USA > Washington > History of Washington; the rise and progress of an American state, Vol. II > Part 16
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These plans were slowly formed. As all must do who succeed in great undertakings, he prepared the way with great prudence and caution, and advanced step by step only so rapidly as he could do so with safety. The situation offered great temptation to one of Irish birth to strike a blow at British interest, and so win some present applause from the multitude, but it did not swerve him from the purpose
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he had formed. To terminate the joint occupation agree- ment would do no good if we were not prepared to take immediate possession of the country and hold it against all comers. That we were not so prepared was evident enough. If we terminated the agreement and left England in pos- session, through the Hudson's Bay Company, we would sometime have to recover the country by force of arms, and that would be worse than to leave things as they were. To build forts on the Columbia and at other points, to en- courage our fur traders to seek for and attempt to take the equal privileges guaranteed them by the joint occupa- tion convention, would be to bring on a condition of things similar to that which prevailed in the Red River country during the war between the Hudson's Bay and old North- west Fur companies, and that would surely end in a greater and more serious war.
What then was to be done ? It is reasonably clear that no plan suggested itself at once even to Senator Linn, who was studying the situation with profound and almost undivided attention. That American settlers could go and take peaceable possession of the country, as they had an undoubted right to do, was doubtless ever present to him. He had been born among that kind of people, and had lived among them all his life. If they would go in sufficient numbers they could not only take possession, but they could be relied upon to hold it, should occasion require. But how could they be in- duced to go in sufficient numbers for that purpose ? No promise of protection would induce them to make the long journey of two thousand miles with their wives and families, through a wilderness and over mountains and deserts. Build- ing and garrisoning forts would not do it. They would prefer to remain where they were, where they did not need
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forts or protection of any kind. Some inducement must be offered them. There was but one inducement the govern- ment could offer, but happily it was the one inducement that settlers would most appreciate-homes, land, and enough land to make every settler's family independent. This would start the settlers in ever increasing numbers toward the west, and they would continue their march until Oregon was ours.
Although Linn may not have had this idea clearly devel- oped in his mind when he began to renew the agitation of the Oregon question in 1837, he gradually developed and perfected it, practically in the form in which it originally became enacted into law, some years after his death. It settled Oregon and settled the Oregon question, and it has done more than any and all other legislation has done, or could do, to hasten the settlement of all the States west of the Mississippi. Lewis F. Linn deserves a monument in every State and every thriving city in the West, for having done what he did in the short space of life that remained to him after he entered the Senate, to provide free homes for home- less people.
A special session of Congress was held in October 1837, during which resolutions were unanimously adopted by both the Senate and House, requesting the president, "If not incompatible with the public interests, to communicate to each body at the next session of Congress information as to whether any, and if so, what portion of the territory of the United States west of the Rocky Mountains and bordering on the Pacific Ocean, is in the possession of any foreign power, and if so, in what way, by what authority and how long such possession or occupancy has been kept." The Senate resolution also asked that there should be
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communicated any correspondence between our govern- ment and any foreign government relative to the occupa- tion of said territory.
These resolutions were referred to the state department for a report, and in December President Van Buren sent to both houses a letter prepared by John Forsyth, Secretary of State, in which he set forth that the Astoria establishment had passed into the hands of the British Northwest Company by the sale of Mr. Astor's interest, during the war of 1812, and on the consolidation of that Company with the Hudson's Bay Company, it had passed into and remained in the pos- session of that Company, and that its retention by them, and the establishment of other trading posts by them, within the Oregon territory was not deemed incompatible with the provisions of the treaties of 1818 and 1827. The Senate was also informed that no correspondence had been had about the occupation of the said territory, with any foreign govern- ments, since the convention of Aug. 6, 1827, had been signed.
During the regular session, which began December II, Senator Linn introduced a bill to establish the Oregon Ter- ritory, authorizing a fort to be built on the Columbia : the occupation of the country by a military force: creating a port of entry, and requiring that the country should be held subject to the revenue laws of the United States. This bill was debated by Senators Clay, Buchanan, Linn and Benton, and finally referred to a select committee of five, from which it was never reported. But in the following year Senator Linn presented a report from the committee, which reviewed our claims to the country, and contained some valuable information in regard to the means by which settlers could reach it. This report also contained a map of the Oregon country, showing the forty-ninth degree extended through
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and across Vancouver Island, as its northern boundary, and at the end of this line was printed this quotation from Secretary Clay's instructions to our minister to England in 1826: "You are authorized to propose the annulment of the third article of the convention of 1818, and the extensions of the line, on the parallel of 49 degrees, from the eastern slope of the Rocky Mountains, where it now terminates, to the Pacific Ocean as the permanent boundary between the two powers in that quarter. This is our ultimatum, and you may so announce it."
