On becoming President, Mr. Polk seems not to have felt himself bound by the extreme statement of his party’s position on the Oregon Question. The tone of his inaugural is rather more conservative upon this subject than might have been expected from the circumstances of his election. His position, as stated in this paper, was sufficiently advanced, however, to alarm the British government. In a letter of April 3, addressed to Packenham, British Minister at Washington, Lord Aberdeen said: “The inaugural speech of President Polk has impressed a very serious character on our actual relations with the United States, and the manner in which he has referred to the Oregon Question, so different from the language of his predecessor, leaves little reason to hope for any favorable result of the existing negotiation.” And yet Mr. Polk, shortly after entering upon office, took up the negotiation as he found it then pending, and made an honest effort to effect a settlement upon the compromise line of his predecessors. In explanation of his course, in his annual message to congress, December following, he said: “Though entertaining the settled conviction that the British pretensions of title could not be maintained to any portion of the Oregon Territory, upon any principle of public law recognized by nations, yet, in deference to what had been done by my predecessors, and especially in consideration that propositions of compromise had been thrice made by two preceding administrations to adjust the question on the parallel of the forty-ninth degree of latitude, and in two of them yielding the free navigation of the Columbia, and that the pending negotiations had been commenced on the basis of compromise, I deemed it my duty not abruptly to break it off. In consideration, too, that under the conventions of 1818 and 1827 the citizens and subjects of the two powers held a joint occupancy of the country, I was induced to make another effort to settle this long pending controversy in the spirit of moderation which had given birth to the renewed discussion.”
In the letter above referred to, Lord Aberdeen, notwithstanding his fears, directed Mr. Packenham to submit again to the new Secretary of State the proposal for arbitration which he had submitted to his predecessor, if conditions for such a proposal seemed favorable. On Mr. Packenham’s informing Mr. Buchanan, the new Secretary of State, of his instructions to this effect, Mr. Buchanan expressed the hope that a satisfactory settlement of the question might yet be effected through negotiation. In accordance with this expressed hope, Mr. Buchanan, a few days later, submitted a proposal of the line of the forty-ninth parallel extended through to the Pacific, offering to Great Britain any port or ports on Vancouver’s Island she might choose. This proposal was rejected by Mr. Packenham, without first submitting it to his government, in a paper in which, after declaring the proposal offered less than was offered by the United States in 1826, he concluded: “The undersigned trusts that the American Plenipotentiary will be prepared to offer some other proposal for the settlement of the Oregon Question more consistent with fairness and equity, and with the reasonable expectations of the British government.” This paper was presented on July 29; on August 30 Mr. Buchanan presented to Mr. Packenham a carefully prepared paper, in which, after reviewing the position in which the President found himself in reference to the question on coming into office, and setting forth the motives which had actuated him in making the present proposal in spite of his personal views on the subject, he called the British Minister’s attention to the fact that the President’s proposal had been rejected by him in terms not over courteous, without even a reference of it to his government, and concluded: “Under such circumstances, I am instructed by the President to say that he owes it to his own country, and to a just appreciation of her title to the Oregon Territory, to withdraw this proposition to the British government, which was made under his direction; and it is hereby accordingly withdrawn.”