An illustrated history of the state of Washington, containing biographical mention of its pioneers and prominent citizens, Part 9

Author: Hines, Harvey K., 1828-1902
Publication date: 1893
Publisher: Chicago, The Lewis publishing company
Number of Pages: 1056

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inen, could not overcome the excited state of the public mind on these questions. Thus the verdict of the people of the United States at the election was unquestionably in favor of Oregon, even up to 54° 40' north latitude. It was well known, however, that the leading statesmen of the Democratie party believed the forty-ninth degree to be the line of onr rightful claim. Mr. Benton had already demonstrated it on the floor of the Senate. Mr. Calhoun, as Democratic secretary of State for Mr. Tyler, at the very moment when the Democratie con- vention was making its platform and nomi- nating Mr. Polk npon it, was engaged in a negotiation with the British minister in Wash- ington, and offering to him a settlement of the entire question on the line of the forty-ninth parallel. Only some item in regard to the right of Great Britain to navigate the Columbia river prevented the acceptance of this proposition by the British minister, and the settlement of the whole question at that time.

While, doubtless, Mr. Calhoun himself wonld have been glad to have concluded the Oregon question as secretary of State, and as he evi- dently might have done, politically he did not dare to do so. The annexation of Texas was a Sonthern question, and the South could be car- ried for Mr. Polk on that issue. Oregon was a Northern question, and the North could be car- ried in the same way by keeping up the cry of "Fifty-four Forty or Fight." To settle on 49° would be to yield the question, and with it the

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election to the Whigs, and make Mr. Clay president. So the Oregon question was not settléd, as it might have been before the elec- tion of 1844, on exactly the same line as was adopted two years later, after it had achieved the political results for which it was kept in the air during the political canvass of 1844, namely, electing Mr. Polk president, and finally defeating the aspirations of Mr. Clay for that eminent position.

With this result achieved, and on this ground this question could not slumber. Mr. Polk brought it promptly forward in his inaugural address, reaffirming the position of the platform on which he was elected. The position of the inaugural threw the public mind of Great Britain into a ferment, and the English nation thundered back the cry of war. For a year the two nations stood face to face like gladi- ators, with uplifted swords, waiting for a word that would send them breast to breast in the fierce grapple of war. History mnst record that the United States must retreat, in her diplomacy and in her legislation, from the political decision of her people, or the inevi- table war must come. It was an embarrassing and mortifying position for the new govern- ment, but it had to be endured and met as best it could be.

James Buchanan was now Secretary of State. He waited for some time for a proposition from the British minister at Washington to renew the negotiations on the Oregon question, but none came. On the 22d of July. 1845, he therefore addressed a note to Mr. Packenham, the British minister at Washington, resuming negotiations where Mr. Calhoun had suspended them, and again proposed the line of forty-nine to the ocean. This the British minister re- fused, but invited a "fairer" proposition. The knowledge of this proposition on the part of the Secretary of State raised a political storm in his party, before which the administration cowered, and, as Mr. Packenham had not ac- cepted it, it was withdrawn. The president recommended strong measures to assert and

secure our title, and the political storm was measurably appeased. Meantime the with- drawal of the proposition of Mr. Buchanan, coupled with the recommendation of the presi- dent, somewhat alarmed the British people, and it began to be rumored that England would propose the line she had before rejected. The position of the dominant party absolutely re- required that it should make a demonstration according to its iterated and reiterated promises to the people. Accordingly a resolution de- termining the treaty of joint occupancy, and looking to the maintenance of that position, was introduced into the House of Representa- tives, most ably debated-John Quincy Adams taking strong grounds in its favor-and, on the 9th of February, 1846, adopted, by the decisive vote of 163 to 54.

The resolution thus passed in the House went to the Senate. Here, in the form in which it passed the House, it encountered violent op- position, a strong contingent of the Democratic party taking position against it. Among these, if not their leader, was Senator Benton. Gen- eral Cass, E. A. Hannigan and William Allen led the debate in its favor. Besides Benton, Webster, Crittenden and Berrien made exhaus- tive arguments against it. It was well under- stood in the Senate that President Polk thought it necessary to recede from the position of his party-the position on which he had fought the campaign in which he was elected to the presi- dency-and accept of the line of 49° without a "fight." So the resolution of the House was defeated in the Senate. But the Senate adopted another resolution, authorizing the president "at his discretion" to give notice to Great Britain for the termination of the treaty. The Senate resolution was conciliatory, its preamble declaring that it was only to secure "a speedy and amicable adjustment of the differences and disputes in regard to said territory."