President Van Buren in his annual message to Congress in December 1837, referred to the unsettled boundary ques- tion, particularly between Maine and Canada, and this part of the message was referred by the House of Representatives to the Committee on Foreign Affairs, of which Caleb Cush- ing, then one of the ablest lawyers in either house, and after- wards attorney-general in President Pierce's cabinet, was a member. During the session he delivered a speech on the boundary question, in which he paid particular attention to our claims on the Pacific, and later prepared one of the fullest and most complete reports on that subject that had ever been presented to either house. This report was subse- quently enlarged by the addition of several pages, and twenty thousand extra copies of it were printed for general distribution. No man of his time was more competent to discuss this question from any point of view, than he was, for he had long studied it, and had written much about it. Some members of his family were ship owners and occa- sionally sent their vessels to the Columbia. Through them he had gained information not generally accessible to the public. He had thoroughly considered all the treaties, and had written and published three long articles in the North
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American Review, then the most influential magazine pub- lished on the continent, on the Oregon country and our claims to it. These claims, he held, now made our title most complete. Though our claims, and those of Spain, which we had acquired, "conflicted with each other originally, they acquired mutual strength in the same hands; as if three persons claim the same estate, one by deed or devise, another by inheritance, and a third by permission, the union of all in one person, by purchase or otherwise, would result in the best of titles." He also gave this splendid description of the resistless westward movement of our population : "Who shall undertake to define the limits of the expansibility of the United States? Does it not flow westward with the never ceasing advance of a rising tide of the sea? Along a line of more than a thousand miles from the Lakes to the Gulf of Mexico, perpetually moves forward the western frontier of the United States. Here, stretched along the whole length of this line, is the vanguard as it were of the onward march of the Anglo-American race, advancing, it has been calculated, at the average rate of about one-half a degree of longitude each succeeding year. Occasionally, an obstacle presents itself, in some unproductive region of country or some Indian tribe; the column is checked; its wings incline towards each other: it breaks: but it speedily reunites again beyond the obstacle, and resumes its forward progress, ever facing and approaching nearer and nearer to the remotest regions of the west. This movement goes on with the predestined certainty, and the unerring precision of the great works of Providence, rather than as an act of feeble man. Another generation may see the settlements of our people diffused over the Pacific slope of the Rocky Mountains. It is idle to suppose any new colony to be
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sent out by Great Britain will, or can, establish itself in the far west, ultimately to stand in competition with this great movement of the population and power of the United States."
As to the unanimity with which all our leading statesmen had supported our claim to Oregon this report says: "The Committee beg leave to subjoin, that in the course of this report they have not undertaken to raise any novel preten- sions in behalf of the United States. They have relied on the grounds of right alleged by every American statesman, who has had occasion to examine the subject, from the time of Mr. Jefferson to the present day : referring more especially to the instructions, correspondence and despatches of Mr. Monroe, Mr. Adams, Mr. Rush, Mr. Clay, Mr. Gallatin and Mr. Lawrence, and the reports of Mr. Floyd, Mr. Bay- lies and Mr. Linn, and superadding only such further illustrations, facts and arguments as the personal research of the Committee has brought to their knowledge."
At this session, in December 1838, Senator Linn introduced his bill for the occupation of the Oregon country, and it was read twice and referred to a select committee composed of himself as chairman, John C. Calhoun, Henry Clay and Franklin Pierce.
In December 1839, at the opening of the twenty-sixth Congress, he introduced a joint resolution in which his plan to encourage settlement by gifts of land first appears. It declared that "our title to the Oregon country is indisputable and will never be abandoned": that our government should give the requisite twelve months' notice, that we desired to terminate the Convention of August 6, 1827; for extending the laws of the United States over Oregon; for raising soldiers to protect immigrants to Oregon; and for giving 640 acres of land in Oregon to each white male of 18 years of age,
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resident of the territory who would live on and cultivate it for five years. These resolutions were referred to a select committee consisting of Linn, Walker, Preston, Pierce and Sevier.
It was at this session that Congress ordered the publica- tion of Mr. Greenhow's history in which all the story of the discovery of the coast was for the first time told, and the facts and correspondence pertaining to the several treaties and conventions made by and between various governments affecting title to it, were for the first time brought together. Of this history twenty-five hundred extra copies were printed for the use of the public, and it was also republished by pri- vate enterprise, both in New York and London, for general sale. It is the only official history of any of our territorial acquisitions which our government had, at that time, ever printed, while the title was still in dispute.
