USA > Washington > History of Washington; the rise and progress of an American state, Vol. II > Part 17
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The president could not with propriety reply, nor could Mr. Webster make answer in person, but Mr. Choate, who was his friend, was authorized to speak for him, and did so on Wednesday, January 18th .* He was glad he said to have it in his power to undeceive the senator, and to assure him, which he did from authority-for he had been requested by the secretary himself to do it for him-that he "never either made or entertained a proposition to admit of any line south of the forty-ninth parallel of latitude, as a negotiable
* Congressional Globe, Twenty-seventh Congress, Third Session, pp. I71-2.
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boundary line for the territory of the United States." In still another speech, made some days later, Mr. Choate still more specifically denied Mr. Benton's insinuations. "I desire chiefly to assure the Senator and the Senate," he said, "that the apprehension intimated by him, that a disclosure of these informal communications would disgrace the American Secretary, by showing that he had offered a boundary line south of the parallel of forty-nine, is totally unfounded. He will be glad to hear me say that I am authorized and de- sired to declare, that in no communication, formal or informal, was such an offer made, and that none such was ever meditated."*
The debate on the Linn bill in the Senate began on January 9th, and was participated in by many senators. Among the most prominent of those who favored it, in addition to Sena- tors Linn and Benton, were Senators Tappan of Ohio, Sevier of Arkansas, Woodbury of New Hamphsire, Young of Illinois and Phelps of Vermont. Those opposing were Senators Calhoun, and McDuffie of South Carolina, Choate of Massachusetts, Huntington of Connecticut, Berrien of Georgia and Rives of Virginia, and they objected to it only
* It would have been easy for President Tyler and Secretary Webster to spare themselves all these bitter denunciations by making known just what Lord Ashburton's instructions were, but this it seems, they did not think it wise to do, and their full tenor was not made known until they were published in the report of the Berlin Arbitration (by Emperor William) in 1871. From this it appears that he was directed to propose the line of the Columbia River from its mouth to the Snake River, and thence due east to the summit of the Rockies. If he could not secure that line he was (2) authorized to renew the offer made us in 1824, and again in 1827 by England, of the line of forty-nine degrees from the summit of the Rocky Mountains to the most north- eastern branch of the Columbia, and thence the river to the Pacific. If he could not secure this line he was positively forbidden to accept the line of 49 degrees, to the coast, which we had always insisted upon, and as early as 1826 had announced to England as "our ultimatum."
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because they believed the section granting land to settlers would conflict with the convention for joint occupation, and possibly lead to trouble with England. Some of these declared they would be willing to vote for the bill with this clause, providing notice for terminating the convention should be given in advance. Not one of them doubted the validity of our title, at least so far north as the 49th parallel, and a few were for asserting our claim to the whole coast as far north as 54° 40'.
Senator Linn's argument in favor of the bill was temperate but forceful. Mr. Benton was aggressive and even violent. He contended that England had absolutely no claim to any part of the country south of the forty-ninth parallel, except such as she had gained through our own temporizing policy. She had, in accordance with her long established custom, laid claim to all in the hope of finally securing a part by compromise. He would consent to no compromise by which we should sacrifice any part of what was legally and justly ours. In describing the conditions which we had permitted to grow up in Oregon, by the policy we had so long pursued, he said: "In its own name, and by an act of Parliament immediately after the Convention, the British Government has extended its jurisdiction over the whole country, taking no notice at all of our claims, and subjecting all our citizens and their property to British judges, British courts, and appeals to Canada. They have taken possession of our claimed territory, of our harbor, our river, colonized the country and killed and expelled our traders.
