The country at this time was in a condition of feverish irritation; and the war spirit was only too easily aroused. In 1847, it threatened to burst into flame over a territorial dispute with Great Britain. America claimed the latitude of 54.40 as the northern boundary of Oregon, and for awhile, under the jingo President, the country rang with the insane alliterative cry of "fifty-four forty or fight".[90] A spirited foreign policy is the universal panacea of the charlatan; it is his receipt for every internal disorder, and it was continually being prescribed to America during the next fifteen years. This was indeed the charlatan's hour, when the official policy of the dominant Democratic party oscillated between jingoism and what was afterwards known throughout America as "squatter sovereignty". It was the repudiation of the Wilmot proviso, and the adoption of the new doctrine which Douglas afterwards made his own, that drove Whitman into revolt. He was comfortably seated in his editorial chair, where he might have remained for years had his Radical convictions permitted. Though the owners of the _Eagle_ were orthodox party men, the editor's anti-slavery attitude was not concealed,[91] and indeed could not be. Their criticism of his editorials caused him immediately to throw up his post. He would not compromise on the question, and he would not brook interference. It was January, 1848, when he left the _Eagle_,[92] and a few weeks later he was making his way south to New Orleans. * * * * * Whitman had joined the "Barnburners" or Van Buren men of New York State, who now became Free-soil Democrats, making the Wilmot proviso their platform,[93] in opposition to the "Hunkers," who denounced it. As to the Whigs, they burked the whole matter, and contrived in their nominating convention to silence the question by shouting. The Democratic party found its real platform in the nostrum of "squatter sovereignty," the specious doctrine that in each new State the citizens should themselves decide upon their attitude towards slavery, deciding for or against it when drawing up a Constitution. To this, Lewis Cass, its candidate for the Presidency, subscribed. But the "Barnburners" put forward Van Buren, a former President, and a Democrat of the school of Jefferson and Jackson, who was also supported by the "anti-slavery" party. His policy was to confine slavery within its actual limits: "no more Slave states, no more slave territory". As a consequence of the Democratic split in the Empire State, the thirty-six electoral votes of New York were given to the Whig candidate, General Taylor, the Mexican conqueror, and he became the next President. A whole-hearted Free-soil Democrat, Whitman's position as editor of an orthodox party journal had naturally become untenable. FOOTNOTES: [55] MSS. Harned. [56] _Comp. Prose_, 187. [57] _Whit. Fellowship_, '94 (Traubel). [58] MSS. Harned. [59] _Comp. Prose_, 7-9.