in that war.9 Webster secretly sent word of the maps to Maine's governor, threatening that their existence would be made public if Maine did not accede to a compromise. Soon papers were reporting, along with the New York Spectator, "It is satisfactory to learn that the legislature of Maine is proceeding rapidly and judiciously in measures ... that will enable the general Government to effect an arrangement with Lord Ashburton."

Judiciously, perhaps. Rapidly for sure. Four months after Lord Ashburton arrived in the United States, the Senate ratified the Webster-Ashburton Treaty, establishing the boundaries of Maine at their present-day location.10 Webster went on to make yet another bid for the presidency, this time in 1852. Because of the treaty he had managed to secure, he had reason to hope this election would be the one to put him in the White House. But he now had an additional liability: he was seventy, older than any first-term president ever elected. He lost the Whig nomination to Winfield Scott, who in turn lost in November to Franklin Pierce. By then, however, Webster was dead. In May 1852 he had sustained a head injury in a carriage accident. His recovery was hindered by cirrhosis of the liver.11 Daniel Webster died in late October, nine days before the election.

Upon his death, the American philosopher Ralph Waldo Emerson, visiting the site of one of Webster's greatest speeches, wrote in his journal: Last Sunday I was at Plymouth.... I supposed Webster must have pa.s.sed, as indeed he had died at three in the morning. The sea, the rocks, the woods, gave no sign that America and the world had lost the completest man.

Yet, on another occasion, Emerson had said of Webster: It was for his defect in moral perceptions, for the inequality of his moral to his intellectual faculty ... that hence came the sterility of thought.... It is a curious fact that though he wrote and spoke with an ability that impresses the world, there is not a single remarkable sentence, not a single valuable aphorism which can pa.s.s into literature from his writing.12 Both observations were true.

WASHINGTON, IDAHO, MONTANA.

JAMES K. POLK.

Fifty-Four Forty or Fight!

On the nomination of Mr. Polk we hardly know what to say. A more ridiculous, contemptible and forlorn candidate was never put forth by any party.... Mr. Polk is sort of a fourth or rather fortieth-rate lawyer and small politician in Tennessee.

-NEW YORK HERALD, MAY 31, 1844 What, if anything, is generally remembered about President James K. Polk is that his campaign slogan was "Fifty-Four Forty or Fight!" In fact, it wasn't. The issue (involving present-day Oregon, Washington, and British Columbia) was central to his campaign, but there is no evidence that the slogan existed at that time.1 During Polk's presidency, the American map changed dramatically, its boundary expanding to include Texas, the Oregon Territory, and everything in between, from the Rockies to the Pacific. Many factors contributed to the change, but a key element was that, at critical moments, Polk was a prodigious political poker player.

To follow how Polk's moves resulted in these gains, we need to know who else was at the table, since each player's strategy affected the others. Following his election in 1844, Polk found himself in a high-stakes game already in progress that included Mexico, Britain, and, reflecting public opinion, Congress. He also found himself having been dealt cards that were not particularly good.

James K. Polk (1795-1849) (photo credit 23.1) United States when Polk entered office and when he left In the case of Mexico, Polk began with a crisis over Texas. Texas had battled itself free from Mexico in 1836, though Mexico had not recognized its independence and therefore never agreed to particular borders. Texas claimed that its border with Mexico was the Rio Grande. But its southern border as a Mexican province had been farther north, at the Nueces River. Four days before Polk's inauguration, President John Tyler signed a congressional resolution admitting Texas to the Union, "subject to the adjustment by this government of all questions of boundary that may arise with other governments." Mexico, whose objections went considerably beyond "questions of boundary," recalled its amba.s.sador during the first week of Polk's presidency, thus upping the ante on the prospect of war.

War with Mexico was not militarily intimidating, particularly since Mexico was in the midst of one of its many revolutions. War with Britain was another matter. And that possibility was another of the cards Polk had been dealt.

Until the presidential campaign that resulted in Polk's election, the United States and Britain had agreed to disagree about a boundary dividing the Oregon Country, a region far more vast than the present-day state of Oregon. Under an extension of a ten-year joint occupancy agreement included in the 1818 Anglo-American Convention negotiated by Richard Rush, Britain and United States shared the area bounded on the south by the 42nd parallel (below which, at that time, was Mexico), on the east by the crest of the Rocky Mountains, and on the north at 5440' (the border with Russian Alaska that Britain negotiated in 1825). By the 1840s, the region's population had grown to the point that the United States and Britain picked up where they had left off in seeking to determine a boundary. The Tyler administration proposed an extension of the 49th parallel-the line already in place from Minnesota to the Rockies. But the British sought a boundary farther south at the Columbia River.

