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it was rejected, in March, 1842. The "People's Constitution," as the other was called, had been adopted by a vote that was afterwards proven fraudulent, but there was now a direct opposition between the laws under the charter and those of the faction that had adopted the Constitution. Under the Constitution Thomas W. Dorr was chosen Governor, and a government organized at Providence, the legal capital being at Newport. President Tyler sent troops to sustain the legal government, and when Dorr took the field with an armed force, his followers mostly left him. Volunteers went against Dorr, and the war ended June 27th. A new Constitution was legally adopted a few months later, which went into operation in May, 1843. Dorr was tried for treason, convicted, and sentenced to imprisonment for life; but after three years he was released, and in 1851 fully pardoned and restored to his privileges as a citizen.

CHAPTER XXII.

WAR WITH MEXICO.

HE choice of President in 1844 turned upon the Texas question, and as the vote resulted in the election of James K. Polk of Tennessee, who favored annexation, that measure continued to be pressed, as we have seen that it had been at the close of the term of President Tyler. The consequences were left to the new President. Polk was of North Carolina descent, one of his ancestors having been a promoter of the "Mecklenburg Resolutions" of 1775. But his family removed to Tennessee in 1806, and he was educated at the University of Nashville. Entering the practice of law, he soon found himself in a political career, and was chosen a member of the State Legislature. Subsequently he was for fifteen years a member of Congress, where he was known as an opponent of the measures of the administration of the younger Adams, and afterwards as a supporter of President Jackson. He was a man of good abilities, and of irreproachable private life. He felt the importance of the crisis at which he entered office, and said in his inaugural address, "Well may the boldest fear, and the wisest tremble, when incurring responsibilities on which may depend our country's peace and prosperity, and in some degree the hopes and happiness

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of the whole human family." After the struggle with Mexico was over, he was able to add, doubtless with pride, "the acquisition of California and New Mexico, the settlement of the Oregon boundary, and the annex ation of Texas, extending to the Rio Grande, are results which, combined, are of greater consequence,

and will add more to the strength and wealth of the nation than any which have preceded them since the adoption of the Constitution."

At the beginning of Polk's administration the boundary between Canada and the United States near

the Pacific Ocean, was unsettled, and at the moment was threatening to bring about war. The United States had long laid claim to the territory in the Oregon region, on the Pacific, as far as fifty-four degrees and forty minutes, and one of the war cries of the Polk campaign had been " fifty-four forty or fight!" The English government had insisted, on the contrary, that the northern line of the United States did not extend beyond the forty-ninth degree. The American claim was based on the explorations of Captain Robert Gray of Boston, who had entered a river flowing into the ocean, and named it after his vessel, "Columbia,” May 11th, 1792; upon the purchase of Louisiana, in 1803, by which all the rights of Spain to the western shores were conveyed; and upon the explorations of Lewis and Clarke soon after that time, by whom the river Columbia had been descended to its mouth. During the administration of Monroe, the United States had proposed a settlement of the dispute, and again in the time of Tyler, and by 1844, the interest in the subject had risen to a remarkable height, and there were those who said that they would rather make the territory the grave of their fellow-citizens and color its soil with their blood, than surrender one inch of it. In his inaugural address, President Polk had stated that he considered our title to the disputed. territory "clear and unquestionable;" the region had been held by joint occupancy, under agreements made in 1818 and 1827, but the number of Americans who had settled there had become so considerable that a decision of the ownership of the soil was imperative. During the discussion of the question, the prospect of war with Mexico became more evident, and the United

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States entered into a treaty by which the claims of the British were recognized, and the forty-ninth degree was made our northern boundary.

War with Mexico was brought on by a dispute. about the boundary of the State of Texas. The Mex

ican people on becoming independent of Spain in 1821, had united under one government the Provinces of Texas and Coahuila, of which the river Rio Grande was the western boundary. When Texas, on the other hand, had, in 1836, obtained her independence