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What did "Fifty-four forty or fight" mean?

The slogan "Fifty-four forty or fight" originated during a dispute between the United States and Great Britain over the Oregon country. Under the terms of a treaty signed in 1818, both nations were permitted to occupy this territory. The boundary began at 42 degrees north latitude, the southern boundary of present-day Oregon; it extended north to 54 degrees 40 minutes north latitude, in present-day British Columbia. (Latitude is a geographical term for the angular distance north or south of Earth's equator.) During the 1830s and early 1840s, American expansionists (those who advocated expanding the United States into the West) insisted that U.S. rights to the Oregon country extended north to latitude 54 degrees 40 minutes. (A degree is a position or space in measuring latitude; a minute is the sixtieth part of a degree.) At the time this was the recognized southern...

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