Texas: disputed border Negotiations crept along cordially enough until the Democratic Party seized upon the issue as a possible means of defeating its formidable opponent in the upcoming election, Henry Clay. Clay's reputation was that of a creative compromiser, an invaluable skill in a nation fundamentally divided over the issue of slavery. The Democrats sought to outfox Clay by including in the party's platform a totally uncompromising position regarding Oregon. "Resolved, that our t.i.tle to the whole of the Territory of Oregon is clear and unquestionable," it a.s.serted, "that no portion of the same ought to be ceded to England or any other power."

British-American Oregon For this ploy to be effective, the public had to believe that the entire region was vital to the United States. Consequently, the Democrats beat this drum loudly. Much of the public responded to their alarm. To them, the Democrats had a clear vision regarding Oregon; Henry Clay's nuanced views were more ponderous. The Democrats won the White House.

But not the Democrat anyone expected. Seven candidates had vied for the party's nomination on the first ballot. Polk was not among them. Successive balloting failed to give any candidate a majority; none, however, would release his support to any opponent. Ultimately they chose to nominate someone who was no one's opponent (or hero), and who would publicly promise not to seek reelection if, by some fluke, he won. That candidate was former congressman and former Tennessee governor (twice defeated for reelection) James K. Polk. The fluke was the effectiveness of the Oregon issue.

Polk, for his part, had partic.i.p.ated in the ploy and did believe expansion to the Pacific was vital to the nation's future. The ports provided by the Columbia River and, farther north, Puget Sound, would provide the nation with its only access to the Pacific Ocean (since California was still part of Mexico).

Polk thus took his seat at the table with Mexico threatening to go to war over Texas, and with an American public having provided him the seat through its support for his party's campaign to acquire the entire region of Oregon, which could mean war with Britain. In addition, he knew that the other players viewed him as a lightweight. The first thing Polk had to do, therefore, was change the way he was perceived. He needed to create the impression that he was somehow in possession of much stronger cards, or that he was wildly unpredictable. Either would do, since either would cause his opponents to take a step back. Polk made that first move in his inaugural address: The Republic of Texas has made known her desire to come into our Union.... I regard the question of annexation as belonging exclusively to the United States and Texas.... Foreign nations have no right to interfere.... Nor will it become in a less degree my duty to a.s.sert and maintain by all const.i.tutional means the right of the United States to that portion of our territory which lies beyond the Rocky Mountains. Our t.i.tle to the country of the Oregon is "clear and unquestionable."

That got Britain's attention, clearly fitting the category of wild and unpredictable. The Liverpool Mercury reported in April 1845: The Earl of Clarendon drew the attention of their Lordships to the inaugural address of the President of the United States respecting Texas and the Oregon territory, the language of which he described as characterized by a studied neglect of that courtesy and deference which governments were wont to observe when treating upon international affairs, and as leading to the inference that ... the only basis of negotiation was unconditional surrender by England of all that was claimed by America.

In achieving his initial objective with Britain, Polk limited his next move in terms of public opinion in the United States. "There has been an important debate in the British Parliament on the Oregon, disclosing the view of England on that subject," the New York Herald observed in April 1845. "We may now expect a serious difficulty between England and America. We do not see what is to prevent it. America has a.s.sumed her position, and England has now taken hers. Neither, therefore, can recede an inch."

Britain indeed did not recede but rather, turning to Mexico, raised the stakes by urging Mexico to go to war with the United States over Texas. "There are many considerations that militate in favour of the Mexicans," the London Times editorialized that same week. "Can anything exceed the dissatisfaction of the states of New England, or New York, or of Ohio, at having to meet the calls of war ... for the encouragement of slavery?... The military establishment of the United States is very well adapted to ... repel a foreign enemy.... But offensive and defensive war are two different things."

Mexico saw Britain's move and, three weeks later, added its chips. On May 7, 1845, its congress pa.s.sed a resolution. "The unjust usurpation of which [the United States] sought to make Mexico the victim, makes it her duty to take up arms in her defense," it a.s.serted, upping the ante by concluding, "The Mexican nation calls upon her sons to defend their national independence, threatened by the usurpation of the territory of Texas."2 It was Polk's turn again. What he needed now was room to maneuver, knowing he could not simultaneously take on two wars. In July he had Secretary of State James Buchanan make Britain an offer that gave him room to maneuver with U.S. public opinion, and time to do so by making it an offer Britain had to refuse. Polk achieved both with deceptive simplicity. He abandoned his campaign pledge (and inaugural address demand) that the United States was ent.i.tled to all of Oregon and returned to the previous administration's bid for a boundary that continued along the 49th parallel from the Rockies to the Pacific. Americans who preferred compromise to war were startled and impressed; Polk's militant supporters were startled and upset. Unnoticed by both groups was the absence, in Polk's proposal, of any mention of British access to the Columbia River. But the British noticed. The Columbia was a major artery of Britain's fur trade, conducted under the auspices of the Hudson's Bay Company. In addition, a line from the Rockies to the Pacific would divide Vancouver Island and its prized ports in the strait separating it from the mainland. Britain rejected Polk's proposal.

