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LESTER BURRELL SHIPPER
pare for possible hostilities with Great Britain. Congress, according to testimony even of southerners who were not unwilling to see the addition of territory which might presumably
be to their benefit, were stampeded into a declaration of war. That Polk intended to force an issue with Mexico in order to obtain California and New Mexico providing they could not be obtained in any other way has been brought out many times; that he never intended to allow the Oregon Question to jeopardize the acquisition of the southern territory seems
He intended, no doubt, to get as much of Oregon and was not willing to have the issue brought bluntly before the British government to stir that body into But before all he was thinking of the Mexican terriaction. and played the British concern over Oregon along with tory equally clear. as possible
war spirit in his own country to make sure of that. No doubt his course was tinged with opportunism, but the essenFrom his own record it is tial game seems to have been this.
the
he expected a peaceful solution of the with Great Britain, a solution which would never controversy have attained had he continued to insist upon all of Oregon. sufficiently clear that
Furthermore he was probably aware that his real sentiments on the tariff issue fell in with the desires of the English people and he may have counted on their willingness to relax their pretensions in Oregon rather than to force an issue and bring a high-protectionist party into power. Some time after the treaty was signed and Congress had adjourned there came an incident which emphasizes the belief that Polk intended to maintain that his course throughout
been marked with consistency.
London in the summer of 1846, the Chamber of Commerce of
When McLane
had
returned from
answer to an address from York, he made certain taken were some of the Whig papers as which statements by an admission that the President's Annual Message and his instructions to McLane were inconsistent. Polk accepted Mcin
New
Lane's explanation that, while the President was assured of the soundness of the title to 54 40' as an abstract question, nevertheless McLane was instructed to secure an adjustment on
