The influx of Americans into Oregon in the 1840s ignited a dispute between Britain and the United States that, in its more intemperate phrases , was accompanied by shrill demands in both countries for war. The argument originated in the fact that the boundaries of Oregon had never been clearly fixed. The name vaguely embraced the territory west of the Rockies between the northern boundary of Mexican-held California and the southern edge of Russian-held Alaska, which at the time extended south to parallel 54 40’ . In 1818when America proposed a boundary at the 49th parallel-an extension of the border with Canada that already existed east of the Rockies-and the British suggested a line farther south, statesmen of both nations avoided the resulting impasse by agreeing to accept temporary “joint occupancy.”
But by the early 1840s , the issue could no longer be avoided: Oregon fever and Manifest Destiny had become potent political forces. Though many eastern Americans considered Oregon country too remote to become excited about, demands for its occupation were shouted with almost religious fervor. Senator Thomas Hart Benton , for one , urged Congress to muster “ thirty or forty thousand American rifles beyond the Rocky Mountains that will be our effective negotiators. ‘ The Democratic party made “ 54 40’ or fight” an issue of the 1844 Presidential election and just managed to install James K. Polk, an ardent expansionist , in the White House. But despite their seeming intransigence, neither Polk nor the British government wanted to fight. And just about the time that Polk learned that the land lying north of the 49th parallel was useless for agriculture, the British decided the American market for goods was worth far more than Oregon’s fast-dying fur trade. So they quietly settled for the 49th parallel , the boundary that the United States had proposed in the first place.
đang được dịch, vui lòng đợi..