"Fifty-four Forty or Fight!"
Thursday, September 3, 2020
With a few exceptions, we tend to think of today's national boundaries as pretty well fixed. It is uncommon to see disagreements on the scale of the Oregon boundary dispute of the 19th century.
The modern US state of Oregon was once part of a much larger area called the "Oregon Country" by the US, and the "Columbia District" by the British. It stretched from the Rocky Mountains to the Pacific Ocean, and included part of what is now the Canadian province of British Columbia; all of the US states of Oregon, Washington, and Idaho; and parts of the states of Montana and Wyoming.
Spain laid claim to parts of it from the south, and the Russians from the north. Little by little, these disputes were settled by treaties.
This left a stand-off between the U.S. and Great Britain. At the time, the northern border of Mexico (successor to Spain in California after 1834) lay at the 42nd parallel north, which is still the border between the states of California and Oregon. The northern border of the disputed area was at 50 degrees and 40 minutes, now the southernmost-point of continental Alaska; remember those numbers.
In 1844 Democrat James K. Polk was running for president of the US. Aside from the major issues, Polk also promoted "Manifest Destiny," the unprovable claim that God wanted the US to occupy the continent from the Atlantic to the Pacific; his platform included annexing all of the Oregon Country into the United States.
Facing British opposition as the new President, Polk suggested a compromise: that the US and the UK split the territory at the 49th parallel, which today is the US/Canadian border. The British countered that the border should be at the Columbia River, today the border between the states of Oregon and Washington. This caused the "All Oregon" faction to urge Polk to insist on all of the territory again, up to that line of "50 degrees and 40 minutes," and they coined a slogan: "Fifty-four Forty or Fight!"
With the war with Mexico looming, Polk felt that the option to "fight" was not attractive; the dispute ended with the 1846 Oregon Treaty, fixing the border at Polk's preferred location, the 49th parallel.