Only two other explanations offer themselves: Polk took the platform in good faith until he saw the course it pointed was absolutely impracticable, or he had from the beginning a plan which contained his course on Oregon as one of the main threads. Of the two explanations the latter presents more the appearance of being the real one. There was a "bluff" but it was not primarily for the benefit of Great Britain; it was not a trick to force Great Britain into yielding the territory between the forty-ninth parallel and the Columbia,[1] but it was a portion of the game whereby California and other Mexican territory was to be secured; Oregon was a secondary consideration throughout the whole episode. Friend and foe were alike mystified; the southerner who desired more territory to the southwest was as much bewildered as was the northerner who saw in Polk's madness a course which meant war and commercial disaster.
Polk undoubtedly intended to get as much of Oregon as he could, but that it occupied a secondary place in his thoughts is definitely suggested by an entry in his diary recording an interview with Colonel Benton. Before Congress convened in December, 1845, Buchanan had shown Benton the correspondence between the British and American governments except the instructions to McLane-at Polk's request. Then Benton called to discuss the situation (October 24, 1845). He doubted the completeness of the United States claim when Polk outlined the recommendations which he was going to put into his Annual Message (although he did not tell Benton that these were to be a part of that document). Polk further stated that he inclined to reaffirm Mr. Monroe's doctrine about settlement of the American continents, whereupon Benton said that Great Britain possessed some sort of a title to Fraser's River, the same kind that the United States did to the Columbia.[2]
"The conversation then turned on California," Polk wrote, "on which I remarked that Great Britain had her eye on that country and intended to possess it if she could, but that the
