USA > Oregon > History of Oregon, Vol. II, 1848-1888 > Part 12
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Surely it could not be said that the British com- panies were not as anxious to get out of Oregon as the Americans were to have them. It is more than likely, also, that had it not been for the persistent animosity of certain persons influencing the heads of the government and senators, some arrangement might have been effected; the reason given for re- jecting the offer, however, was that no purchase could be made until the exact limits of the company's possessions could be determined. In October 1850, Sir John Henry Pelly addressed a letter to Webster, then secretary of state, on the subject, in which he referred to the seizure of the Albion, and in which he said that the price in the disposal of their property was but a secondary consideration, that they were more concerned to avoid the repetition of occurrences which might endanger the peace of the two govern- ments, and proposed to leave the matter of valuation to be decided by two commissioners, one from each government, who should be at liberty to call an umpire. But at this time the same objections existed in the indefinite limits of the territory claimed which would require to be settled before commissioners
111
ABANDONMENT OF POSTS.
could be prepared to decide, and nothing was done then, nor for twenty years afterward,17 toward the purchase of Hudson's Bay Company claims, during which time their forts, never of much value except for the purposes of the company, went to decay, and the lands of the Puget Sound Company were covered with American squatters, who, holding that the rights of the company under the treaty of 1846 were not in the nature of an actual grant, but merely possessory so far as the company required the land for use until their charter expired, looked upon their pretensions as unfounded, and treated them as trespassers,18 at the same time that they were compelled to pay taxes as proprietors.19
Gradually the different posts were abandoned. The land at Fort Umpqua was let in 1853 to W. W. Chapman, who purchased the cattle belonging to it,20 which travellers were in the habit of shooting as
17 32d. Cong., 1st Sess., H. Ex. Doc. 2, pt. iii. 473-4.
18 Roberts, who was a stockholder in the Puget Sound Company, took charge of the Cowlitz farm in 1846. Matters went on very well for two years. Then came the gold excitement and demoralization of the company's servants consequent upon it, and the expectation of a donation land law. He left the farm which he found it impossible to carry on, and took up a land claim as a settler outside its limits, becoming a naturalized citizen of the United States. But pioneer farming was not either agreeable or profitable to him, and was besides interrupted by an Indian war, when he became clerk to the quarter- master general. When the Frazer River mining excitement came on he thought he might possibly make something at the Cowlitz by raising provis- ions. But when his hay was cut and put up in cocks it was taken away by armed men who had squatted on the land; and when the case came into court the jury decided that they knew nothing about treaties, but did under- staud the rights of American citizens under the land law. Then followed arsou and other troubles with the squatters, who took away his crops year after year. The lawyers to whom he appealed could do nothing for him, and it was only by the interference of other people who became ashamed of sceing a good man persecuted in this manner, that the squatters on the Cowlitz farm were finally compelled to desist from these aets, and Roberts was left in peace until the Washington delegate, Garfield, secured patents for his clients the squatters, and Roberts was evicted. There certainly should have been some way of preventing outrages of this kind, and the government should have seen to it that its treaties were respected by the people. But the peo- ple's representatives, to win favor with their constituents, persistently helped to instigate a feeling of opposition to the claims of the British companies, or to create a doubt of their validity. See Roberts' Recollections, MS., 75.
19 The Puget Sound Company paid in one year $7,000 in taxes. They were astute enoughi, says Roberts, not to refuse, as the records could be used to show the value of their property. Recollectionx, MS., 91.
20 21. C. Gibbs, in U. S. Ev. H. B. C. Claims, 29; W. T. Tolmie, Id., 104; W. W. Chapman, Id., 11.
