Meanwhile, another issue had been prepar ing. For many years the vast Oregon region had been held jointly by Great Britain and the United States. This territory extended from northern Texas to the 54th parallel of north latitude. Both England and the United States had claims on Oregon, and these clainis had been mutually recognized, but the people of the West, always ready for growth and expansion and not given to quibbling over constitutional limitations, were rapidly coming to demand the whole of Oregon. Calhoun saw the importance of the Oregon question; he recommended that the Democratic party couple it with the Texas question, though he did not favor the extreme demands of the Westerners. The Southern Democrats seized the opportunity, and co-operat ing with the expansionists of the West, they began a campaign for the control of the Demo cratic national convention, which was to meet in Baltimore. The editor of the Richmond Enquirer was a typical leader of this move ment. A letter of ex-President Jackson, written a year before, was now published in the En quirer, bearing date of 1844. The Nestor of the party urged annexation. When the con vention met it set aside at once Jackson's favorite, and the ablest Northern candidate, Van Buren, and nominated James K. Polk, an avowed °Texas man .° The platform demanded the immediate °re-annexation of Texas and the re-occupation of Oregon.° °Fifty-four or fight° became the party cry of the West, while the leaders of the South boldly threatened secession in case Texas was not annexed. Meanwhile, the Senate rejected the Texas treaty by a majority of 35 to 16, and the leaders of the Whig party, aided by the dissatisfied followers of Van Buren, exerted their influence to the utmost to get the country to sustain the Senate majority. They failed by a narrow margin and Polk became the next President. Tyler and Calhoun, falling back on a popular Demo cratic doctrine, considered themselves and Congress °instructed° by the country to proceed with their work. Since the Senate held out stubbornly against them they resorted to the plan of accepting Texas by joint resolu tion, a method hardly justified by the Con stitution. This required a majority only of both Houses, while the passage of a treaty in regular form required two-thirds. The joint resolution passed, and on 3 March 1845 an nexation was complete, so far as the United States was concerned. Texas approved the
treaty without questioning its legality in June 1845, and in July of the same year the people of the Lone Star State, in convention assembled, ratified the work of their representatives by an almost unanimous consent.
Texas came into the Union with a quarrel on its hands: Both the Mexican and Texas governments claimed the country lying between the Nueces and the Rio Grande. This -and all other subjects of dispute between these gov ernments seemed about to be amicably arranged in the early months of 1845, on condition, how ever, that Texas should not permit annexation to the United States. Mexico had repeatedly declared that annexation would be regarded as a declaration of war. When the joint resolu tion passed Congress the Mexican Minister In Washington asked for his passports and the American representative in Mexico was un ceremoniously dismissed. The United States had already sent troops into the disputed country; a year later they advanced under General Taylor to the Rio Grande and trained their guns on the Mexican town of Matamoras. War followed. Texas had been obtained at the behest of a Southern party and for the purpose of a make-weight against the expansion of the free States toward the Northwest. The leaders of Texas had come into the Union to safeguard slavery against the free labor and abolitionist sentiment of the great outside world. This had not been done without the promise of the "re-occupation" of Oregon, which gained the votes of the West and North. But the able, aggressive and uncompromising policy of Calhoun and his section had aroused the North; the abolitionists became politically im portant, and the issue which followed ter minated in civil war. See TEXAS; MEXICAN WAR.
Bancroft, H. H., 'Mexican States and Texas' (San Francisco 1885); Calhoun, 'Collected Works' (6 vols., 1853-55); id.,
(1900) ; Garrison, P., (Texas; A Contest of Civilizations,' in (Ameri can Commonwealth Series' (Boston 1903); McLaughlin, A. C., 'Life of Cass' (1891) •, McMaster, J. B.,
of the United States' (1892) ; Raines, C. W.,