by Mark Stein
Angered by this taunting, New Brunswick bit the bait. “John Baker, the citizen of Maine who was lately seized by the British authorities and carried to Frederickton [New Brunswick], was indicted … on two charges amounting to Treason against the king of England,” Vermont’s Burlington Messenger reported. The acts of treason the newspaper cited consisted of Baker having flown the American flag and “resisted a British officer.”
The U.S. government did not bite the bait. “Some young, discreet lawyer should be sent into New Brunswick to see Baker,” President John Quincy Adams wrote in his diary, aware that there was more to the story than reported in the press. Baker, Adams noted, had been imprisoned “for stopping the British mail from passing over the land on which he was settled, within the disputed territory.”
Baker wasn’t the only American whose behavior was making life difficult for the president. The governor of Maine contributed, too, as Adams confided to this diary:
[April 28, 1827] A letter from Enoch Lincoln, Governor of the State of Maine … is querulous, testy, and suspicious.… The tendency of all this is to multiply the difficulties of the negotiation.
[November 26, 1827] Lincoln’s letters are absurd and provoking; and he is deeply infected with a disease which many of the Governors of the States are apt to catch—wanton assailing of the General Government, overweening zeal for the interests of the State.
When Maine’s governor then activated the state’s militia, Adams finally had no choice but to respond, and dispatched U.S. troops to Maine.
But Adams simultaneously made movements in the other direction as well, using the crisis to justify allowing the king of Holland to arbitrate the dispute. In 1831 King William I specified a compromise line that sought to split the difference between the American and British positions.
Maine responded by changing its strategy. It now maintained its boundary claims were part of a larger national issue: states’ rights.4 By aligning itself with slave states that were asserting states’ rights to resist federal restrictions on slavery, Maine succeeded in getting the Senate to reject the Dutch king’s decision. Consequently, the situation continued to smolder. Seven years later the smolders began to flame. In March 1839 the Boston Atlas reported:
A detachment of 26 [American] men, sent … to break up a horde of trespassers on the Fish River has returned, having succeeded in their object.… [Maine] Gov. Fairfield is urging forward his militia with great zeal. In addition to the 700 enlisted men on the Aroostook, [militia] Gen. Hudson’s brigade of 1000 men at Houlton, and Gen. Batchelder’s brigade of 1000 who are on the march from Augusta, another 1000 are under orders to march.… It is rumored that 5000 British troops … left Frederickton on the 23rd for the disputed territory.
Northern Maine: arbitration decision
Through the skillful intervention of U.S. General Winfield Scott and his British counterpart, no one died in what has come to be known as the Aroostook War (or, more incongruously, the Pork and Beans War). It did, however, result in two indisputable facts. First, a verdict on the boundary could no longer be postponed. Second, getting Maine to agree on a verdict would require a courtroom magician. The United States had one: Daniel Webster.
During the years that Maine’s boundary dispute had been simmering, Webster had been orating his way to an 1836 presidential bid. Americans found him spellbinding. “No man has been found tall enough to overshadow him,” Washington, DC’s National Intelligencer exclaimed. “No man has been able to attract or intercept from him the constant regard of the nation, for he has been so conspicuous, so prominent, that whatever he has done, and whatever he has said, has been watched and understood throughout the borders of the land.”
Webster’s flair for speaking, however, was a component of an exuberant personality that also resulted in rumors of excessive drinking, of large sums of money having been given to him by wealthy merchants and bankers, and of womanizing.5 Running in a field of five presidential candidates, Webster wound up with less than 3 percent of the vote.
In the next presidential election, candidate William Henry Harrison offered candidate Webster the vice presidency, in an effort to consolidate his bid. Webster declined, stating “I do not propose to be buried until I am really dead.”6 Still, rather than fruitlessly oppose Harrison in the 1840 election, Webster accepted the popular general’s alternate offer of secretary of state. (Had Webster accepted the vice presidency, he would have become the president when Harrison died thirty-two days after his inauguration.)
