ing the next Presidential election, the great probability is
that the country would lose all the advantages secured by
this Treaty. I adverted to the immense value of Upper
California, and concluded by saying that if I were now to
reject my own terms as offered in April last, I did not see
how it was possible for my administration to be sustained."^
The rumor soon spread in Washington that Buchanan and Walker were exerting their influence to have the treaty re- jected. On the 28th, Senator Sevier, the chairman of the Committee on Foreign Relations, informs the President that the committee will recommend the rejection of the treaty and advise sending a commission. The other members of the committee were Webster, Benton, Mangum, and Hanne- gan. Polk declared his opinion unchanged, and expressed his belief that Webster's object was to defeat the treaty. Sevier said Webster wanted no territory beyond the Rio Grande, and Polk comments in his diary : " Extremes meet. Mr. Webster is for no territory and Mr. Hannegan is for all Mexico, Benton's position cannot be calculated." Polk concludes his entry with : " If the treaty in its present form is ratified, there will be added to the United States an im- mense Empire, the value of which twenty years hence it would be difficult to calculate." It was surely the irony of fate that the eyes of this resolute Augustus, enlarger of empire, were so soon closed in death and that he was not suffered to see in the consequences of his policy the fulfil- ment at once of the most dismal prognostications of its opponents and of his own confident prophecy.
For several days the treaty hung in the balance. On Feb- ruary 29, Polk records : " From what I learn, about a dozen Democrats will oppose it, most of them because they wish to acquire more territory than the line of the Rio Grande and the Provinces of New Mexico and Upper California will
1 Calhoun wrote his son, February 23 : ** The treaty with Mexico has just been laid before the Senate and read. It will be warmly opposed, but I think it will be approved by the body. It will be a fortunate deliverance if it should be." Cor- respondence, 744.