Our traders, left to contend single-handed against the organized Hudson's Bay Company, against their Indians, against their free goods, have all been driven in-forced not only out of the valley of the Columbia, but out of the
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Rocky Mountains, and ruin has overtaken many of them. Even the strong and rich Company of Mr. Choteau can no longer approach the Rocky Mountains. The Hudson's Bay Company are the masters there. Every American that approaches that region does so at the peril of his life. Many were killed there this summer, . . . and now, if after all this, any proposition has been made by our Government to give up the north bank of the Columbia, I for one shall not fail to brand such a proposition with the name of trea- son. We fear War! as if the fear of war ever kept it off. We fear war while Great Britain is systematically preparing for war with us. All her encroachments upon us show that she is preparing for this result. She is preparing for war, and the late treaty is the largest of her preparations. As a nation Great Britain despises and hates our na-
tion. . There may be individual Englishmen who have regard for individual Americans, but as it concerns nation and nation they despise and hate us! They want war with us, and count upon its being short and triumphant. We should count upon expelling them from our continent, giving freedom to Ireland and aiding the English people to reform their government. Sooner or later the war will come for Great Britain is determined upon it, and we should roll back the thunder upon her own shores.
"Thirty thousand friends of Ireland landed on her coast, and forming the rallying point for a million of patriots, would make 'the devoted island' free, and shake Old England to her center. These are my sentiments, and I neither dis- semble nor deny them. Peace is our policy. War is the policy of England and war with us is now her favorite policy. Let it come rather than dishonor!
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"The man is alive, and with a beard on his face, (though it may not be I) who will see an American army in Ireland, and an American general in the streets of London."*
All the senators who favored the bill stood staunchly by its provision for donating land to actual settlers, and did not hesitate to declare that they regarded this as the soul of the whole measure. The purpose of it was to encourage settle- ment. We had a clear right to make grants of land, not- withstanding the joint occupation agreement. We could have made grants before that agreement was made: there was no reason why we should not make them now. It was not possible that England would oppose if grants were made south of the Columbia, since she had practically abandoned all claim to that country. It was the duty of the government to protect its citizens in all their lawful pursuits, in every portion of our territory, no matter how remote, and it was equally the duty of Congress to extend our territorial laws for the protection of even its most remotely settled citizens. In the opinion of Mr. Woodbury it was especially expedient that all this should be done now and quickly, since further neglect was likely to be laid hold of by a rival power, if a ground were given for enlarging and strengthening preten- tions which never could have arisen had we made timely effort to secure our rights beyond cavil.
Mr. Calhoun pointed to the fact that Great Britain had planted her power on the eastern coast of China, where she was preparing to maintain a strong military and naval force, and that from such a vantage point she would soon be ready to concentrate a force at the mouth of the Columbia to · maintain her claim to that territory, in case a collision should be brought about. But he was not for that reason in favor
* Appendix to Congress. Globe, 27th Congress, 3d Sess., pp. 74-84.
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of abandoning any part of our claims. He was opposed to that. But time was acting in our favor, and he thought it wise, in the then embarrassed state of our finances, to per- mit it to continue so to act. Even Mr. McDuffie, the most violent opponent of the measure, did not doubt our title. He thought it infinitely more clear than that upon which the negotiations had just terminated, but he did not think the country worth quarreling about.
The debate continued until the third of February, when the bill was passed, twenty-four senators voting for it and the noes were not entered on the journal. There were then fifty senators and four were absent, and doubtless paired, so that a majority of the whole number favored the bill with the land clause its essential feature. Of the other twenty-two sena- tors, nine had during the debate declared that they opposed it only because they believed it to be in conflict with the joint occupation convention.
Congress adjourned on the third of March, and before it reassembled Mr. Linn had died, and the cause he had so long championed, and which now seemed about to succeed, was left to the management of others. As Moses had come up from the plains of Moab unto the mountain of Nebo, even to the top of Pisgah, where the Lord showed him all the land of Gilead and of Judah, unto the utmost sea, so he had seen, or seemed about to see, his efforts to secure the whole disputed valley of the Columbia crowned with success, and then in the stillness of the night a voice said to him as it had said also to Moses: "I have caused thee to see this with thine eyes, but thou shalt not go over thither."
