THE FEDERAL RELATIONS
OF OREGON
205
21 Polk might gracefully bring back a counter-proposition. much to the had was obdurate he question and thought given had been "it he was glad the offer rejected; having been rebound & not now be no would longer by it, jected he felt that the Secretary's boundary." To willing to compromise on
suggestion that war might follow the President replied, "If we have war it will not be our fault." Buchanan then stated that he supposed there would be a war sometime but he did not think the people of the United States would be willing and if there to sustain a war for the country north of 49
would like to have it for some better cause, "for some of our rights of person or property or of National honour violated." Whereupn Polk told him that he differed as as to popular sentiment and he thought "we had the strongest evidence that was to be anywhere seen that the people would be prompt and ready to sustain the Government in the course which he had proposed to pursue." Many a time in the months following (this conversation
had
to be one he
took place in the latter part of August) did the Secretary of State strive to secure some definite word which he could use in his negotiation and to the comfort of his own soul, to the effect that a compromise could be made, but he was forced reluctantly to resign himself to the belief that the President was bent on maintaining the stand of the Inaugural which
seemed to be "Fifty-Four Forty or Fight." Such too was the opinion of the other members of his Cabinet although no other of them found it so hard to be reconciled as did Buchanan.
And
today, in reading the record left by President Polk himhow any other view could have been reached. Yet is is to be noticed that nowhere did Polk record self, it is difficult to see
that he
would make no compromise; nowhere did he say that insist on the full claim.
he intended irrevocably to
At this point it is interesting to note the views of two contemporary historians of Folk's administration. Lucien B. Chase, a Tennessee Democrat and a member of both the ai Polk, Diary, I, 4. This is from an entry on a separate sheet noting the sonrersation which was responsible for the diary.