When this resolution went to the House that body receded from its former position, and, with even a greater unanimity than had char- aeterized their action on that which the Senate

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had rejected, adopted it, -- only forty-six, and they almost entirely Northern Democrats, vot- ing against it.

With this action the danger of the war with Great Britain was dispelled. It was immedi- ately followed by a treaty between Mr. Buch- anan, Secretary of State, under the direction of the president and British minister at Washing- ton, adopting the forty-ninth parallel as the boundary between the two countries, with cer- tain concessions touching the line westward of where that parallel strikes the Gulf of Georgia, and, for a definite period, the rights of the Hudson's Bay Company and the navigation of the Columbia river by the British. Thus closed a controversy with Great Britain that came very near involving the two nations in a conflict of arms. In a war England could have possessed, and it may not be too much to suppose, would have possessed Oregon, but, perhaps, at the cost of the Canadas. Had the settlement been post- poned a few years longer, it is not improbable that American emigrants would have so filled the country even np to 54° 40', that all the country would have been ours. In the discus- sion both sides were partly right and partly wrong, as history clearly demonstrates. The "30,000 rifles" theory of Senator Benton, in the hands of emigrants, was correct. The "time and patience" theory of Mr. Webster and Mr. Calhoun was also correct. These acting to- gether solved the "Oregon question," and on the whole, as matters stood in 1846, solved it honorably and justly to both the high contract- ing parties.

It is probably dne to the justice of history that we should not dismiss finally the subject of the rival claims and claimants to Oregon, and of the diplomatic negotiations through which those claims were led to a final settle- ment, withont some notice of a curious and annoying error into which the people of the Pacific coast were led in regard to what was contained in the Webster-Ashburton treaty. It was not only annoying to the feelings of the people, but it led to the writing of a great dale

of fictitious history, the writers not stopping to ascertain the truth or falsity of the rumors which they adopted as fact. The error was this: That in the negotiations between Mr. Webster for the United States and Lord Ash- burton for England a proposition was discussed and well nigh adopted for the United States to cede to Great Britain her claim to Oregon for extended fishing privileges on the banks of Newfoundland, and some other privileges con- trolled by the English on the northeast coast. This statement was brought to Oregon by the emigrants of 1842 and raised a great excite- ment among the people. It was widely claimed that it was this that prompted, or rather im- pelled, Dr. Whitman to make his perilons winter journey to the Eastern States in order that the Government should be prevented from making that fatal trade. Dramatic incidents have been recited as veritable history connected with these supposed facts, which have had no being but in the excited imaginations of care- less writers, or the partial and overwrought eulogies of admiration and friendship.

The truth of the matter is clearly ascertained to be that the subject of the Oregon boundary formed no part of the formal negotiations of that occasion. There is no reference to it in the treaty, or in the documents accompanying it when it was transmitted to the Senate for ratification.

The statement so often made that Mr. Web- ster and President Tyler were prevented from committing this blunder by the timely arrival of Dr. Whitman in Washington just before the treaty was to be signed, has not a shadow of foundation. As before shown the treaty was signed August 8, 1842, two months before Dr. Whitman started from his home in Oregon. On the 11th it was submitted to the Senate. On the 26th it was approved, and Lord Ash- burton started with it the same day for Eng- land, where it was ratified, returned to the United States, and proclaimed on the 10th of November. Dr. Whitman arrived in Washing- ton in March following.

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So plain a statement of fact renders it un- necessary to balance probabilities or weigh ar- guments; the facts are more convineing than either. As the United States had never offered to yield any territory to England south of the 49th parallel, and had always peremptorily re- jected any offer from Great Britain to com- promise on a lower line, or the line of the Co- lumbia river, so now Mr. Webster and Mr. Tyler could not and did not depart from the oft-repeated position of the United States on that question, and Mr. Webster's own statement that " the United States had never offered any line south of forty-nine, and it never will," con- eludes it.

