The United States and Great Britain established in 1818 joint claim over the Oregon Territory - the region north of Spanish controlled Upper California up to the southern boundary of Russia's Alaska Territory at North latitude 54°40'. By the late 1830's this arrangement was beginning to fall apart. In the 1840's the expansionist Democrats, including their 1844 presidential candidate, James Polk, claimed the entire region for the United States. Their expansionist desires were expressed by Polk's famous campaign slogan, "Fifty-four Forty or Fight!" The slogan also became a rally cry for Americans desiring to settle the territory. Following Polk's election, the dispute was resolved by the 1846 Treaty of Oregon, which struck a compromise that fixed the U.S./Canadian boundary at 49º North.

This handsome and finely engraved map covers the United States with most of Mexico and a bit of Canada. The United States are shown with their claims into British Columbia (Territoire Oregon) and Mexico still controls all of Texas and the Southwest, most of which is blank with only conjectural topography shown. The West also features some fictitious rivers, including the S. Buenaventura, flowing from the Rockies into Salt Lake, and then conjecturally through the Pay Inconnu (unknown land) to the Pacific. Two dotted lines trace the course of two rivers from L. Timpanagos to the Pacific. Farther south the Rio de la Pyramyde is suggested near the short Rio de los Martires, both of which appear to go nowhere. The western territories include North West Territory (encompassing present-day Wisconsin, Minnesota and the Upper Peninsula of Michigan), and the large Arkansas Territory.

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Condition: A

Original outline color and nice impression. There are faint damp stains in the wide original margins