He died when the work he had so well begun was still far from finished, but there was no doubt as to what its end would be. The measure he had so carefully prepared, and
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so long and so ably championed was now fairly well under- stood. It was already popular in the West, and was growing in favor everywhere. Champions for it were not lacking in Congress. Its enactment was beginning to be regarded as certain. Emigrants in ever increasing numbers were taking the trail toward the West, and the thirty thousand rifles of whom Senator Tappan had spoken, as the surest reliance of our government in the settlement of the boundary controversy, would soon be in the valley of the Columbia. There was no longer any need for anxiety about the boundary, or about joint occupation. The settler would soon be on the ground, and joint occupation, as between settler and trapper and fur trader could not long endure.
And so it came about, as it often had done before in this world, that while the man died his work remained. It seemed unfinished-scarcely begun perhaps, but it was sufficient. The donation act, designed to encourage the settle- ment of Oregon, was the foundation of our generous home- stead law, the beginning of that magnificent system of disposing of our national domain that has been so beneficial to government and people alike. To have planted the seed from which that tree grew, even though he did not live to see its tender shoot, or enjoy the shade of its wide spreading branches, is enough to perpetuate the memory of Lewis F. Linn to remotest generations. So long as a free people enjoy the luxury of free homes he will not be forgotten.
If some soldier, "wearing the tools of his trade girt round his haunches, not without air of pride," as Mr. Carlyle has said, could show that he had desolated one-tenth as many homes by war, as the statesmanship of Lewis F. Linn has filled with prosperous and happy families, his fame would fill the whole earth. Even that of Cæsar and Napoleon
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would pale in its presence; Marlborough, and Turenne, Frederick, Eugene, and Suvarof, Titus and Constantine, and other famous generals of more ancient times would hardly be remembered. But Lewis F. Linn, the peer of Benton, Clay, Webster, Calhoun and Douglas, the author of the donation land law, which was the beginning of the most beneficent system of land distribution the world has ever known, is now almost forgotten. The world will yet remember him.
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CHAPTER XXVI. THE EARLY IMMIGRANTS.
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M ORE than five months before the Lausanne sailed from New York with the great mis- sionary reinforcement which reached the Co- lumbia in 1840, another party was organized at Peoria, Illinois, to make the journey overland. Captain T. J. Farnham, who afterward wrote a fairly entertaining book about his trip, was the leader of it. This was not at all a missionary enterprise. If we may judge it now by the declarations of its leader, made shortly after they set out, its youthful members fancied they were going on a filibuster- ing expedition. They were nineteen in number, not counting their captain, and called themselves the "Oregon Dragoons." They carried a banner presented by the wife of their comman- der, and inscribed "Oregon or the Grave." At Independ- ence, Missouri, and possibly at other places the captain frankly told those he conversed with that his purpose was to take possession of Oregon and drive the British intruders out of it. Being asked if he thought his force of nineteen men sufficient for that purpose, he replied, "Oh, yes; plenty." "But some of your party are Englishmen," said a doubting interrogator. "Do you think they will fight against their countrymen ?" "Oh, yes; they will not turn traitors," said the confident commander; "if they do by God we'll shoot 'em."
Peoria was in those days pretty well out toward the fron- tier. The most thickly settled part of Illinois lay to the south and east of it. Chicago was scarcely more than a frontier town; there was plenty of excellent prairie land still open for settlement within fifty miles of it. All the present counties in the northern part of the State were as wild as they ever had been, with the exception of a few settlers here and there, and a small colony of lead miners at Galena.
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Nevertheless there was a lively interest in the Oregon ques- tion among such settlers as there were, and at no place was it livelier or keener than at Peoria. The "Patriot" published there, had been one of the first papers to reprint Walker's story of the Indians who had made the long journey across the plains to St. Louis in search of religious instruction. The Presbyterian Synod had met there and investigated and discussed it. Jason Lee and his two Indian boys had held a meeting there, and the people who had attended had remembered, and discussed with the greatest interest, the stories they told of the natural wealth of western Oregon, and its most attractive climate. From that time forth Peoria became one of the principal recruiting stations of the Oregon immigration.
