To extricate the Administration from the embarrassment caused by its ill-timed and boastful pretensions to the line of 54 deg.

40' was a difficult and delicate task.

To accomplish it, Mr.Buchanan had recourse to the original and long disused habit of asking the Senate's advice in advance of negotiating the treaty, instead of taking the ordinary but at that time perilous responsibility of first negotiating the treaty, and then submitting it to the Senate for approval.

As a leading Northern Democrat, with an established reputation and a promising future, Mr.Buchanan was instinctively reluctant to take the lead in surrendering the position which his party had so defiantly maintained during the canvass for the Presidency in 1844, and which he had, as Secretary of State, re-affirmed in a diplomatic paper of marked ability.
When the necessity came to retreat, Mr.Buchanan was anxious that the duty of publicly lowering the colors should not be left to him.
His device, therefore, shifted the burden from his own shoulders, and placed it on the broader ones of the Senate.
Political management could not have been more clever.

It saved Mr.Buchanan in large degree from the opprobrium visited on so many leading Democrats for their precipitate retreat on the Oregon question, and commended him at the same time to a class of Democrats who had never before been his supporters.