In the wake of the 1839 Aroostook War, Maine’s boundary with Canada became one of Secretary Webster’s top priorities. England, equally anxious to end the dispute, sent Lord Ashburton to Washington as its negotiator. It was as shrewd a choice on England’s part as Webster would prove to be on the American side. Lord Ashburton’s family owned Barings Bank. Webster had performed legal services for Barings. The two men knew each other and liked each other. So informally did they proceed that, when the treaty they created was sent to Senate for ratification, Senator Thomas Hart Benton complained that he had never before seen a treaty accompanied by so little documentation.7 The dearth of supporting documents, however, was not the result of a cozy relationship. Rather, it resulted from the fact that Webster was negotiating primarily with Maine—invisibly.
To tilt public opinion, Webster began with the press. The State Department budget set aside $17,000 for “secret service” regarding the boundary negotiations.8 The money was used to fund a public relations campaign aimed at placing stories in newspapers and other publications.
It worked. In December 1841, as the nation awaited the arrival of Lord Ashburton, the Christian Mirror proposed a possible compromise that was extraordinarily detailed. After laying out what was purportedly its own proposal, the article pointedly concluded, “Is there a citizen of Maine who will not, upon careful meditation, pronounce such a compromise honorable to both parties, advantageous to both parties, and founded in a just regard for the wants and rights of the respective parties?”
The National Intelligencer, whose coverage of political events in Washington was often picked up by newspapers nationwide, published numerous editorials favoring a compromise. These editorials were rumored to have been written by Webster himself, a close friend of one of the paper’s publishers. One such editorial, quite likely written by Webster, appeared in July 1842:
Rumors are afloat concerning the supposed terms of adjustment of the Northeastern Boundary question which we rather think—indeed, we may almost say we know—are calculated to mislead the public mind.… It is not unlikely, we learn, that the line which the Dutch arbiter decided for … will be agreed to. But then Maine gets what the Dutch king did not give her, the navigation of the [St. John] River, and this trebles the value of all her tall pine trees.
The editorial went on to detail other trade-offs, including:
England takes a tract of mountain land, untimbered and of no earthly value but as a boundary, and she relinquishes to the United States Rouse’s Point, the key of Lake Champlain, and a large territory heretofore supposed to belong to New York and Vermont, but which turns out to lie north of the 45th degree of latitude and is therefore a part of Canada.
From the newspaper’s point of view, it got a scoop. Webster got to dish it out.
In time, even Maine’s Augusta Age, while remaining ardently opposed to any boundary compromise, was now conceding, “We do not deny that very many candid and honest men are numbered among the friends of the treaty; men, too, of the highest intelligence, and every way entitled to respect.”
To persuade Maine itself, Webster employed a different approach: cartographic blackmail. Webster learned of two maps on which red lines had been drawn that conformed to the British interpretation of the Treaty of Paris. The lines had purportedly been drawn by Benjamin Franklin and John Jay, two of the key American negotiators. While questions could be raised as to whether Franklin and Jay had personally drawn the red lines, there was no question as to the maps
’ authenticity. One had belonged to Friedrich von Steuben, the Prussian general who had provided invaluable assistance to the Americans in the Revolutionary War; the other was in a French archive, also a nation allied with the Americans in that war.9 Webster secretly sent word of the maps to Maine’s governor, threatening that their existence would be made public if Maine did not accede to a compromise. Soon papers were reporting, along with the New York Spectator, “It is satisfactory to learn that the legislature of Maine is proceeding rapidly and judiciously in measures … that will enable the general Government to effect an arrangement with Lord Ashburton.”