By the advice of Sublette and Thompson, the fur traders, whom they met at Independence, Farnham's party took the Sante Fe road, in preference to that up the Platte, which the fur traders had now been traveling for several years. The young men were without experience as plainsmen, and consequently made their way with some difficulty, and encountered many adventures, some of which were not alto- gether of an agreeable kind. The harmony of the party soon began to be disturbed by quarrels and a part deserted, after falling in with a Sante Fe wagon train, by which they were at first mistaken for a party of Comanche Indians. With this they reached Bent's Fort, on the Arkansas, where they remained about a week and where their quarrels con- tinued. The party divided here. Farnham and a few others decided to follow the Arkansas, and the remainder consisting of eight went north to the Platte, the south branch of which they reached at a point near where the city of Denver now stands. Thence they followed the river eastward to St.
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Vrains Fort, where they halted and awaited the arrival of a party bound for Green River. They were detained there for six weeks, when, the expected party having arrived, they resumed their journey, crossing the Black Hills to Laramie, and then following the north fork of the Platte, they crossed the mountains to Little Bear River, and thence over a barren desert to Fort Crockett. Here they made the acquaintance of a number of traders and trappers, among whom were Dr. Robert Newell and Joseph L. Meek, who were about to start for Fort Hall to sell their furs, and lay in a stock of goods for the winter. Some of the party accompanied them, and as the season was then well advanced they made the trip with great difficulty, encountering deep snow during the greater part of it, and being reduced nearly to starvation on account of the short supply of their provisions. They arrived at Fort Hall on the eleventh day and were hospitably received by Frank Ermatinger, the Hudson's Bay representative who was then in charge. From this point Robert Shortress made his way, in company with a Canadian and two Indians, to Walla Walla, which they reached just as the winter had fairly begun. There they were advised that it was then too late in the season to cross the Cascade Mountains, so Shor- tress went to Dr. Whitman's mission, where he remained until spring. On March 12, 1840, he resumed his journey alone, following the south bank of the river along which he traveled, with no company except that of an occasional Indian, until he reached the Dalles. At the Methodist mission, then under charge of Rev. H. K. W. Perkins, he found Ben Wright from Texas and a young man by the name of Dutton, both of whom had crossed the plains during the preceding year. In their company he resumed his journey and finally arrived safely on the Willamette.
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Farnham, the captain of the dragoons, finally reached Walla Walla accompanied only by two of his party. He quarreled with one of them, and the already divided party were still further divided. One went to the Lapwai mission, where he found employment for a time in one of Spalding's mills, but afterwards went to the Willamette and finally to California. The other pursued his journey down the river alone, and finally reached Vancouver nearly naked and more than half starved. Farnham also reached the Willamette in time, but instead of raising the American flag and driving the Hudson's Bay Company out of the country, he finally accepted the gift of a suit of clothes and a passage to the Sandwich Islands in one of the Company's ships, and took final leave of Oregon. On his return to the East, in 1841, he published a pictorial history of California and Oregon, which was fairly successful and ran through several editions.
Four other members of this adventurous party, which set out with so many lofty hopes and high aspirations, finally found their way to the Willamette. They were Francis Fletcher, Joseph Holman, Ralph L. Killourne and Amos Cook. They spent the winter of 1839 in the mountains, and were forty days on the way from Fort Crockett to Fort Hall, which was four times the usual time required to make that journey. They did not reach Vancouver until the sum- mer of the following year. They were all so youthful in appearance, that Dr. McLoughlin suggested that it might be his duty to send them home as runaway boys, but he did not do so. They remained in the Willamette Valley and won honorable places among Oregon's most resolute and energetic pioneers. Of the remainder of this Peoria party some went to New Mexico and some returned home.
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A far more important party than Farnham's left the Mis- souri River for Oregon in the spring of 1842. It was the first organized immigrant party that crossed the plains and moun- tains, and finally reached its destination intact, and it was followed each succeeding year by constantly increasing trains of immigrants, until Oregon was finally settled and our title to it fixed and determined.
