The contracting parties rested content with the power to join issue and try titles at any time by simply giving the required notice.
The subject was also overshadowed by more urgent disputes between Great Britain and the United States, especially that relating to the North-eastern boundary, and that touching the suppression of the African slave-trade.

The latter involved the old question of the right of search.

The two governments came to an agreement on these differences in 1842 by the negotiation of the convention known as the Ashburton Treaty.

In transmitting the treaty to Congress, President Tyler made, for the first time since the agreement for a joint occupancy was renewed in 1827, a specific reference to the Oregon question.

He informed Congress, that the territory of the United States commonly called the Oregon country was beginning to attract the attention of our fellow-citizens, and that "the tide of our population, having reclaimed from the wilderness the more contiguous regions, was preparing to flow over those vast districts which stretch from the Rocky Mountains to the Pacific Ocean;" that Great Britain "laid claim to a portion of the country and that the question could not be well included in the recent treaty without postponing other more pressing matters." He significantly added, that though the difficulty might not for several years involve the peace of the two countries, yet he should urge upon Great Britain the importance of its early settlement.
As this paragraph was undoubtedly suggested and probably written by Mr.Webster, it attracted wide attention on both sides of the Atlantic; and from that moment, in varying degrees of interest and urgency, the Oregon question became an active political issue.
Before the next annual meeting of Congress, Mr.Upshur had succeeded Mr.Webster in the State department; and the message of the President took still more advanced ground respecting Oregon.