Judiciously, perhaps. Rapidly for sure. Four months after Lord Ashburton arrived in the United States, the Senate ratified the Webster-Ashburton Treaty, establishing the boundaries of Maine at their present-day location.10
Webster went on to make yet another bid for the presidency, this time in 1852. Because of the treaty he had managed to secure, he had reason to hope this election would be the one to put him in the White House. But he now had an additional liability: he was seventy, older than any first-term president ever elected. He lost the Whig nomination to Winfield Scott, who in turn lost in November to Franklin Pierce. By then, however, Webster was dead. In May 1852 he had sustained a head injury in a carriage accident. His recovery was hindered by cirrhosis of the liver.11 Daniel Webster died in late October, nine days before the election.
Upon his death, the American philosopher Ralph Waldo Emerson, visiting the site of one of Webster’s greatest speeches, wrote in his journal:
Last Sunday I was at Plymouth.… I supposed Webster must have passed, as indeed he had died at three in the morning. The sea, the rocks, the woods, gave no sign that America and the world had lost the completest man.
Yet, on another occasion, Emerson had said of Webster:
It was for his defect in moral perceptions, for the inequality of his moral to his intellectual faculty … that hence came the sterility of thought.… It is a curious fact that though he wrote and spoke with an ability that impresses the world, there is not a single remarkable sentence, not a single valuable aphorism which can pass into literature from his writing.12
Both observations were true.
· · · WASHINGTON, IDAHO, MONTANA · · ·
JAMES K. POLK
Fifty-Four Forty or Fight!
On the nomination of Mr. Polk we hardly know what to say. A more ridiculous, contemptible and forlorn candidate was never put forth by any party.… Mr. Polk is sort of a fourth or rather fortieth-rate lawyer and small politician in Tennessee.
—NEW YORK HERALD, MAY 31, 1844
What, if anything, is generally remembered about President James K. Polk is that his campaign slogan was “Fifty-Four Forty or Fight!” In fact, it wasn’t. The issue (involving present-day Oregon, Washington, and British Columbia) was central to his campaign, but there is no evidence that the slogan existed at that time.1
During Polk’s presidency, the American map changed dramatically, its boundary expanding to include Texas, the Oregon Territory, and everything in between, from the Rockies to the Pacific. Many factors contributed to the change, but a key element was that, at critical moments, Polk was a prodigious political poker player.
To follow how Polk’s moves resulted in these gains, we need to know who else was at the table, since each player’s strategy affected the others. Following his election in 1844, Polk found himself in a high-stakes game already in progress that included Mexico, Britain, and, reflecting public opinion, Congress. He also found himself having been dealt cards that were not particularly good.
James K. Polk (1795-1849) (photo credit 23.1)
United States when Polk entered office and when he left
In the case of Mexico, Polk began with a crisis over Texas. Texas had battled itself free from Mexico in 1836, though Mexico had not recognized its independence and therefore never agreed to particular borders. Texas claimed that its border with Mexico was the Rio Grande. But its southern border as a Mexican province had been farther north, at the Nueces River. Four days before Polk’s inauguration, President John Tyler signed a congressional resolution admitting Texas to the Union, “subject to the adjustment by this government of all questions of boundary that may arise with other governments.” Mexico, whose objections went considerably beyond “questions of boundary,” recalled its ambassador during the first week of Polk’s presidency, thus upping the ante on the prospect of war.
War with Mexico was not militarily intimidating, particularly since Mexico was in the midst of one of its many revolutions. War with Britain was another matter. And that possibility was another of the cards Polk had been dealt.
Until the presidential campaign that resulted in Polk’s election, the United States and Britain had agreed to disagree about a boundary dividing the Oregon Country, a region far more vast than the present-day state of Oregon. Under an extension of a ten-year joint occupancy agreement included in the 1818 Anglo-American Convention negotiated by Richard Rush, Britain and United States shared the area bounded on the south by the 42nd parallel (below which, at that time, was Mexico), on the east by the crest of the Rocky Mountains, and on the north at 54°40’ (the border with Russian Alaska that Britain negotiated in 1825). By the 1840s, the region’s population had grown to the point that the United States and Britain picked up where they had left off in seeking to determine a boundary. The Tyler administration proposed an extension of the 49th parallel—the line already in place from Minnesota to the Rockies. But the British sought a boundary farther south at the Columbia River.
