USA > Washington > History of Washington; the rise and progress of an American state, Vol. II > Part 5
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It is easy now to understand why England so ardently desired the free navigation of the Columbia, and possession of the country west and north of it, and why she should so willingly resign all on the east and south. The value of the great interior valleys of Washington, Oregon and Idaho, were not known or guessed before the boundary question was finally settled. The great sagebrush plains were sup- posed to be nothing better than a desert, and were so repre- sented even to a much later day, on all maps. The Hudson's Bay agents and trappers found some good hunting ground in the Snake River valley, and along the upper waters of the Columbia and its tributaries, but its possession was not essential to their business. There was abundant fur-bearing
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territory elsewhere, and so long as they could keep the Colum- bia as a means of access to it, they could spare all the country lying south and east of it, when in time they should be re- quired to give it up. Of the value of the Willamette and western Oregon they were not ignorant, but the river was the natural dividing line : it was better to sacrifice a part, how- ever desirable, rather than jeopardize all that was most desirable.
Even before the eighteenth century began England was a vast workshop. Her factories rapidly increased their produc- tive power; her home market was limited. To keep the facto- ries going, and so provide employment for people who would otherwise be idle, it was necessary to give them assistance and encouragement of a kind precisely the opposite of that which the United States has found desirable. New markets must be found, and access to them provided, and so ship- building was encouraged and England rapidly became the dominant power of the world. As such she quickly recog- nized the value of a great inland sea like Puget Sound, the one ample harbor in a long and otherwise unbroken line of coast. It was easy of access, and Vancouver's report of his voyages had shown that there was but one other, that in any way approached it in value, on the whole western side of the continent. By making the Columbia River the boundary of her claims she would secure the free navigation of that river, as well as the grander harbor, with an abundance of the best shipbuilding material, of the kind then used, con- veniently at hand. Possessing these she might rest secure, and in time control the commerce of the Pacific, as she al- ready controlled that of the Atlantic and so continue to extend the markets for the ever-increasing products of her factories. These were the objects she steadily had in view
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in all negotiations pertaining to the coast, and to secure them it is not surprising that she should be willing to relin- quish all others.
While the negotiations above described were going on in London, a convention with Russia had been arranged by our minister resident at St. Petersburg, and it was signed in that city on April 5, 1824. It consisted of five articles, four of which pertained to matters of trade and navigation, and the third as numbered in the instrument itself, provided that neither the United States nor their citizens should, in future, make any settlements on the coast of North America, north of the latitude of 54° 40', and that the subjects of Russia should make none south of it. The Russian govern- ment construed this agreement as giving it the absolute sov- ereignty of all the country north of the limit specified. It did not however regard it as giving the United States a similar sovereignty south of it, and in the February following con- cluded a similar convention with Great Britain. The latter more particularly defined the boundary of the Russian posses- sions on their eastern and northeastern side, and yet it was not so indisputably fixed but that it became the subject of arbi- tration between the United States, as the successor of Russia, and Great Britain, in 1903.
When the ten-year limit, specified in the convention for joint occupancy of 1818, was about to expire, a new negotia- tion became necessary. John Quincy Adams was then presi- dent and Henry Clay was his secretary of state, while Mr. Gallatin was our minister to Great Britain. All these were thoroughly familiar with our claims to the Columbia River territory. All had taken part in or directed the earlier nego- tiations in regard to them. But conditions had materially changed since the first convention had been signed. The
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Hudson's Bay Company and the Northwest Company had composed their difficulties and were now united. The new and stronger company had established itself in the territory in dispute, had in it several trading posts and forts, some of which were well provided with war material, and could easily be defended in case of attack. It had acquired great influence over the Indians, and established a very profitable business among them. It had cultivated farms and stocks of cattle. On the other hand no citizen of the United States had been able to found a permanent abiding place in the country. Some two or three hundred American trappers pursued their calling in the eastern part of it, but if they strayed far away from their base of supplies on Green River they soon became aware that they were in a country not their own. A foreign corporation was supreme in it. Foreign law, made by the British Parliament especially to be administered in it, was the only law known or recognized. A single individual, living in a palisaded fort on the north bank of the Columbia, near the mouth of the Willamette, governed it as autocratically as if he had been a feudal lord in the time of Charles Martel. "To the difficulties occasioned by the clash of such material interests, in this particular case," says Mr. Greenhow, "were added those arising from the pride of the parties, and their mutual jealousy, which seems ever to render them adverse to any settlement of a dis- puted point, even though it should be manifestly advantageous to them both." Under such circumstances it did not seem probable that a settlement of the boundary question would be reached, even by the able and experienced diplomats who were to direct the negotiations on our part, and it was not.
