13.6 Boundary Disputes and Manifest Destiny
Beginning in the early 1840s, “Oregon Fever” gripped the United States. Oregon was touted as a land of pleasant climates and fertile soil. Several thousand American settlers began a westward migration over the Oregon Trail. By the mid-1840s, some 5,000 Americans had populated the southern half of the Columbia Department, thus strengthening the U.S. claim to Oregon, and in 1843 the Americans declared a provisional government. The HBC’s James Douglas wrote to his superiors that “An American population will never willingly submit to British domination.”[1] Britain’s tenuous hold on the whole region was in danger of slipping away. Oregon Fever, moreover, fuelled the idea of Manifest Destiny in America, popularizing the the notion that it was God’s will that the republic should control the whole of the continent.
Fifty-Four Forty
American territorial expansion became one of the paramount issues of the U.S. election of 1844. Democrat James K. Polk, a protege of the expansionist Andrew Jackson (president, 1829-37), won office in an election that revolved largely around the issues of the possible annexation of Texas and acquiring some or all of the HBC-administered Columbia Department, which the Americans referred to as the Oregon Territory. Polk won the election by a narrow majority, but the Democrats took both houses of Congress, causing many to read the result as a mandate for expansionism.
Many Americans, Polk among them, set their sights on taking the Mexican provinces of New Mexico and California in addition to the Oregon Territory, which at that stage constituted most of the territory between California and the Alaska panhandle — that is, almost all of what is now British Columbia. Polk’s priority, however, was the Mexican territories and so he needed to quickly settle with the British on the issue of the Columbia Department in order to have the military strength for a war against Mexico. The process was further complicated by signs that Britain was considering an alliance with the Mexicans in Texas, so getting the British out of the picture was a priority.
On taking office, Polk initiated talks with Britain. The president quickly found himself a prisoner of his own expansionist rhetoric: public opinion over the Oregon Territory had grown increasingly heated with expansionists demanding nothing less than the whole package and threatening war in the far northwest in order to achieve their ends. The slogan Fifty-Four Forty or Fight! was coined at this time, referring to the northernmost latitude of the territory that America might claim, some 30 kilometres north of present-day Prince Rupert.
49th Parallel
British enthusiasm for war in the Pacific Northwest was understandably tepid. In 1845 and 1846 the fur trade was becoming less profitable and alternative economic engines were slow to emerge. Few politicians in Britain were prepared to go to bat for the monopolistic HBC, which was widely regarded as a blo