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Home  »  Respectfully Quoted  »  John Caldwell Calhoun (1782–1850)

Respectfully Quoted: A Dictionary of Quotations. 1989.

 
NUMBER: 1985
AUTHOR: John Caldwell Calhoun (1782–1850)
QUOTATION: Our well-founded claim, grounded on continuity, has greatly strengthened, during the same period, by the rapid advance of our population toward the territory—its great increase, especially in the valley of the Mississippi—as well as the greatly increased facility of passing to the territory by more accessible routes, and the far stronger and rapidly-swelling tide of population that has recently commenced flowing into it.
ATTRIBUTION: JOHN C. CALHOUN, secretary of state, letter to Richard Pakenham, British minister to the United States, September 3, 1844, concerning the boundary dispute between the two countries.—Congressional Globe, December 2, 1845, vol. 15, Appendix, p. 26.

When the dispute was settled in 1846, the United States was given all the land south of the forty-ninth parallel except Vancouver Island. The area included the modern states of Oregon, Idaho, and Washington as well as parts of Montana and Wyoming.

Calhoun served in Congress 1811–1817, 1832–1843, and 1845–1850. He was vice president 1825–1832.
SUBJECTS: Westward movement