The second period of the discussion of the Oregon Question in congress began late in the year 1837, near the close of the first session of the twenty-fifth congress. It was opened a few days before adjournment by each house calling upon the President “to furnish at an early period of the next session any correspondence that may have taken place between the government and foreign powers in relation to our territory west of the Rocky Mountains.” To both these resolutions the President, promptly on the opening of the next congress, replied that no correspondence whatever had passed between the government of the United States and any other government in relation to that subject since the renewal in 1827 of the convention of joint occupancy. It thus appeared that while the subject had been in abeyance in congress it had been equally so in the executive department of the government, and it was not destined to reappear in this department for a further period of more than four years. Meanwhile the subject in one form or another was seldom absent for long at a time from the discussions of congress. This was especially true of the senate, where, in the person of Dr. Lewis F. Linn, senator from Missouri, the title of the United States to Oregon and the cause of the citizens of the United States who had settled there found an earnest advocate and a zealous and indefatigable friend. Measures were introduced in both houses of congress, by Doctor Linn in the senate, and by Mr. Cushing in the house, looking to the occupation and settlement of Oregon. These first measures elicited but little debate, and failed of reaching action. They did, however, by bringing out reports from the executive and committees, get before congress and the country a large amount of information on the subject. In the house, after a year of unavailing effort to reach action on the measures introduced, the subject remained again in abeyance for two or three years. In the senate, however, chiefly through the active interest of Doctor Linn, new measures were introduced each session which, though failing in every case of reaching the point of action, gained more and more the ear of the senate and a wider attention in the country. In each of the measures as thus far proposed there was some vitiating clause or provision which to the calmer and clearer minds in the senate made it inconsistent with the terms of the existing convention. It was open to congress to abrogate that convention by giving due notice to Great Britain, and so to open the way for a larger action on the part of the government, and resolutions to this effect were introduced, but neither congress nor the country as yet was ready for this step. Not yet clear as to what action should next be adopted, congress was not prepared to remove this bar to hasty or ill-advised measures. Thus far the convention had certainly been in the interests of peace, and had not seriously interfered with the progress of settlement.