In the United States, Britain was now viewed as intractable. What wasn't viewed was the purpose of Polk's move-to make Americans view themselves as tractable. Polk had acquired the card he needed.

Later in the same month of July 1845, with Britain now pausing to rea.s.sess the U.S. president, Polk raised the stakes on Mexico. He ordered troops to cross the Nueces River, with those orders explicitly stating for the first time that the United States considered the Rio Grande to be the border between Texas and Mexico.

Britain, after considerable thought, opted to match this move. "In a short time," the London Times reported in November, "Admiral Seymour will be upon or near the coast of Oregon with one ship of 80, one of 50, one of 18, and one of 16 guns."

Within weeks Polk hedged his bet, sending Congressman John Slidell to Mexico with an offer to purchase Texas for as much as $40 million.3 By hedging on Mexico, Polk caused Britain to ponder him yet again. Did war over Oregon amount to bluffing or not?

To make certain the British kept wondering, Polk used his December 2, 1845, State of the Union message (which he would later make further use of domestically) to ensure the uncertainty of his intentions. In speaking of Oregon, he repeatedly invoked the spirit of compromise while simultaneously raising the specter of war: In consideration that propositions of compromise had been thrice made by two preceding Administrations ... and that the pending negotiation had been commenced on the basis of compromise, I deemed it to be my duty not to abruptly break it off.... A proposition was accordingly made which was rejected by the British.... All attempts at compromise having failed, it becomes the duty of Congress to consider what measures it may be proper to adopt ... for the maintenance of our just t.i.tle to that territory.

Over in Britain, one thing was certain. It too had a militant faction that equated compromise with surrender. This faction was spearheaded by Lord Palmerston, a former foreign minister whose party no longer led Parliament. Prime Minister Robert Peel, like Polk, needed room to maneuver. In a parliamentary maneuver, Peel called Palmerston's bluff and won. Polk, in response to Peel's having marginalized Palmerston's opposition, sent word in January 1846 that if the British wished to make a counterproposal to his offer of the 49th parallel, he would send it to the Senate to hear its advice.

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 antic.i.p.ated, 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 Ca.s.s 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 a.s.sumed 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, antic.i.p.ating that Polk's silence and two-thirds request would tilt the field. The proposal thereby ended up being pa.s.sed 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 the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo brought what would become California, Nevada, Utah, and parts of what would become Wyoming, Colorado, New Mexico, and Arizona into the borders of the United States. The treaty was ratified on March 10, 1848, in the midst of the next presidential campaign.

James K. Polk, as promised, was not a candidate.

VIRGINIA, DISTRICT OF COLUMBIA.

ROBERT M. T. HUNTER.

Cutting Washington Down to Size

Virginia is ready to receive these people back into her bosom, and they are ready and anxious to return. They desire to enjoy the rights of men, the privileges of free men. Can the American Congress fail to respect such a feeling?

-CONGRESSMAN ROBERT M. T. HUNTER1 In 1791 Andrew Ellicott and Benjamin Banneker marked off the boundaries of the District of Columbia: a square with ten-mile sides, straddling the Potomac River. It encompa.s.sed two munic.i.p.alities (Georgetown and Alexandria), a federal enclave (Washington), and rural areas on either side of the Potomac (Alexandria County and Washington County).

Fifty-five years later, President James K. Polk signed away the entire section of the nation's capital on the Potomac's southern side, returning it to Virginia. In reaction, one newspaper in the North wrote: The Senate has pa.s.sed, by a majority of more than two to one, the bill which pa.s.sed the House the 8th of May, retroceding the city and county of Alexandria, D.C. to Virginia.

The Democrats of Maine have nominated John W. Dana, of Fryeburg, as their candidate for governor.2 District of Columbia, 1790-1846 In the South, by comparison, a Mississippi paper wrote: In the Senate, on the 2nd inst., the bill taking the city of Alexandria from the District of Columbia and giving it to the State of Virginia pa.s.sed.

In the House, on the 3rd, McKay's tariff bill pa.s.sed.3 h.e.l.lo? Was anyone paying attention?

This 1846 legislation was initiated by Virginia Congressman Robert M. T. Hunter. His success, however, culminated efforts that had begun more than forty years earlier. The seeming indifference of the press is misleading. It had been covering these efforts for decades. As early as 1803, Washington, DC's National Intelligencer reported on the problem of the federal government running the District of Columbia.4 That year and the next, Congress vigorously debated the return of areas ceded to the federal government for the creation of a nation's capital. The Annals of Congress record that Virginia Congressman John Randolph "believed the interests of the several parts of the [District of Columbia] were as hostile as any in the Union, as it was manifest there was an Alexandria, a Georgetown, and a city interest.... He therefore thought it expedient to retrocede all the territory, excepting the City of Washington."

