"During all this time, farther to the north, another territory had been coming into being. The “Oregon Trail” had brought many men from the more crowded states of the North-East to find their homes and establish their farms along the undefined Canadian frontier to the Pacific. With the prospect of war in the South for the acquisition of Texas and California, the American Government was not anxious to embark upon a quarrel with Great Britain upon its Northern frontier. There was strong opposition by the Southerners to the acquisition of Oregon, where the Northern pioneers were opposed to slavery. Oregon would be another “free soil state.” Negotiations were opened with Britain, and in spite of electioneering slogans of “Fifty-four-forty or fight” the boundary was settled in June 1846 by peaceful diplomacy along the forty-ninth parallel. This solution owed much to the accommodating nature of the Foreign Secretary in Peel’s Government, Lord Aberdeen. The controversy now died down, and in 1859 the territory of Oregon reached statehood."