Efforts were then begun to persuade Congress to extend the jurisdiction of the United States over Oregon, order the occupation of the country, and end the old agreement with Great Britain.  Petitions were sent (1838-1840), reports were made, bills were introduced; but Congress stood firmly by the agreement, and would not take any steps toward the occupation of Oregon.  In 1842, Elijah White, a former missionary, came to Washington and so impressed the authorities with the importance of settling Oregon that he was appointed Indian Agent for that country, and told to take back with him as many settlers as he could.  Returning to Missouri, he soon gathered a band of 112 persons and with these, the largest number of settlers that had yet started for Oregon, he set off across the plains in the spring of 1842.  At the next session of Congress (1842-1843) another effort was made to provide for the occupation of Oregon at least as far north as 49 deg., and a bill for that purpose passed the Senate.

Meanwhile a rage for emigration to Oregon broke out in the West, and in the early summer of 1843, nearly a thousand persons, with a long train of wagons, moved out of Westport, Missouri, and started northwestward over the plains.  Like the emigrants of 1842, they succeeded in reaching Oregon, though they encountered many hardships.

%360.  “Fifty-Four Forty or Fight."%—­So much attention was thus attracted to Oregon, in 1843, that the people by 1844 began to demand a settlement of the boundary and an end of joint occupation.  The Democrats therefore gladly took up the Oregon matter.  Their plan to reannex Texas, which was slave soil, could, they thought, be offset by a declaration in favor of acquiring all Oregon, which was free soil.  The Democratic platform for 1844, therefore, declared that “our title to the whole of Oregon is clear; that no portion of the same ought to be ceded to England or any other power; and that the reoccupation of Oregon and the reannexation of Texas” were great American measures, which the people were urged to support.  The people thought they were great American measures, and with the popular cries of “The reannexation of Texas,” “Texas or disunion,” “The whole of Oregon or none,” “Fifty-four forty or fight,” the Democrats entered the campaign and won it, electing James K. Polk and George M. Dallas.

The Whigs were afraid to declare for or against the annexation, so they said nothing about it in their platform, and nominated Henry Clay of Kentucky and Theodore Frelinghuysen of New Jersey.  The real question of the campaign was of course the annexation of Texas, and though the platform was silent on that subject their leader spoke out.  In a public letter which appeared in a newspaper and was copied all over the Union, Clay said that he believed slavery was doomed to end at no far away day; that the admission of Texas could neither hasten nor put off the arrival of that day, and that he “should be glad to see” Texas annexed if it could be done “without dishonor, without war, and with the common consent of the Union and upon just and fair terms.”