Although the Oregon treaty was made, and had been proclaimed as the law of the land, one thing remained to be done which became a mat- ter of infinite disagreement, and came very near involving the two countries in war before its final conclusion. The line was agreed upon, but it was not run. The trouble arose from a long-continued perversion, on the part of Great Britain, of the application of the description of the line from where the forty-ninth parallel of latitude strikes the gulf of Georgia. Thence, as it was worded in the treaty, it was to follow " the middle of the channel which separates the continent from Vancouver's island," and follow it through the Straits of Fuca to the ocean. No map or chart was attached to the treaty on which the line could be traced, and so little was really known of the geography of the gulf of Georgia that it would have been difficult for the commissioners to have traced the middle of the channel had one been present. This left open a ground for dispute and diplomatic finesse.

Between the continent and the island of Van- conver lies an archipelago, a stretch of sea fifty or more miles from east to west, and sixty or more from north to south, in which are thirty- nine islands that have come under description and name. These range from sixteen miles to one-fourth of a mile in length and from fifty- four to one-half a square mile in area. Through these islands there run ten channels southward,

but combine in three as they enter into the Straits of Fuca. The one to the eastward is the Rosario, the one to the west is the Canal de Ilaro. Great Britain insisted on the line tak- ing the eastward, or Rosario channel; the United States claimed that the real channel was the Canal de Haro, or westward channel. What was between these channels was the real object of desire on the part of both the contending parties. This was an area of abont 400 square miles, in which are a number of prominent islands, and some small ones, all comprising in land area abont 170 square miles. The owner- ship and sovereignty of these were what was in- volved in the settlement of the channel question. The most valuable of these was San Juan, con- taining fifty-five square miles, mostly good grazing land, which the Hudson's Bay Com- pany, whose center of trade was now Victoria on Vancouver island, had been accustomed to use as a pasture for their sheep. The difference between the two channels was about this: Ro- sario had about four miles width of channel and sixty fathoms of water in its greatest depth, while the Canal de Haro had about six and a half miles of maximum width of channel, and its greatest depth is 183 fathoms.

The debate over this question was hardly less tedious and perplexing than that which fixed the terms of the line at first. That de Haro was the channel intended as the line, was too plain for rational dispute, as no other was known at the time the treaty was negotiated. It was expressly mentioned, more than once, at the very time and by the very persons that con- ducted the negotiations.

When the commissioners appointed by the two governments to run the line agreed upon in the treaty met to accomplish their task, Captain Prevost, for the British Government, declared Rosario to be the " channel" of that instrument. Of course this claim was met by Mr. Campbell on the part of the United States with rejection. Then Lord Russell proposed as a compromise the middle, or President's ehan- nel. This was suggested because, while it

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yielded a little in area of water, it still retained San Juan island on the British side of the line. Lord Russell instructed Lord Lyons, the British envoy to the United States, that no line would be agreed upon that did not leave that island on the British side of it. Mr. Lewis Cass, our Secretary of State, met this menace-for such it really was-with words equally decisive. This ended the effort to fix the line geographi- eally through this archipelago. Then the Pa- cific pioneers again took it up. Twelve years had passed since the treaty, and ministers of State had invited difficulties and postponed decisions. These pioneers were as clear of head as they were resolute of heart. They knew how to set- tle it; and they tried their knowledge on.

If the line was not determined they had as good a right on San Juan island as had the Hudson's Bay Company. They would go there. Twenty-five Americans and their families were there,-for when was there ever a pioneer man so' bold and brave that he could not find a woman as bold and brave as he to accompany him and brace his armor to his breast? The arrogant Hudson's Bay people were all about them. Collisions were imminent. Of this condition Sir Robert Peel declared in the Brit- ish Parliament it " inst probably involve both countries in an appeal to arms unless speedily terminated."