On December 31, 1840, Linn gave notice of his intention to introduce a joint resolution relating to Oregon, and on January 8, 1841, he introduced his bill for the occupation of the country. It provided for a line of military posts from Fort Leavenworth to the Rocky Mountains, and for donating one thousand acres of land, instead of six hundred and forty, to every white male, eighteen years of age and upwards, who should cultivate and use the same for five consecutive years. This bill was referred to a select committee composed of Linn, Walker, Pierce, Preston and Sevier. In presenting it Mr. Linn said that when the bill was before the Senate during the last and preceding sessions of Congress, his polit- ical friends, as well as opponents, earnestly pressed him to forbear urging the subject to a final vote, as it might prove embarrassing at that time, in the settlement of the long pend- ing and important boundary question. But since then he
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had been censured in letters received from gentlemen resid- ing in all parts of the Union, for not having pressed it to a final decision. England had extended a part of her criminal laws over the Oregon country, and was now proposing to enforce them even up to the boundaries of the States of Arkansas and Missouri. If we had any rights in the terri- tory in dispute, he was not willing to abandon them, and was quite prepared to discuss and finally settle them.
At this time petitions and memorials began to appear from various quarters, urging that the long pending question be taken up and finally disposed of. Two petitions from the settlers in Oregon were among the first of these, but they received but little attention. Now Mr. King of Alabama presented a petition from citizens of his State who wished to migrate 'to Oregon, by way of the Isthmus of Panama, and they asked that the government would make some arrangement for their protection after they reached it. Mr. King said many of these memorialists were personally known to him and were men of worth.
Near the close of the session Mr. Linn proposed a reso- lution that the president be requested to give the notice to the British government, which the treaty of 1827 between the two governments requires, in order to put an end to the treaty for the joint occupation of the territory which is now possessed and used by the Hudson's Bay Company to the ruin of the American Indian and fur trade in that quarter, and conflicting with our inland commerce with the internal provinces of Mexico.
This resolution was discussed briefly by Linn, Benton, Sevier and Preston, and on August 2Ist, after being amended so as to direct the Committee on Foreign Relations to in- quire into the expediency of requesting the President to give
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the notice, it was referred to the Foreign Relations Com- mittee.
At the opening of the second session of the twenty-seventh Congress, in December 1841, President Tyler invited partic- ular attention to the report of the secretary of war, which proposed, "the establishment of a chain of military posts from Council Bluffs to some point on the Pacific ocean within our limits. The benefits thereby destined to accrue to our citizens engaged in the fur trade over that wilderness region," said the president, "added to the importance of cultivating friendly relations with the savage tribes inhabiting it, and, at the same time, of giving protection to our frontier settle- ments, and of establishing the means of safe intercourse be- tween the American settlements at the mouth of the Columbia River and those on this side of the Rocky Mountains, would seem to suggest the importance of carrying into effect the recommendations upon this head with as little delay as may be practicable."
Linn again introduced his bill granting land to actual settlers, and made a speech in its support, in which he insisted that there could be no dispute about the right of the United States to all the region south of the Columbia River, a right which Great Britain had fully conceded. The only ques- tion now was the right to the country north and west of the Columbia. "Besides this bundle of memorials praying Congress to take steps to assert our title to the territory and to enact measures to encourage emigration," he said, "the legislatures of two or three states had passed resolutions asking Congress to assert our rights to the country we claimed on the western ocean, and to take such steps as the urgency of the case seemed to demand. He had also in his posses- sion hundreds upon hundreds of letters, from every quarter
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of the Union, making anxious inquiries as to what was likely to be done by Congress relative to this long agitated and long deferred question."
The committee unanimously instructed their chairman to report this bill back to the Senate with the recommendation that it pass. It was then placed in its order on the calen- dar, but before it came up for consideration as a special order, Lord Ashburton arrived from England to enter upon a negoti- ation touching all points of dispute between the two countries -boundaries as well as others, Oregon as well as Maine.
In that posture of affairs it was considered on all hands indelicate, not to say unwise, to press the bill to a decision whilst these negotiations were pending. It was accordingly laid aside and before it was taken up again the treaty fixing the northeastern boundary, but leaving the Oregon boundary question still open, was sent to the Senate for ratification.
