The Daily Union publishes a marathon congressional speech by Representative Robert Smith of Illinois defending America's absolute claim to the entire Oregon Territory—all 300,000 square miles stretching from the 45th to 54th parallel north. Smith argues with passionate patriotism that the whole territory "belongs to the United States" and must be settled and defended "if need be, at the cannon's mouth." He marshals centuries of historical evidence: Spanish discoveries dating to the 1500s (which America inherited via the 1819 Florida Treaty), Captain Robert Gray's 1792 exploration and naming of the Columbia River, and the 1787 Boston merchant expedition that circumnavigated the globe. Smith methodically dismantles British claims based on Sir Francis Drake's vague 1579 landing, calling them "piratical" and legally baseless. The speech reflects the fevered expansionist moment of 1846—negotiations with Britain over Oregon are collapsing, and war seems possible. The House is debating whether to terminate the 1837 joint occupation agreement and move toward unilateral American control.

This debate marks the climax of "Manifest Destiny"—the doctrine that American expansion across North America was inevitable and righteous. By 1846, Britain and America shared the Oregon Territory under an uneasy 1837 agreement. Smith's speech reveals how deeply Americans believed the territory was theirs by history, settlement right, and national destiny. Within months, this rhetoric would push Congress toward the brink of war with Britain. The dispute would ultimately be settled diplomatically (the 1846 Oregon Treaty split the territory at the 49th parallel), but these speeches show how close the nation came to armed conflict with its closest rival. The debate also exposes the racial underpinnings of expansion—Smith celebrates George Rogers Clark's 1778 seizure of territory "from the monopolizing grasp of Great Britain" without mentioning the Indigenous peoples already inhabiting Oregon.

• Smith credits Captain Robert Gray of Boston with discovering the Columbia River on May 11, 1792—entering it and sailing 15 miles upriver, naming it after his ship. Gray had previously entered the river under different circumstances in 1789, making the American claim to the Columbia rest entirely on this Boston merchant's enterprise, not government action.
• The entire speech relies on dense historical quotations from congressional reports by Mr. Cushing and Mr. Baylies, plus scholarly writings on early Spanish and British navigation—evidence that this territorial dispute was fought as much with historical documents and legal precedent as with geographic claims.
• Smith invokes the 1819 Florida Treaty as the legal foundation for American claims, noting that Spain first discovered the Pacific Northwest coast, and America inherited Spanish title through that agreement—a fascinating example of how territorial claims were traded like property across European empires.
• The speech opens with a telling personal note: Smith says he would 'content myself with simply voting' if he weren't worried about 'some doubt' existing over the matter, revealing that even by late February 1846, consensus on Oregon was fragile enough that a congressman felt compelled to give a lengthy floor speech.
• At the masthead, the paper proudly declares its editorial motto: 'LIBERTY, THE UNION, AND THE CONSTITUTION'—the exact phrase that would soon be tested as the Oregon crisis threatened to split the Union between expansionists and those wary of war with Britain.

• Robert Smith's passionate invocation of Andrew Jackson—'the immortal Jackson'—references a president dead less than two years (Jackson died June 1845). By 1846, 'Jacksonian' expansion had become almost religious orthodoxy among Democrats, and Smith's speech shows how quickly a recently deceased president's ideology could become the baseline for national debate.
• Smith describes George Rogers Clark's 1778 capture of Kaskaskia as freeing the Mississippi Valley from British control 'on the 4th day of July, 1778'—yet that battle actually occurred in February 1779. This error suggests either OCR corruption or genuine historical confusion, but it's revealing that Smith anchors Oregon claims in the Revolutionary War's opening chapters.
• The speech cites Captain Vancouver's 1792-1794 expedition as somehow less legitimate than Gray's because Vancouver came 'posterior to' Spanish navigators—a legal argument that the first European to explore doesn't necessarily hold the claim if another European had discovered it first. This shows how absurdly Eurocentric the territorial debate was: neither power asked the Chinook, Nez Perce, or Salish peoples who actually lived there.
• By February 1846, when this speech was given, Britain and America had already been sharing Oregon peacefully for nine years under the 1837 convention. Yet Smith's rhetoric of 'cannon's mouth' and absolute title suggests that diplomatic compromise was already politically toxic—American public opinion had hardened toward maximalist territorial demands.
• The paper's publication itself reveals institutional politics: The Daily Union was the Democratic Party's official newspaper in Washington (edited by Thomas Ritchie), meaning this expansionist speech received prime front-page real estate as party propaganda. Within months, the Oregon Treaty would force Democrats to accept a compromise they'd spent years denouncing.