Dr. Elijah White has been given a large part of the credit for organizing and conducting this train through to its des- tination. White had come as a physician in 1837 with the first reinforcement sent to the Methodist mission on French Prairie. He had been one of the most active factors in dis- turbing the harmony of the little colony, and soon came to be regarded as an intriguer, who cared more for his own personal preference than for the general success of the mission. Gray says that "Jason Lee soon found out the character of this wolf in sheep's clothing, and presented charges against him for his immorality, and expelled him from the mission. Previous to leaving the country he called a business meeting and made his statements, and attempted to mob Lee and get the settlers to give him a character, in both of which he failed and left the country to impose upon the government in Washington, as he had done upon the mission and the early settlers of Oregon."
After leaving the Willamette he returned to the East, and as soon as he reached the frontier began to hold public meetings, and to deliver addresses, with a view of inducing settlers to go to the new country. As soon as Senator Linn of Missouri learned of his arrival, and the work he was en- gaged in, he invited him to visit Washington, and with the help of the senator and various other parties it was made apparent to the administration that it was desirable to have
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a government representative of some sort in the Oregon country, if for nothing else than that he might report regu- larly upon the movements of the British, who were there. But there was no law providing for an officer of any kind in that country, nor was a way easy to provide for one. But it was so desirable to have somebody there, with some sem- blance of authority, that it was finally arranged to send the doctor back with the title of Sub-Indian agent, as it was thought that an officer of that description would be little likely to give occasion for offence.
Having secured this recognition, and with a federal com- mission in his pocket, White at once resumed his efforts to organize an emigrant party for the following season, and by the first of May 1842, one hundred and five persons had assembled, with their wagons at the crossing of the Missouri. Most prominent among those who composed this, the first regular immigrant party to cross the plains, were Judge Columbia Lancaster, afterwards the first territorial repre- sentative of Washington in Congress, A. L. Lovejoy, L. W. Hastings, S. W. Moss, T. J. Shadden, J. L. Morrison, John and James Force, Hugh Burns, Medorem Crawford, and F. X. Matthieu. This company is described as having been made up largely of people of a roving disposition, some of whom never remained in one place longer than to obtain the means to travel; and of one family in particu- lar it was said that they had practically lived in a wagon for more than twenty years, only remaining in one locality long enough to make a crop, which they had done in every State and territory in the Mississippi Valley. While such people might not be very desirable as founders of a new State, nor likely to become permanent settlers in a new territory, they were a very good kind of people to explore and break a new
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trail across a continent, and this they did with success and to their everlasting credit. It is estimated that about one- third of them went to California during the succeeding year, though some of them subsequently came back to Oregon and remained there. At Elm Grove, a few miles west of the Missouri, the company found that some sort of organiza- tion was desirable, and accordingly a meeting was held to elect officers and adopt regulations. It was resolved "that every male over the age of eighteen years should be provided with one mule, or horse, or wagon conveyance; he should also have one gun, three pounds of powder, twelve pounds of lead, one thousand caps, or suitable flints, fifty pounds of flour or meal, thirty pounds of bacon and a suitable pro- portion of provisions for women and children; and if any present were not so provided he should be rejected."
Dr. White, who seems to have felt great pride in his com- mission as sub Indian agent, as well as confidence that it entitled him to do anything that the national government could do if actually present, here exhibited it to the company, and was elected captain for a month. Columbia Lancaster, L. W. Hastings, and A. Lawrence Lovejoy were designated as a "scientific corps, to keep a careful and true record of everything for the benefit of others who may hereafter remove to Oregon, and that the government may be well informed of the route, its obstructions, means of subsistence, eminences, depressions, distances, bearings, etc." A black- smith, a wagon maker, and a road and bridge builder were selected, each of whom was authorized to have two assis- tants, and when necessary to call to their aid the whole force of the company. A code of regulations forbidding profane swearing, obscene conversation and immoral conduct, was adopted and these regulations were to be enforced by
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