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A DELEGATE TO CONGRESS.
game while they belonged to the company. The stockade and buildings were burned in 1851. The land was finally taken as a donation claim. Walla Walla was abandoned in 1855-6, during the Indian war, in obedience to an order from Indian Agent Olney, and was afterward claimed by an American for a town site. Fort Boisé was abandoned in 1856 on account of Indian hostilities, and Fort Hall about the same time on account of the statute against selling ammunition to Indians, without which the Indian trade was worthless. Okanagan was kept up until 1861 or 1862, when it was left in charge of an Indian chief. Vancouver was abandoned about 1860, the land about it being covered with squatters, English and American.21 Fort George went out of use before any of the others, Colville holding out longest. At length in 1871, after a tedious and expensive ex- amination of the claims of the Hudson's Bay and Puget Sound companies by a commission appointed for the purpose, an award of seven hundred and fifty thousand dollars was made and accepted, there being nothing left which the United States could confirm to any one except a dozen dilapidated forts. The United States gained nothing by the purchase, unless it were the military reserves at Vancouver, Steila- coom, and Cape Disappointment; for the broad acres of the companies had been donated to squatters who applied for them as United States land. As to the justice of the cause of the American people against the companies, or the companies against the United States, there will be always two opinions, as there have always been two opinions concerning the Oregon boundary question. Sentiment on the American side as enunciated by the Oregon pioneers was as follows: They held that Great Britain had no rights on the west shore of the American continent; in which opinion, if they would include the United States in the same category, I would concur. As I think I
21 J. L. Meek, in U. S. Ev. H. B. C. Claims, 90.
113
THE FINAL ISSUE.
have clearly shown in the History of the Northwest Coast, whether on the ground of inherent rights, or rights of discovery or occupation, there was little to choose between the two nations. The people of Oregon further held that the convention of 1818 conferred no title, in which they were correct. They held that the Hudson's Bay Company, under its charter, could acquire no title to land-only to the occupancy of it for a limited time; in which position they were undoubtedly right. They denied that the Puget Sound Company, which derived its existence from the Hudson's Bay Company, could have any title to land, which was evident. They were quick to per- ceive the intentions of the parent company in laying claim to large bodies of land on the north side of the Columbia, and covering them with settlers and herds. They had no thought that when the boundary was settled these claims would be respected, and felt that not only they but the government had been cheated- the latter through its ignorance of the actual facts in the case. So far I cannot fail to sympathize with their sound sense and patriotism.
But I find also that they forgot to be just, and to realize that British subjects on the north side of the Columbia were disappointed at the settlement of the boundary on the 49th parallel; that they naturally sought indemnity for the distraction it would be to their business to move their property out of the territory, the cost of building new forts, opening new farms, and laying out new roads. But above all they forgot that as good citizens they were bound to re- spect the engagements entered into by the govern- ment whether or not they approved them; and while they were using doubtful means to force the British companies out of Oregon, were guilty of ingratitude both to the corporation and individuals.
The issue on which the first delegate to congress elected in Oregon, Samuel R. Thurston, received his HIST. OB., VOL. II. 8
114
A DELEGATE TO CONGRESS.
majority, was that of the anti-Hudson's Bay Com- pany sentiment, which was industriously worked up by the missionary element, in the absence of a large number of the voters of the territory, notably of the Canadians, and the young and independent western men.22 Thurston was besides a democrat, to which party the greater part of the population belonged; but it is the testimony of those who knew best that it was not as a democrat that he was elected.23 As a member of the legislature at its last session under the provisional government, he displayed some of those traits which made him a powerful and useful champion, or a dreaded and hated foe.
Much has been said about the rude and violent manners of western men in pursuit of an object, but Thurston was not a western man; he was supposed to be something more elevated and refined, more cool and logical, more moral and Christian than the peo- ple beyond the Alleghanies; he was born and bred an eastern man, educated at an eastern college, was a good Methodist, and yet in the eanvass of
22 Thurston received 470 votes; C. Lancaster, 321; Meek and Griffin, 46; J. W. Nesmith, 106. Thurston was a democrat and Nesmith a whig. Tribune Almanac, 1850, 51.