The Oregon Territorial legislature, in the session of 1852-'53, included San Juan and all the islands in the archipelago in a county. Soon after the Hudson's Bay Company took formal possession of the island, Oregon levied taxes on the property of the company, and when payment was refused, the sheriff sold sheep enough to pay them. This was the ready method of the pio- neer; open the conflict on the ground for which the battle is to be fought. Of course recrimi- nations and reprisals followed. This was ex- pected. The local excitement increased. General Ilarney, commander of the Department of the Pacifie, in 1859, landed 461 troops on the island, and instructed Captain Pickett-he of the charge of Gettysburg-to protect Americans

there. English naval forces, to the number of five ships of war, conveying 167 guns, and 1,940 men gathered near the little island. The Americans threatened to resist by force any attempted landing of English troops. The English commander protested against military occupation of San Juan, but to this Captain Pickett responded: " I, being here under orders from my government, cannot allow any joint occupation until so ordered by my commanding general. In this he had the approval of his commander. Bnt General Harney had acted without instructions from Washington, and the president withheld his official approval of the act of taking possession of the island in this manner, and expressed the hope that General Harney had done so for the protection of Ameri- can citizens and interest alone, and with no reference to territorial acquisitions. Still it was obvious that the Government at Washington was not nuwilling that an issue should be forced, so that the question would be settled. Certainly the pioneers of the Northwest approved it.

In the emergency General Scott was sent to the field of action, arriving late in 1859. On his way he called at Portland, and conferred with leading citizens and Territorial officers. The writer remembers him well as he appeared, as he walked the deck of the Massachusetts, as she lay at the Portland wharf, on his way to the north. He had met him once before, on the hill at the head of " Lundy's Lane," but six years before. General Scott went out under pacific instructions, directed to bring about " joint occupation" of San Juan until the boundary line was settled. General Harney was withdrawn from command in the North- west. It was agreed between General Scott and Governor Donglas of Vancouver, that 100 armed men of each party should occupy the island; and thus again the case was remanded to di- plomacy. But the act of General Harney had forced a speedy adjustment.

The next resort was a proposal on the part of Great Britain to submit the question at issne between the two governments to arbitration, and

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she named the king of the Netherlands, or of Sweden and Norway, or the president of the Federal Council of Switzerland, as the arbiter. This proposition was declined by the United States, and for ten years the question lingered. At length, on the 8th of May, 1871, the ques- tion was given for final arbitration, without ap- peal, to Emperor William of Germany.

For twenty-five years, under the finesse of British diplomacy, the treaty of June 15, 1846, had waited for its execution. Its interpretation was the last question of territorial right between Great Britain and the United States. It was eminently fitting that George Bancroft, who was secretary of the navy when the treaty was ne- gotiated, and was now the only remaining mem- ber of the administration that negotiated it, should be chosen to expound the treaty to the German emperor on the part of the United States. His memorial of 120 octavo pages is one of the most finished and unanswerable di- plomatic arguments ever produced. Each party presented a memorial setting forth its case. These memorials were then interchanged and re- plies were presented by each. These four papers

the emperor laid before three eminent jurists. besides giving them his personal attention. After a full and faithful examination of the submitted case the emperor decreed this award:

" Most in accordance with the true interpre- tations of the treaty concluded on the 15th of June, 1856, between the Government of her Britannic Majesty and of the United States of America, is the claim of the Government of the United States, that the boundary line between the territories of lier Britannic Majesty and the United States should be drawn through the Haro channel. Authenticated by our antograph sig- nature, and the impression of the Imperial Great Seal. Given at Berlin October the 21st, 1872." Thus the end of the long controversy came.

For over ninety-two years, the two great English-speaking nations of the world had been trying to decide upon a line that should divide between them from sea to sea, and at Berlin, and by the Emperor William, the last and defi- nite word was spoken, and the controversy was ended.

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CHAPTER VII.

FIRST AMERICAN SETTLEMENT.

ASTORIA-CHARACTER OF EARLY TRADE-JOHN JACOB ASTOR-JEFFERSON'S LETTER TO ASTOR THE PACIFIC FUR COMPANY-ITS MEMBERS THE SHIP TONQUIN-ARRIVAL AT THE COLUM- BIA- OVERLAND COMPANY-WILSON PRICE HUNT- UP THE MISSOURI-OVER THE MOUNTAINS- WRECKED ON SNAKE RIVER-IN SNAKE RIVER DESERT APPALLING OBSTACLES-COMPANY REACH ASTORIA-THE SHIP TONQUIN AGAIN -- LANDING AT ASTORIA-TONQUIN SAILS NORTH- TRADING WITH THE NATIVES- DESTRUCTION OF THE TONQUIN-IRVING'S ACCOUNT-ALEXAN- DER MCKAY-AFFAIRS AT ASTORIA-THE NORTHWESTERN COMPANY AND MCDOUGAL-ARRI- VAL OF SHIP BEAVER-MACKENZIE AND THE NORTHWESTERN COMPANY-GATHERING OF THE PARTNERS AT ASTORIA -- BRITISH WAR SHIP EXPECTED-EXPEDITION FOR THE RELIEF OF AS- TORIA ABANDONED-NEGOTIATIONS WITH NORTHWESTERN COMPANY-ASTORIA SURRENDERED TO THAT COMPANY-ARRIVAL OF MR. HUNT-ASTORIA RETURNED TO THE UNITED STATES AFTER THE CLOSE OF THE WAR.

