But though the American people had the manifest destiny of expanding to the Pacific, the Government was strangely supine. We say "strangely," but it was not so strange after all. Congress was dominated by the South in the interest of slavery, and by the East in the interest of the tariff. Calhoun usually led the South, and he weighed everything in the scales of slavery. Webster governed Eastern sentiment largely, and he spoke for New England manufacturers. It is true that Clay was at all times a power in the councils of the nation, and Clay's constant word was nationalisation and expansion. But even Clay was so committed to the tariff that he did not always appreciate the possibilities of the "West-most West." The Presidents of the period from 1819 to 1846 were from the South or the Atlantic seaboard and not usually inclined to regard the far West with special interest. The American people were away ahead of the American government in the struggle for possession of Oregon. A few of the utterances of leading statesmen of that period as significant of their conception of Oregon, may be given here. Benton, who became later the greatest champion of Oregon, was so imperfectly informed in 1825 that he spoke thus: "The ridge of the Rocky Mountains may be named as a convenient, natural, and everlasting boundary. Along this ridge the western limit of the Republic should be drawn, and the statue of the fabled god Terminus should be erected on its highest peak, never to be thrown down." But Benton improved, for later referring to the Columbia, he said, "That way lies the Orient." Webster said of Oregon: "What do we want of this vast, worthless area, this region of savages and wild beasts, of shifting sands and whirlwinds of dust, of cactus and prairie dogs. To what use could we ever hope to put these great deserts or these great mountain ranges, impenetrable and covered to their base with eternal snow? What can we ever hope to do with the western coast, a coast of three thousand miles, rock-bound, cheerless, and uninviting, and not a harbour on it? What use have we of such a country? Mr. President, I will never vote one cent from the public treasury to place the Pacific Coast one inch nearer Boston than it is now." And that was "God-like Dan!" Dayton expressed himself thus: "God forbid that the time should ever come when a State on the shores of the Pacific, with interests and tendencies of trade all looking toward the Asiatic nations of the East, shall add its jarring claims to our distracted and already overburdened confederacy." The _National Intelligencer_ doubtless expressed a common sentiment in the following: "Of all the countries upon the face of the earth, Oregon is one of the least favoured by nature. It is almost as barren as Sahara and quite as unhealthy as the campagna of Italy."