| "The
only way to treat John Bull is to look him straight in the eye" James K. Polk. |
Dominic
Vautier
9/17/18
James K. Polk was a strong president. Arguably he was the strongest president before Lincoln and he was probably the only president to work himself to death (Borneman, 354). His accomplishments were lost for a long time in the fog of history or most likely distorted by the many tumultuous years that were soon to follow him (Borneman, 345), but it has to be admitted that he single-handedly engineered a magnificent growth spurt for the country, adding much real estate to America, 34 percent in fact, and this real estate today contains about half of the population and more than half it’s wealth, no small accomplishment for a man whom history chose to forget.
Polk was a devoted disciple of Andrew Jackson and shared Jackson’s lifelong dislike for the “British Empire” and its voracious desire to gobble up any and all lands it could first colonize. Jackson had for a long time cultivated a plan to wrest the Oregon Territory away from "evil" British control but had failed to do so during his time as president. So it was all up to his favorite son.
For well over 100 years after the colonies became independent, America had a deep seeded distrust of the British Empire and its philosophy of expansionism. This distrust lasted well into the Grant Administration when the San Juan Islands dispute called the “pig war” was finally settled through arbitration in late 1872, the year that brought to a final close so many northern border disputes between the two countries. But the big dispute had been already settled by that time.
At the beginning of the 1812 war our navy consisted of just 6 frigates plus another dozen smaller gunboats. Six frigates! That was it. Great Britton had around 1000 ships including many men-o-war and frigates (Toll, 332). They also had a fine army of well over 200,000 battle hardened soldiers fresh from the fields of Napoleonic France. America had no army. The 1812 war against England was insane, a disaster, a total failure of our leaders to negotiate a reasonable settlement over impressment, and still the US was able to come out of it miraculously without losing land, status quo ante bellum, even though the British army practically walked all over our country.
By 1844 much had changed with our navy. England was required to spread its enormous fleet of ships to many distant places; India, South Africa, Australia, Egypt, and especially the many islands of the south pacific. It could little afford to try to protect a small and apparently unimportant piece of real estate tucked away in forests and backwashes and small treacherous islands in the northwest. By the 1840s the US had built up a good navy and Britain knew it. This was soon to be demonstrated with our war with Mexico. We were able to blockade Mexican ports, capture or burn the Mexican fleet in the Gulf of California and capture all major cities in Baja California region. The Navy successfully was able to capture large areas of California with land operations coordinated with the local militia. The navy also landed over 12,000 army troops and equipment in one day at Veracruz, Mexico for the assault on Mexico City (Borneman, 218). Even though this naval activity occurred after the Oregon Territory treaty had been signed, none of this went without notice by the English.
The convention of 1818 provided joint occupation of the Oregon Territory by the two dominant powers and was extended in 1827 indefinitely. The new extension allowed each party one year if it wished to terminate the agreement. Richard Pakenham, British ambassador to America in 1844 had again offered its previous oft repeated plan; the extension of the 49th parallel to the Columbia River. From there the border was to follow the Columbia. This had been the strongly held British position for many years from previous negotiations beginning with John Quincy Adams. This position had never changed.
Calhoun and many others in the senate had insisted that the 49th parallel be simply extended, giving America the badly needed safe harbor in the smaller Puget Sound area. Polk had a plan on how to force the British to come to a favorable settlement, that is, to extend the 49th parallel and surrender Puget Sound with all the excellent land of Cascadia including the rich Puyallup valley, the fertile Nisqually, the Kent region and the many fine harbors of the sound. The first thing Polk did early in 1846 was get congress to terminate the joint occupancy agreement (Borneman, 218). This would force the British hand. They could now negotiate or fight and the British were not ready to fight at all.
Meanwhile, early that year, mad sentiment was kicking up in Washington. The 54 40 people were on a rampage demanding America take possession of the whole of the Oregon territory. Washington was truly the scene of a huge media blitz. 54 40 signs were everywhere; windows, doors, streets. Finally on April the notice of termination passed the senate and became law. Our position was clear. We wanted all of Oregon. Or at least the British thought so. The bluff was on.
Lord Aberdeen, British foreign secretary immediately advised Packenham to make a counter offer and try to rescue at least the upper part of the Oregon Territory. He had been advised by several that the dispute was not worth the possible consequences. The offer was simply to extend the 49th parallel to the coast. In this way the British could save face and claim that they had been able to keep the larger part of the north pacific coast and the entire straight of Georgia while all the Americans got from the deal was a measly bunch of rock infested islands south of the Admiralty Inlet along with the remnants of HBC which was a dying company by that time.
Polk also had a way to appease the 54 40 people as well by blaming the senate if they approved the latest British compromise offer. They did so with some slight modifications so in June, 1846 Washington and Oregon territories finally became part of the United States and Puget Sound became a key part.
