Published in 1846 at the height of the border crisis, Albert Gallatin’s The Oregon Question is a masterful diplomatic treatise advocating for a peaceful resolution to the fierce territorial dispute between the United States and Great Britain. Writing in direct opposition to the aggressive "Fifty-four Forty or Fight" expansionists, the elderly statesman systematically reviewed decades of treaties, geographic surveys, and international law to argue for a pragmatic partition of the Pacific Northwest. A keen insight drawn from the text is how Gallatin effectively weaponized his own unparalleled institutional memory—having personally negotiated the original 1818 joint occupation agreement—to expose the legal frailty of America's maximum territorial claims and demonstrate that a compromise at the 49th parallel was the only sound outcome. Ultimately, this rigorous pamphlet served as a crucial voice of reason that helped defuse jingoistic war fever and provided the exact diplomatic blueprint later adopted in the 1846 Oregon Treaty.

75 pages ; 23 cm