23 Mrs E. F. Odell, née McClench, who came to Oregon as Thurston's wife, and who cherishes a high regard for his talents and memory, has fur- nished to my library a biographical sketch of her first husband. Though strongly tinctured by personal and partisan feeling, it is valuable as a view from her standpoint of the character and services of the ambitious young man who first represented Oregon in congress-how worthily, the record will determine. Mr Thurston was born in Monmouth, Maine, in 1816, and reared in the little town of Peru, subject to many toils and privations common to the Yankee youth of that day. He possessed a thirst for knowledge also common in New England, and became a hard student at the Wesleyan semi- nary at Readfield, from which he entered Bowdoin college, graduating in the class of 1813. He then entered on the study of law in Brunswick, where he was soon admitted to practice. A natural partisan, he became an ardent democrat, and was not only fearless but aggressive in his leadership of the politicians of the school. Having married Miss Elizabeth F. McClench, of Fayette, he removed with her to Burlington, Iowa, in 1845, where he edited the Burlington Gazette till 1847, when he emigrated to Oregon. From his education as a Methodist, his talents, and readiness to become a partisan, he naturally affiliated with the Mission party. Mrs Odell remarks in her Bio7- raphy of Thurston, MS., 4, that he was 'not elected as a partisan, though his political views were well understood;' but L. F. Grover, who knew him well in college days and afterward, says that 'he ran on the issue of the missionary settlers against the Hudson's Bay Company.' Public Life in Or., MS., 95.
115
CHARACTERISTICS OF THURSTON.
1849 he introduced into Oregon the vituperative and invective style of debate, and mingled with it a species of coarse blackguardism such as no Kentucky ox- driver or Missouri flat-boatman might hope to excel.24 Were it more effective, he could be simply eloquent and impressive; where the fire-eating style seemed likely to win, he could hurl epithets and denuncia- tions until his adversaries withered before them. 23
And where so pregnant a theme on which to rouse the feelings of a people unduly jealous, as that of the aggressiveness of a foreign monoply? And what easier than to make promises of accomplishing great things for Oregon? And yet I am bound to say that what this scurrilous and unprincipled demagogue promised, as a rule he performed. He believed that to be the best course, and he was strong enough to pursue it. Had he never done more than he engaged to do, or had he not privately engaged to carry out a scheme of the Methodist missionaries, whose sentiments he mistook for those of the majority, being himself a Methodist, and having been but eighteen months in Oregon when he left it for Washington, his success as a politician would have been assured.
Barnes, in his manuscript entitled Oregon and Cali- fornia, relates that Thurston was prepared to go to California with him when Lane issued his proclama- tion to elect a delegate to congress. He immediately
24 ' I have heard an old settler give an account of a discussion in Polk county between Nesmith and Thurston during the canvass for the election of delegate to congress. He said Nesmith had been accustomed to brow- beat every man that came about him, and drive him off either by ridicule or fear. In both these capacities Nesmith was a strong man, and they all thought Nesmith had the field. But when Thurston got up they were astonished at his eloquence, and particularly at his bold manner. My inform- ant says that at one stage Nesmith jumped up and began to move toward Thurston; and Thurston pointed his finger straight at him, after putting it on his side, and said: "Don't you take another step, or a button-hole will be seen through you," and Nesmith stopped. But the discussion proved that Thurston was a full match for any man in the practices in which his antago- nist was distinguished, and the result was that Thurston carried the election by a large majority.' Grover's Pub. Life, MS., 96-7.
25 4 He was a man of such impulsive, harsh traits, that he would often carry college fends to extremities. I have known him to get so excited in recount- ing some of his struggles, that he would take a chair and smash it all to pieces over the table, evidently to exhaust the extra amount of vitality.' Id., 94.
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A DELEGATE TO CONGRESS.
decided to take his chance among the candidates, with what result we know. 26
The first we hear of Thurston in his character of delegate is on the 24th of January 1850, when he rose in the house and insisted upon being allowed to make an explanation of his position. When he left Oregon, he said, he bore a memorial from the legisla- tive assembly to congress which he could not produce on account of the loss of his baggage on the Isthmus. But since he had not the memorial, he had drawn up a set of resolutions upon the subjects embraced in the memorial, which he wished to offer and have referred to their appropriate committees, in order that while the house might be engaged in other matters he might attend to his before the committees. He had waited, he said, nearly two months for an opportunity to present his resolutions, and his territory had not yet been reached in the call for resolutions. He would detain the house but a few minutes, if he might be allowed to read what he had drawn up. On leave being granted, he proceeded to present, not an abstract of the memorial, which has been given elsewhere, but a series of questions for the judiciary committee to answer, in reference to the rights of the Hudson's Bay Company, and Puget Sound Agricultural Associ- ation.27 This first utterance of the Oregon delegate, when time was so precious and so short in which to labor for the accomplishment of high designs, gives us the key to his plan, which was first to raise the question of any rights of British subjects to Oregon lands in fee simple under the treaty, and then to exclude them if possible from the privileges of the donation law when it should be framed.28
26 Thurston was in ill-health when he left Oregon. He travelled in a small boat to Astoria, taking six days for the trip; by sailing vessel to San Francisco, and to Panamá by the steamer Carolina, being ill at the last place, yet having to ride across the Isthmus, losing his baggage because he was not able to look after the thieving carriers. His determination and ambition were remarkable. Odell's Biography of Thurston, MS., 56.
