This frank, if not cynical, disregard of the claims of American emigrants,—­“wandering and unsettled” people, Morris had called them,—­brought Douglas to his feet.  Memories of a lad who had himself once been a wanderer from the home of his fathers, spurred him to resent this thinly veiled contempt for Western emigrants and the part which they were manfully playing in the development of the West.  The gentleman should say frankly, retorted Douglas, that he is desirous of dissolving the Union.  Consistency should force him to take the ground that our Union must be dissolved and divided up into various, separate republics by the Alleghanies, the Green and the White Mountains.  Besides, to cede the territory of Oregon to its inhabitants would be tantamount to ceding it to Great Britain.  He, for one, would never yield an inch of Oregon either to Great Britain or any other government.  He looked forward to a time when Oregon would become a considerable member of the great American family of States.  Wait for the issue of the negotiations now pending?  When had negotiations not been pending!  Every man in his senses knew that there was no hope of getting the country by negotiation.  He was for erecting a government on this side of the Rockies, extending our settlements under military protection, and then establishing the territorial government of Oregon.  Facilitate the means of communication across the Rocky Mountains, and let the people there know and feel that they are a part of the government of the United States, and under its protection; that was his policy.

As for Great Britain:  she had already run her network of possessions and fortifications around the United States.  She was intriguing for California, and for Texas, and she had her eye on Cuba; she was insidiously trying to check the growth of republican institutions on this continent and to ruin our commerce.  “It therefore becomes us to put this nation in a state of defense; and when we are told that this will lead to war, all I have to say is this, violate no treaty stipulations, nor any principle of the law of nations; preserve the honor and integrity of the country, but, at the same time, assert our right to the last inch, and then, if war comes, let it come.  We may regret the necessity which produced it, but when it does come, I would administer to our citizens Hannibal’s oath of eternal enmity, and not terminate the war until the question was settled forever.  I would blot out the lines on the map which now mark our national boundaries on this continent, and make the area of liberty as broad as the continent itself.  I would not suffer petty rival republics to grow up here, engendering jealousy of each other, and interfering with each other’s domestic affairs, and continually endangering their peace.  I do not wish to go beyond the great ocean—­beyond those boundaries which the God of nature has marked out, I would limit myself only by that boundary which is so clearly defined by nature."[206]