Knowing each other so intimately; understanding so thoroughly, all the details of the matter in controversy, as
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Messrs. Adams, Clay and Gallatin undoubtedly did; antici- pating all the difficulties that were likely to be raised by the opposing negotiators, as from long experience they would be able to do, there was perhaps less need for formal instruc- tions to the one member of this trio who was to meet the British plenipotentiaries face to face, in their own capital, where they could so readily confer with their superiors, and where they would have the added advantage of easy access to all records and documents that could have a possible bearing on the subject to be considered, than in any previous nego- tiation of equal importance. And yet formal instructions were duly prepared by Mr. Clay, no doubt with the willing assistance of the president, and they were of the most positive and definite kind. "You are then authorized to propose," says the letter which is dated June 19, 1826, "the annul- ment of the third article of the convention of 1818, and the extension of the line on the parallel of forty- nine, from the eastern side of the Stony Mountains, where it now terminates, to the Pacific Ocean, as the permanent boundary between the territories of the two powers in that quarter. This is our ultimatum, and so you may announce it."
This was the first announcement of an ultimatum of either side, and it will be well to observe that our government never wavered in regard to it until the controversy was finally settled. Strictly, the extension of the line "to the Pacific Ocean" would have given us a part of Vancouver Island, but to insist upon this would be to contend for a bad boundary line, when a natural and most excellent one could be had by accepting the Strait of Fuca, as was done, or by contending for all of Vancouver Island, as with excellent reason, we might have done.
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At the first conference the British negotiators, Messrs. Huskisson and Addington, announced that their govern- ment was willing to abide by the proposition made in 1824, which was to accept the forty-ninth parallel as far west as the northeastern branch of the Columbia, and the middle of that river from that point to the sea. Mr. Gallatin, as he had been instructed to do, repeated the offer that he and Mr. Rush had made in 1818, for the adoption of the forty-ninth parallel from the mountains to the ocean. But he offered to stipulate in addition, that if this line should be found to cross any navigable branch of the Columbia, the navigation of such branch, and of the river itself, should be perpetually free and common to the people of both nations. He also proposed that all settlements already formed by the people of either nation-and none but the English had formed any- within the limits of the other, might be occupied for a period of ten years, and no longer, during which all the remaining provisions of the existing convention should remain in force. But the British commissioners would not accept this, nor any other proposition that would deprive them of the north bank of the river, and the country beyond it, together with the right of navigating the river throughout its whole length. They proposed, however, to set off to the United States a "detached territory" comprising all of the Olympic peninsula west of the east shore of Hood's Canal, and north of Gray's Harbor, and also to agree that no works should be erected by either party at the mouth of, or on the banks of the Colum- bia, calculated to impede the free navigation of that river. Neither of these propositions could be accepted and all at- tempt to fix the boundary was again postponed.
Effort was then made to find some ground for an agree- ment to extend the arrangement for joint occupancy. The
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British negotiators proposed an extension for fifteen years; that during those years neither power should assume or exer- cise sovereignty, and that no settlements then made, or that might be made thereafter, should ever be adduced in support of such sovereignty.