27 For the resolutions complete, see Cong. Globe, 1849-50, 21, pt. i. 220.
28 That Thurston exceeded the instructions of the legislative assembly there is no question. See Or. Archives, MS., 185-6.
117
IGNOBLE MEASURES.
The two months which intervened between Thurs- ton's arrival in Washington and the day when he in- troduced his resolutions had not been lost. He had studied congressional methods and proved himself an apt scholar. He attempted nothing without first hav- ing tried his ground with the committees, and pre- pared the way, often with great labor, to final success. On the 6th of February, further resolutions were introduced inquiring into the rights of the Hudson's Bay Company to cut and manufacture timber growing on the public lands of Oregon, and particuarly on lands not inclosed or cultivated by them at the time of the ratification of the Oregon treaty; into the right of the Puget Sound Agricultural Company to any more land than they had under inclosure, or in a state of actual cultivation at that time; and into the right of the Hudson's Bay Company, under the sec- ond article of the treaty, or of British subjects trad- ing with the company, to introduce through the port of Astoria foreign goods for consumption in the ter- ritory free of duty,29 which resolutions were referred to the judiciary committee. On the same day he in- troduced a resolution that the committee on public lands should be instructed to inquire into the expedi- ency of reporting a bill for the establishment of a land office in Oregon, and to provide for the survey of a portion of the public lands in that territory, con- taining such other provisions and restrictions as the committee might deem necessary for the proper man- agement and protection of the public lands.30
In the mean time a bill was before the senate for the extinguishment of the Indian title to land west of the Cascade Mountains. This was an important preliminary step to the passage of a donation act.31
29 Cong. Globe, 1849-50, 295.
30 Id., 293. A correspondent of the New York Tribune remarks on Thurston's resolutions: There are squalls ahead for the Hudson's Bay Company.' Or. Spectator, May 2, 1850.
31 See Or. Spectator, April 18, 1850; 31st Cong., 1st Sess., U. S. Acts and Res., 26-7; Johnson's Cal. and Or., 332; Cong. Globe, 1849-50, 1076-7; Id., 1610; Or. Spectator, Aug. 8, 1850.
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A DELEGATE TO CONGRESS.
It was chiefly suggested by Mr Thurston, and was passed April 22d without opposition. Having se- cured this measure, as he believed, he next brought up the topics embraced in the last memorial on which he expected to found his advocacy of a donation law, and embodied them in another series of resolutions, so artfully drawn up32 as to compel the committee to take that view of the subject most likely to promote the success of the measure. Not that there was reason to fear serious opposition to a law donating a liberal amount of land to Oregon settlers. It had for years been tacitly agreed to by every congress, and could only fail on some technicality. But to get up a sympathetic feeling for such a bill, to secure to Ore- gon all and more than was asked for through that feeling, and to thereby so deserve the approval of the Oregon people as to be reëlected to congress, was the desire of Thurston's active and ardent mind. And toward this aim he worked with a persistency that was admirable, though some of the means resorted to, to bring it about, and to retain the favor of the party that elected him, were as unsuccessful as they were reprehensible.
