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390 President Tyler. Disputes with Great Britain. [i84i it is significant that, despite the commotion, 7300 votes were cast for Birney. Harrison was inaugurated on March 4, 1841, and died in the following April. John Tyler then became President, and began an administration memorable for his quarrel with the Whigs, the nego- tiation of the Webster- Ashburton Treaty, and the annexation of the slave-holding Republic of Texas. The inauguration of Harrison was quickly followed by a proclamation calling a special session of Congress to carry out the reforms to which the Whig orators had pledged the party. But, when Congress presented the new President with a bill to charter a great national bank, to be called the Fiscal Bank of the United States, Tyler sent it back with his veto. The Whigs were furious and the Democrats delighted. But Tyler well knew the seriousness of the situation, and authorised the Secretary of State and the Secretary of the Treasury to confer with the leaders of the Senate and the House about the details of a new bill. An institution described as the "Fiscal Corporation" was accordingly planned; and the bill to create it was passed rapidly through both Houses. Again the President interposed his veto. The same night all the members of the Cabinet save Webster, Secretary of State, met at the house of the Secretary of the Navy and agreed to resign one after another on Saturday, September 11. As Congress was to adjourn on Monday, the President would thus be forced to find a new Cabinet between Saturday and Monday. But Tyler was equal to the emergency, and, when Monday came, sent to the Senate the names of five Jackson Democrats as Secretaries. Webster alone retained his place. The Whig members of Congress now read Tyler out of the party, and in a manifesto denounced the President for having disappointed the just expectations of those who had elected him. A sincere desire to serve his country kept Webster in the Cabinet after his colleagues had resigned. Many grave questions, some of long standing, between Great Britain and the United States, were pressing for settlement. After fifty-eight years of discussion the north-eastern boundary of Maine was still undefined; and the people of that State were in such a frame of mind that, according to the governors report, the settlers along the border could with difficulty be kept from collision with the British. The destruction of the steamer Caroline, the arrest of McLeod for participation in that affair, the assumption by the British government of all responsibility, and the demand for the release of McLeod, had so excited the people in western New York that it seemed quite likely that troops would be needed to keep the peace along the border. The recent assertion of the right to search American ships supposed to be engaged in the slave-trade revived an old question, once a cause of war ; while the liberation of slaves thrown on the coasts of the British West Indian islands by the perils of the sea, or brought thither by force, and the belief that Great Britain desired to purchase