The reason why the Oregon question was not made a part of the subject of negotiation between Mr. Webster and Lord Ashburton was not then stated, nor was it made clear until many years afterward. In the debate which occupied a large share of the time of the Senate for several days, Mr. Webster and President Tyler were severely criticized, not only for some features of the treaty they had made, but par- ticularly for one they had not made. Why was the Oregon boundary not settled ? What purpose had the administra- tion and Lord Ashburton in holding it in abeyance ? Had they, by consenting to its postponement, entered into some entangling arrangement that would prejudice its determina- tion later, and perhaps deprive us of some valuable territory that really belonged to us ?
Unfortunately the administration was not in position to make the full and satisfactory reply, that might have been
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made. The fact was that Lord Ashburton had come over with full authority to settle the whole boundary question, and unfortunately this had become known soon after his arrival. But it had not become known at the same time, that the conditions on which he could adjust the Oregon boundary were conditions that our government could not accept. He was positively forbidden by his instructions to accept the forty-ninth parallel, and neither President Tyler nor Mr. Webster would consider anything less. On learn- ing what his lordship's instructions were, therefore they concluded to take half a loaf rather than get no bread-to leave the northwestern boundary out of consideration entirely until the northeast boundary was settled. But having done this, to avoid prejudicing or embarrassing future negotiation for the settlement of the Oregon boundary, they could not now make the full explanation demanded without doing what they had so far avoided. They were therefore forced to accept criticism, all of which they did not deserve, and censure for doing something they not only had not done, but never thought of doing.
Mr. Benton was particularly severe in criticising all that he found to criticise and in condemning much that he only suspected. He fancied that the administration had failed to urge our demands in the northwest, through weakness, and for this he censured both the president and his secretary of state unsparingly. Mr. Buchanan of Pennsylvania and Mr. Conrad of Louisiana, a new member of the Senate, were scarcely less severe, but after a debate lasting from the elev- enth to the twentieth of August the treaty was confirmed by a vote of more than three to one.
The treaty now being out of the way Senator Linn gave notice that he would press his bill to a vote at the earliest
THOMAS H. BENTON.
This famous statesman was born in North Carolina in 1782. He early removed to Tennessee and then to Missouri, and on the admission of that State to the Union in 1820, became one of its first senators. He served in the Senate continuously for thirty years, and subsequently served one term in the House of Repre- sentatives. He died in Washington City, April Io, 1858.
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Thomas HBenton
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opportunity. There was no longer any fear that it would embarrass negotiations. He was confident that there was a majority in either house in its favor, and nothing should now prevent him from urging it to its final passage. But it was near the end of August and Congress was about to adjourn until December. Nothing could therefore be hoped for until it convened again, and so the matter rested until the new session opened.
There had been no debate in the House on the Oregon question during this Congress, but the Military Committee, to which that part of the president's message relating to a chain of military posts across the continent had been referred, brought in one of the most complete reports that the Oregon question had ever called forth. It was prepared by Congressman N. E. Pendleton of Ohio, the father of George H. Pendleton of later years. It did not argue the question of our title so fully or so ably as Cush- ing's report had done, for there was now no need of that, as no member of either House or Senate, nor of the administration, nor had any person of consequence anywhere, so far as known, expressed a doubt on that sub- ject since the question had been revived. But it contained a vast amount of information which settlers would value, which had been gathered from the reports of Wyeth, Slacum, Kelly, Wilkes and other persons who had visited the country, and who were prepared to tell people who thought of going there what they would most like to know. Of this report a large number of extra copies were printed and circu- lated.
Shortly after Congress convened in December 1843 Presi- dent Tyler was asked to send to the Senate any informal communications that might have passed between Lord
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Ashburton and Mr. Webster, in the negotiations regarding the northeast boundary, and the president replied that he did "not deem it consistent with the public interest to make any communication on that subject whatever." This aroused Benton and the others who had opposed the rati- fication of the treaty, and for some weeks succeeding, the Linn bill and the Ashburton treaty held the attention of Congress and the country. Benton denounced Tyler and Webster more unsparingly than before. He declared that the president's refusal to furnish the Senate with the informal communications with Ashburton on the Oregon boundary, and the reasons why it was not deemed wise to attempt to include that subject in the Ashburton treaty, were because they would disgrace the administration, by showing that the president and his secretary of state were recreant to our national interests, and ready to sacrifice our national honor on the question of the Oregon boundary, and were willing to yield-not all of Oregon-but that part north and west of the Columbia, by making the Colum- bia the boundary line, instead of the forty-ninth degree to the Pacific.
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