astful pretensions
to the line of 54 deg. 40' was a difficult and delicate task. To
accomplish it, Mr. Buchanan had recourse to the original and long
disused habit of asking the Senate's advice in advance of negotiating
the treaty, instead of taking the ordinary but at that time perilous
responsibility of first negotiating the treaty, and then submitting
it to the Senate for approval. As a leading Northern Democrat,
with an established reputation and a promising future, Mr. Buchanan
was instinctively reluctant to take the lead in surrendering the
position which his party had so defiantly maintained during the
canvass for the Presidency in 1844, and which he had, as Secretary
of State, re-affirmed in a diplomatic paper of marked ability.
When the necessity came to retreat, Mr. Buchanan was anxious that
the duty of publicly lowering the colors should not be left to him.
His device, therefore, shifted the burden from his own shoulders,
and placed it on the broader ones of the Senate.

Political management could not have been more clever. It saved
Mr. Buchanan in large degree from the opprobrium visited on so many
leading Democrats for their precipitate retreat on the Oregon
question, and commended him at the same time to a class of Democrats
who had never before been his supporters. General Cass, in order
to save himself as a senator from the responsibility of surrendering
our claim to 54 deg. 40', assumed a very warlike attitude, erroneously
supposing that popularity might be gained by the advocacy of a
rupture with England. Mr. Buchanan was wiser. He held the middle
course. He had ably sustained our claim to the whole of Oregon,
and now, in the interest of peace, gracefully yielded to a compromise
which the Senate, after mature deliberation, had advised. His
course saved the administration, not indeed from a mortifying
position, but from a continually increasing embarrassment which
seemed to force upon the country the cruel alternatives of war or
dishonor.

THE PRESIDENT AND MR. BUCHANAN.

Mr. Polk was, from some cause, incapable of judging Mr. Buchanan
generously. He seems to have regarded his Secretary of State as
always willing to save himself at the expense of others. He did
not fail to perceive that Mr. Buchanan had come out of the Oregon
trouble with more credit, at least with less loss, than any other
man prominently identified with its agitation and settle