Fifty-four or Fight!

Vincent J. Curtis

15 May 25

“..somebody drew that line many years ago, like a ruler, right across the top of the country..” observed President Donald Trump in his first Oval Office meeting with Prime Minster Mark Carney. That line, sometimes called the 49^th parallel, was drawn by his predecessors, in 1818 and 1846.

The Treaty of 1818, between the United States and Great Britain, settled matters, including boundary disputes, that arose from the War of 1812.  The 49^th parallel was agreed as the boundary from Lake of the Woods to the Rocky Mountains.  West of that terminus lay the Pacific North West, and no final resolution was reached concerning that region.

Called the Oregon Country by the Americans, and the Columbia District by the British (whence British Columbia), the Pacific North West, which includes the Columbia and the Snake Rivers, may be defined as that part of North America bounded by the Pacific Ocean on the West, the 42ºN latitude on the south; the continental divide on the east, and 54º40’N latitude on the north; the last being the southern boundary of Russian America.  Louisiana Territory, purchased by the United States from France in 1803, lay on the east side of the continental divide.

Captain George Vancouver, on behalf of Great Britain, discovered and mapped its sea coast; and Alexander Mackenzie, trekking from Canada by land, reached the Pacific coast in 1792.  For America, Lewis and Clark reached the mouth of the Columbia River in 1805.  In these early days, the fur trade was the main economic reason for controlling the area.  Starting in 1807, explorer David Thompson began developing the region around the Columbia River on behalf of the Montreal-based North West Company, then a competitor to the Hudson’s Bay Company.  In 1811, at the junction of the Snake and Columbia Rivers, Thompson formally claimed the land on behalf of Great Britain, the company erecting Fort Nez Percés on the site.  The American Pacific Fur Company set up a trading post at the mouth of the Columbia in 1811, but the company collapsed during the War of 1812, and its assets fell into the possession of the NWC.

Americans were as bad at geography then as they are now; many believed that the Louisiana Territory extended up to Russian America; and in 1818 American negotiators offered to saw-off the disputed territory along the 49^th parallel, a westward continuation of the boundary from the Rocky Mountains.  The British counter-offered the Columbia River as a boundary, as this would protect the trade of the NWC, and later the HBC. No resolution was reached, and the Treaty of 1818 established a joint occupation of the region for a period of ten years.  Discussions continued, but the Americans could not accept the Columbia River boundary, for they would be left with no deep-water port on the Pacific coast.  (San Francisco Bay didn’t fall into their possession until the Mexican-American War of 1846) Lacking resolution on the boundary dispute, the joint occupation agreement was renewed.  It is noteworthy that in this period the only continuous white presence in the region were the employees of the HBC. At its height around 1840, 34 outposts, 24 ports, six ships, and 600 employees were managed out of Fort Vancouver (modern day Vancouver, WA), and by 1846, only perhaps 3,000 white people lived in the disputed area.

Facts on the ground began to change in the 1830s when Americans began to settle in the Willamette Valley, and American presence rapidly expanded after the opening of the Oregon Trail in 1843.

By 1844, the annexation of the Republic of Texas was a central issue of the presidential election of that year. Texas was a breakaway province of Mexico; her annexation would inevitably lead to war; further complicating matters was that Texas would enter the Union as a slave state, upsetting the balance in the U.S. Senate, and spreading slavery outside the South.  The Oregon Country thus represented to the Democrats the prospect of balancing future free states in the new territory against Texas, as well as appeal to American expansionist sentiment. The danger was having to fight two wars against two enemies simultaneously.  Fighting a war with Great Britain over Oregon would see, as in 1814, the Royal Navy bombarding the major U.S. cities that lay on the eastern seaboard, which included Boston, New York, Philadelphia, Baltimore, Washington, and Charleston.  Hence, the pledge to “Fifty-four Forty or Fight” was an audacious move by James K. Polk and the Democratic party in the election of 1844, though the slogan itself was actually coined by the Democrat press.  Polk raised tensions further in his 1845 State of the Union address, declaring that that U.S. title to the entire Pacific North West was “clear and unquestionable,” and he later recommended giving one year’s notice of the termination of the joint occupation agreement. Newspapers urged that it was “by right of the manifest destiny of the United States to overspread and to possess the whole of the continent which Providence has given us.”

The British, however, were equally adept at rattling the sabre; but were also aware of the low commercial value of the Columbia District to Great Britain as compared to trade and good relations with the U.S.  Both sides were therefore privately inclined to compromise, and it was President Polk who re-offered the proposal first made by his predecessor, President John Tyler, for the 49^th parallel as the boundary, sweetened by ceding the entirety of Vancouver Island to Britain.  Lord Aberdeen, who sought good relations with the United States, agreed, and the matter was settled by the Oregon Treaty, signed on June 15, 1846.  The Mexican-American War broke out on April 26, 1846.

And that’s why the 49^th parallel forms the boundary between Canada and the United States today: by the proposals and agreements of successive U.S. administrations, from James Monroe to James K. Polk.

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