Texas: disputed border
Negotiations crept along cordially enough until the Democratic Party seized upon the issue as a possible means of defeating its formidable opponent in the upcoming election, Henry Clay. Clay’s reputation was that of a creative compromiser, an invaluable skill in a nation fundamentally divided over the issue of slavery. The Democrats sought to outfox Clay by including in the party’s platform a totally uncompromising position regarding Oregon. “Resolved, that our title to the whole of the Territory of Oregon is clear and unquestionable,” it asserted, “that no portion of the same ought to be ceded to England or any other power.”
British-American Oregon
For this ploy to be effective, the public had to believe that the entire region was vital to the United States. Consequently, the Democrats beat this drum loudly. Much of the public responded to their alarm. To them, the Democrats had a clear vision regarding Oregon; Henry Clay’s nuanced views were more ponderous. The Democrats won the White House.
But not the Democrat anyone expected. Seven candidates had vied for the party’s nomination on the first ballot. Polk was not among them. Successive balloting failed to give any candidate a majority; none, however, would release his support to any opponent. Ultimately they chose to nominate someone who was no one’s opponent (or hero), and who would publicly promise not to seek reelection if, by some fluke, he won. That candidate was former congressman and former Tennessee governor (twice defeated for reelection) James K. Polk. The fluke was the effectiveness of the Oregon issue.
Polk, for his part, had participated in the ploy and did believe expansion to the Pacific was vital to the nation’s future. The ports provided by the Columbia River and, farther north, Puget Sound, would provide the nation with its only access to the Pacific Ocean (since California was still part of Mexico).
Polk thus took his seat at the table with Mexico threatening to go to war over Texas, and with an American public having provided him the seat through its support for his party’s campaign to acquire the entire region of Oregon, which could mean war with Britain. In addition, he knew that the other players viewed him as a lightweight. The first thing Polk had to do, therefore, was change the way he was perceived. He needed to create the impression that he was somehow in possession of much stronger cards, or that he was wildly unpredictable. Either would do, since either would cause his opponents to take a step back. Polk made that firs
t move in his inaugural address:
The Republic of Texas has made known her desire to come into our Union.… I regard the question of annexation as belonging exclusively to the United States and Texas.… Foreign nations have no right to interfere.… Nor will it become in a less degree my duty to assert and maintain by all constitutional means the right of the United States to that portion of our territory which lies beyond the Rocky Mountains. Our title to the country of the Oregon is “clear and unquestionable.”
That got Britain’s attention, clearly fitting the category of wild and unpredictable. The Liverpool Mercury reported in April 1845:
The Earl of Clarendon drew the attention of their Lordships to the inaugural address of the President of the United States respecting Texas and the Oregon territory, the language of which he described as characterized by a studied neglect of that courtesy and deference which governments were wont to observe when treating upon international affairs, and as leading to the inference that … the only basis of negotiation was unconditional surrender by England of all that was claimed by America.
In achieving his initial objective with Britain, Polk limited his next move in terms of public opinion in the United States. “There has been an important debate in the British Parliament on the Oregon, disclosing the view of England on that subject,” the New York Herald observed in April 1845. “We may now expect a serious difficulty between England and America. We do not see what is to prevent it. America has assumed her position, and England has now taken hers. Neither, therefore, can recede an inch.”
Britain indeed did not recede but rather, turning to Mexico, raised the stakes by urging Mexico to go to war with the United States over Texas. “There are many considerations that militate in favour of the Mexicans,” the London Times editorialized that same week. “Can anything exceed the dissatisfaction of the states of New England, or New York, or of Ohio, at having to meet the calls of war … for the encouragement of slavery?… The military establishment of the United States is very well adapted to … repel a foreign enemy.… But offensive and defensive war are two different things.”