T will be hard to put into a brief chapter a his- tory which the genius of an Irving has woven into a volume that has become a classic of romance and adventure; but the integrity of our purpose demands that the trial be made. Other chapters of this book have related the events that led up to the magnificent enterprise of John Jacob Astor in his attempt to found a colony and establish a great commerce on the Pacific coast, and hence it is not needfnl even to recapitulate. It may, however, be proper to state, in an introductory paragraph, that the trade of the Pacific coast, including that on the Columbia river, during the first decade of the present century, was largely of a fugitive char- acter, or in other words, was the commerce of individual adventure rather than of organized companies recognized by national law and sus- tained by national authority. The individuals that conducted it, might, and indeed often did, represent wealthy and long-established houses in cities on the other side of the world, but their field of operations were so distant and their trade was encompassed by so many contingencies in- eident to the character of the people with whom they dealt, that they might well be considered " adventurers." France, having transferred all her interests of territory and trade to the United

States, was out of the line of competition, either for place or profit. England, with her usual greed, grasped eagerly at both. The United States had legitimately inherited the loftier part of English ambition for greatness and gain, and of course she claimed, as of right, freedom for trade and the occupancy of her citizens in all the westward regions to the sea. Her technical claim was, as we have seen elsewhere, founded on the discovery of the Columbia river by Cap- tain Gray in 1792, on the explorations of Lewis and Clarke, continued from the springs in the mountains to the discharge between the capes into the ocean of the mighty Columbia in 1805, and by later purchase, from the Government of France, in 1804, of all her rights of territory, and every other right she held, in the vast Louisiana conntry, stretching from the Missouri to the Pacific. England's technical rights were based on alleged discoveries by Captain Sir Francis Drake, Captain Cook, Captain Vancouver, and the explorations of Alexander Mackenzie. Thus, in the assertion of these technical claims to Oregon, and in the effort of each to validate these claims as against the other, the United States and Great Britain stood face to face in the opening of the long and final struggle that would forever determine whether that region

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should be American or British-the struggle for actual possession, during the first decade of the century.

The influence of Mr. Jefferson, as our readers know, was then potent in American affairs, and he earnestly sought American supremacy on the Pacific coast. John Jacob Astor was then a cen- tral figure in American commercial enterprises, and had already extended his ventures beyond the great lakes and the headwaters of the Mis- sissippi. His attention was attracted to the vast region westward of the Rocky mountains, and he resolved to carry into them the commer- cial force of an organized company to supplant the fugitive trade of the independent rovers of the wilderness and the sea. With the prescience of a statesman, as well as with the genius of the merchant, he resolved to establish a great cen- tral post at the mouth of the Columbia, where the drainage of almost half a continent meets the waters of the mightest ocean of the globe, and forms a port for the world's greatest flow of trade. Mr. Jefferson and the most intelligent and far-seeing statesman of the country gave him encouragement and counsel. They foresaw, as in the vision of a clear prophecy, what we read now as a marvelous history. Later, Mr. Jefferson, in a letter to Mr. Astor, thus ex- pressed his own views of the enterprise the latter had undertaken, in these words:

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An illustrated history of the state of Washington, containing biographical mention of its pioneers and prominent citizens, Part 9

Author: Hines, Harvey K., 1828-1902 Publication date: 1893 Publisher: Chicago, The Lewis publishing company Number of Pages: 1056

Author: Hines, Harvey K., 1828-1902
Publication date: 1893
Publisher: Chicago, The Lewis publishing company
Number of Pages: 1056