Robert M. T. Hunter (1809-1887) (photo credit 24.1) While the preponderance of the speakers debated whether or not "retrocession" was const.i.tutional, all agreed with Ma.s.sachusetts Congressman John Bacon that "the exercise of exclusive legislation [for running the District of Columbia] would take up a great deal of time, and produce a great expense to the nation.... It was likely that as much time would be spent in legislating for this District as for the whole United States."

Years later, Hunter repeated Randolph's and Bacon's concerns, amplified now since they had become established facts: We have three cities in this District, each aspiring to be great, and all desiring to open up communications to the sources of their trade.... They have shared unequally in the appropriations.... Go look at [Alexandria's] declining commerce, her deserted buildings, and her almost forsaken harbor. Look to the waste of natural advantages and opportunities in that town, suffering not from the blight of G.o.d, but the neglect of man.... We have not done all that might have been done for those who depend upon us for the necessary care which this government alone can bestow.

Because Congress indeed had its hands full running the country, it had given scant and uneven attention to the District of Columbia. This, in turn, intensified the rivalry among the District's munic.i.p.alities for congressional attention-particularly regarding commercial needs such as ca.n.a.ls and bridges. "One of the early acts of this government ... was to throw a mole [dam] across from Mason's island to the south bank of the Potomac, and thus cut off the channel for boat communication between Alexandria and the water of the upper Potomac," Hunter cited as an example to his colleagues. "From the time this was done up to the completion of the ca.n.a.l, scarcely a boat was ever seen in Alexandria from the upper Potomac."5 Indeed, that earlier debate regarding a dam between Mason's Island (present-day Theodore Roosevelt Island) and the Potomac's south bank also reflected the rivalry of the munic.i.p.alities, the inequities of congressional actions, and the resentment in Congress at having to devote time to the munic.i.p.alities. In that 1804 debate, Virginia Congressman Randolph had declared: [A] prompt rejection of the bill would serve as a general notice to the inhabitants of the District to desist from their daily and frivolous applications to Congress, to the great obstruction of the public business.

Andrew Gregg of Pennsylvania, however, pointed out that under the Const.i.tution: The House [was] bound to legislate for these people until it relinquished the claim to the jurisdiction either by authorizing them to legislate for themselves or retroceding them to the states to which they originally belonged.

Regarding the rivalry and inequitable treatment, North Carolina Congressman Nathaniel Macon argued: The gentlemen in favor of this dam or causeway say it will do no harm.... On the other side, serious apprehensions are entertained of its injurious effects upon ... the Eastern Branch [the present-day Anacostia River] and its causing obstructions in the harbor of Alexandria.

In the years leading up to Hunter's 1846 effort, pet.i.tions seeking to detach the Virginia portion of the District of Columbia were repeatedly presented to Congress, resulting in bills that failed to pa.s.s in 1824 and 1840. Residents of Georgetown also periodically sought to have their area of the District returned to Maryland, most notably in an 1838 pet.i.tion presented to Congress and in a bill that failed in 1856.

How, then, did Hunter succeed? Two overarching concerns account for Hunter's success-and also account for the continued failure of such efforts by District residents on the Maryland side. Over the years, one of those overarching issues diminished, while the other enlarged.

The issue that diminished regarded the location of the nation's capital itself. Differing visions among the Founding Fathers led to disputes as to whether the capital should be in Philadelphia or New York or a central location or in the South. Only after protracted negotiations between Thomas Jefferson and Alexander Hamilton was the Potomac River location accepted.6 When Congress first debated retrocession in 1803, Delaware Congressman James A. Bayard voiced this ongoing concern. Should the land be returned to Virginia and Maryland, he worried, "What obligation is there in Congress to remain here? ... Unfix the Capitol and recede the District and believe me, Congress will soon take wings and fly to some other place." But compared to when the Founders had debated the capital's location, the issue now had an added dimension. President Jefferson was just then concluding the Louisiana Purchase, by which the United States suddenly became twice as large as it had been. If the legislative bolts locating the nation's capital were loosened, where might the expanded nation want its center of power?

As the Louisiana Purchase evolved, the development of railroads so greatly reduced the burdens of travel that the concerns of the new states and territories did not include relocating the nation's capital. The primary concern that emerged turned out to be the second overarching issue that contributed to Hunter's success: slavery.

It was during this era of national expansion that Robert Mercer Taliaferro Hunter grew up. The son of a prosperous landowner in Ess.e.x County, Virginia, 100 miles south of the District, Hunter attended the University of Virginia, became an attorney, and in 1834 was elected to the Virginia House of Delegates. Three years later he was elected to the U.S. House of Representatives.