From the first day of his labors at Washington this relentless demagogue acted iu ceaseless and open hos- tility to every interest of the Hudson's Bay Company in Oregon, and to every individual in any way con- nected with it.33
Thurston, like Thornton, claimed to have been the author of the donation land law. I have shown in a
32 Cong. Globe, 1849-50, 413; Or. Statesman, May 9, 1851.
33 Here is a sample of the ignorance or mendacity of the man, whichever you will. A circular issued by Thurston while in Washington to save letter- writing, says, speaking of the country in which Vancouver is located: 'It was formerly called Clarke county; but at a time when British sway was in its palmy days in Oregon, the county was changed from Clarke to Vancouver, in honor of the celebrated navigator, and no less celebrated slanderer of our government and people. Now that American influence rules in Oregon, it is due to the hardy, wayworn American explorer to realter the name of this county, and grace it again with the name of him whose history is interwoven with that of Oregon. So our legislature thought, and so I have no doubt they spoke and acted at their recent session.' Johnson's Cal. and Or., 267. It was certainly peculiar to hear this intelligent legislator talk of counties
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THE DONATION LAND BILL.
previous chapter that a bill creating the office of sur- veyor-general in Oregon, and to grant donation rights to settlers, and for other purposes, was before congress in both houses in January 1848, and that it failed through laek of time, having to await the territorial bill which passed at the last moment. Having been crowded out, and other affairs pressing at the next session, the only traee of it in the proceedings of con- gress is a resolution by Collamer, of Vermont, on the 25th of January 1849, that it should be made the special order of the house for the first Tuesday of February, when, however, it appears to have been forgotten; and it was not until the 22d of April 1850 that Mr Fitch, chairman of the committee on territo- ries, again reported a bill on this subject. That the bill brought up at this session was but a copy of the previous one is according to usage; but that Thurston had been at work with the committee some peculiar features of the bill show.34
There was taet and diplomacy in Thurston's elar- acter, which he displayed in his short congressional
in Oregon before the palmy days of British sway, and of British residents naming counties at all. While Thurston was in Washington, the postmaster- general changed the name of the postoffice at Vancouver to Columbia City. Or. State-man, May 28, 1851.
34 Thornton alleges that he presented Thurston before leaving Oregon with a copy of his bill, Or. Hist., MS., 13, and further that ' the donation law we now have, except the 11th section and one or two unimportant amendments, is an exact copy of the bill I prepared.' Or. Pioneer Asso. Trans. 1874, 94. Yet when Thurston lost his luggage on the Isthmus he lost all his papers, and could not have made an 'exact copy' from memory. In another place he says that before leaving Washington he drew up a land bill which he sent to Collamer in Vermont, and would have us believe that this was the iden- tical bill which finally passed. Not knowing further of the bill than what was stated by Thornton himself, I would only remark upon the evidence that Collamer's term expired before 1850, though that might not have pre- veuted him from introducing any suggestions of Thornton's into the bill reported in January 1849. But now comes Thornton of his own accord, and admits he has claimed too much. He did, he says, prepare a territorial and also a land bill, but on 'further refiction, and after consulting others, I deemed it not well to have these new bills offered, it having been suggested that the bills already pending in both houses of congress could be amended by incorporating into them whatever there was in my bills not already pro- vided for in the bills which in virtue of their being already on the calendar would be reached before any bills subsequently introduced.' From a letter dated August 8, 1882, which is intended as an addendum to the Or. Ilist., MS., of Thornton.
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A DELEGATE TO CONGRESS.
career. He allowed the land bill to drift along, mak- ing only some practical suggestions, until his resolu- tions had had time to sink into the minds of members of both houses. When the bill was well on its way he proposed amendments, such as to strike out of the fourth section that portion which gave every set- tler or occupant of the public lands above the age of eighteen a donation of three hundred and twenty acres of land if a single man, and if married, or becoming married within a given time, six hundred and forty acres, one half to himself in his own right, and the other half to his wife in her own right, the surveyor- general to designate the part inuring to each;35 and to make it read "that there shall be, and hereby is granted to every white male settler, or occupant of the public lands, American half-breeds included, members and servants of the Hudson's Bay and Puget Sound companies excepted," etc.
He proposed further a proviso "that every foreigner making claim to lands by virtue of this act, before he shall receive a title to the same, shall prove to the surveyor-general that he has commenced and com- pleted his naturalization and become an American citizen." The proviso was not objected to, but the previous amendment was declared by Bowlin, of Mis- souri, unjust to the retired servants of the fur com- pany, who had long lived on and cultivated farms. The debate upon this part of the bill became warm, and Thurston, being pressed, gave utterance to the following infamous lies:
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