The treaty also contained provision for the mutual extradition of criminals guilty of specified crimes, but these did not include embezzlement, and "gone to Canada" was for years the epitaph of many a dishonest American who had been found out.
The friendly spirit in which Webster and Ashburton had carried on their negotiations inaugurated a period of reasonable amity between their two nations.

The United States annexed Texas without serious protest; in spite of the clamor for "fifty-four forty or fight," Oregon was divided peacefully; and England did not take advantage of the war with Mexico.
Each of these events, however, added to American territory, and these additions gave prominence to a new and vexing problem.

The United States was now planted solidly upon the Pacific, and its borders were practically those to which Adams had looked forward.

Natural and unified as this area looks upon the map and actually is today, in 1850 the extent of territorial expansion had overreached the means of transportation.

The Great Plains, then regarded as the Great American Desert, and the Rockies presented impossible barriers to all but adventurous individuals.