The victorious Democrats were poised to acquire Texas under President-elect Polk's doctrine of Manifest Destiny, rather than on the pro-slavery agenda of Tyler and Calhoun. As a treaty document with a foreign nation, the Tyler-Texas annexation treaty required the support of a two-thirds majority in the Senate for passage. But in fact, when the Senate voted on the measure on June 8, 1844, fully two-thirds voted against the treaty (16–35). The vote went largely along party lines: Whigs had opposed it almost unanimously (1–27), while Democrats split, but voted overwhelmingly in favor (15–8). The election campaign had hardened partisan positions on Texas among Democrats. Tyler had anticipated that the measure would fail, largely because of the divisive effects of Secretary Calhoun's Packenham letter. Undeterred, he formally asked the House of Representatives to consider other constitutional means to authorize passage of the treaty. Congress adjourned before debating the matter. The same Senate that had rejected the Tyler–Calhoun treaty by a margin of 2:1 in June 1844 reassembled in December 1844 in a short lame-duck session. (Though pro-annexation Democrats had made gains in the fall elections, those legislators – the 29th Congress – would not assume office until March 1845.) Lame-duck President Tyler, still trying to annex Texas in the final months of his administration, wished to avoid another overwhelming Senate rejection of his treaty. In his annual address to Congress on December 4, he declared the Polk victory a mandate for Texas annexation and proposed that Congress adopt a joint resolution procedure by which simple majorities in each house could secure ratification for the Tyler treaty. This method would avoid the constitutional requirement of a two-thirds majority in the Senate. Bringing the House of Representatives into the equation boded well for Texas annexation, as the pro-annexation Democratic Party possessed nearly a 2:1 majority in that chamber. By resubmitting the discredited treaty through a House-sponsored bill, the Tyler administration reignited sectional hostilities over Texas admission. Both northern Democratic and southern Whig Congressmen had been bewildered by local political agitation in their home states during the 1844 presidential campaigns. Now, northern Democrats found themselves vulnerable to charges of appeasement of their southern wing if they capitulated to Tyler's slavery expansion provisions. On the other hand, Manifest Destiny enthusiasm in the north placed politicians under pressure to admit Texas immediately to the Union. Constitutional objections were raised in House debates as to whether both houses of Congress could constitutionally authorize admission of territories, rather than states.