With somewhat staggering frankness, Douglas laid bare his inmost motive for unflinching opposition to Great Britain.  The value of Oregon was not to be measured by the extent of its seacoast nor by the quality of its soil.  “The great point at issue between us and Great Britain is for the freedom of the Pacific Ocean, for the trade of China and Japan, of the East Indies, and for the maritime ascendency on all these waters.”  Oregon held a strategic position on the Pacific, controlling the overland route between the Atlantic and the Orient.  If this country were yielded to Great Britain—­“this power which holds control over all the balance of the globe,”—­it would make her maritime ascendency complete.[214]

Stripped of its rhetorical garb, Douglas’s speech of January 27, 1846, must be acknowledged to have a substratum of good sense and the elements of a true prophecy.  When it is recalled that recent developments in the Orient have indeed made the mastery of the Pacific one of the momentous questions of the immediate future, that the United States did not then possess either California or Alaska, and that Oregon included the only available harbors on the coast,—­the pleas of Douglas, which rang false in the ears of his own generation, sound prophetic in ours.  Yet all that he said was vitiated by a fallacy which a glance at a map of the Northwest will expose.  The line of 49 deg. eventually gave to the United States Puget Sound with its ample harbors.

Perhaps it was the same uncompromising spirit that prompted Douglas’s constituents in far away Illinois to seize the moment to endorse his course in Congress.  Early in January, nineteen delegates, defying the inclemency of the season, met in convention at Rushville, and renominated Douglas for Congress by acclamation.[215] History maintains an impenetrable silence regarding these faithful nineteen; it is enough to know that Douglas had no opposition to encounter in his own bailiwick.

When the joint resolution to terminate the treaty of occupation came to a vote, the intransigeants endeavored to substitute a declaration to the effect that Oregon was no longer a subject for negotiation or compromise.  It was a silly proposition, in view of the circumstances, yet it mustered ten supporters.  Among those who passed between the tellers, with cries of “54 deg. 40’ forever,” amid the laughter of the House, were Stephen A. Douglas and four of his Illinois colleagues.[216] Against the substitute, one hundred and forty-six votes were recorded,—­an emphatic rebuke, if only the ten had chosen so to regard it.

While the House resolution was under consideration in the Senate, it was noised abroad that President Polk still considered himself free to compromise with Great Britain on the line of 49 deg..  Consternation fell upon the Ultras.  In the words of Senator Hannegan, they had believed the President committed to 54 deg. 40’ in as strong language as that which makes up the Holy Book.  As rumor passed