This proposition Mr. Gallatin referred to his superiors in Washington although confident it would not be accepted. While awaiting an answer, which could not be hoped for for several months, the whole question was reviewed and con- sidered much more fully, and seemingly in far better temper than ever before. All the former contentions by both par- ties were restated and discussed, both orally and in writing, and some new ones offered. Among those presented by the British negotiators are some that are so curious and incon- sistent, that it seems hardly probable that they could have been seriously offered. For example they urged that Meares had discovered the mouth of the Columbia four years before Gray saw it, and yet admitted that "Mr. Gray, finding him- self in the bay formed by the discharge of the waters of the Columbia into the Pacific, was the first to ascertain that this bay formed the outlet of a great river, a discovery that had escaped Meares." How Meares could have discovered a river, from the ocean, without finding the bay through which it flowed to the ocean they did not explain.
The president declined the proposition for renewing the joint occupation arrangement for fifteen years, with the con- ditions proposed by the British plenipotentiaries, for the reasons, as stated by Mr. Clay, that in so far as they tended to prevent the United States from exercising exclusive juris- diction at the mouth of the Columbia River, it would be con- trary to their rights as acknowledged by the treaty of Ghent, and by the restitution of the place made in accordance with it;
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that the proviso did not define what might be regarded as an exercise of exclusive sovereignty, and that from the nature of the institutions of the United States, their rights in the territory must be protected, and their citizens must be secured in their lawful pursuits by some species of government, differ- ent from that which it has been or may be the pleasure of Great Britain to establish there.
In the many conferences between the negotiators, held while waiting for this answer from the United States, and in their written statements, Messrs. Huskisson and Addington frankly admitted that their government claimed no exclusive right of sovereignty over any territory lying between the forty-second and forty-ninth parallels. All that it claimed was a right of joint occupancy in common with other nations, and that all it sought to do for the present was to establish its rights of trade, navigation and settlement therein. They admitted that the right of the United States was equal to that of Great Britain. Evidently their hope was, and that of their government was, that by claiming an interest in the whole, in common with others, they would finally secure the smaller part which they were now definitely committed to accept.
Various proposals were next made by both sides for extend- ing the joint occupation agreement for a definite term, but all were rejected. Notice was given by both sides that they would no longer be bound by the definite proposals they had made for a boundary line. Finally on the 6th of August 1827, a new convention was signed, by which the whole country in dispute was left free and open, as before, to the citizens and subjects of both countries, but for an indefinite period, though it could be terminated at any time by one govern- ment giving a year's notice to the other.
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This convention remained in force for nearly nineteen years. No further negotiation between the two countries in regard to boundaries was had until 1843, when the question of the boundary between Maine and Canada was settled, by what was known as the Ashburton treaty, which was negotiated by Mr. Webster, who was then secretary of state in the cabinet of President Tyler. In this negotiation the question of the Oregon boundary had no part, but many people thought it had, and much interest was felt in it for that reason. For many years after it had been concluded, and had become a part of the supreme law of the land, it was asserted that Mr. Webster thought so little of Oregon, that he had even offered to abandon it to England in exchange for some disputed fishing privileges on the Atlantic side, but there is no evidence of this in the record, and the charge has been frequently denied by those who ought to have known, and doubtless did know, what the facts were. The truth is that we were never in danger of losing any part of Oregon through the fault of our negotiators or executive officers. At no time did they offer to accept any boundary south of the forty-ninth parallel, and on one occasion at least they claimed one much farther north. The danger of the situa- tion lay in the joint occupation agreement, and the advan- tages that Great Britain might have gained under it. Had she made any effort to colonize the country with permanent settlers, or had Chief Factor McLoughlin's plans received even moderate encouragement from his company, the whole history of the settlement of Oregon might easily have been different.
CHAPTER XX. EARLY DELIBERATIONS IN CONGRESS.
F ROM the time of Gray's discovery until the year 1820, the Columbia River country received but little attention from Congress. The fact that any such discovery had been made was known only to a few people in the United States, until Vancouver announced it in the report of his voyages, published in 1798. Five years later President Jefferson suggested that a modest expedition be sent out to explore the line of possible trade along the upper Missouri, "and even to the western ocean." Twenty-five hundred dollars, "to be used for the purpose of extending the external commerce of the United States," were appropriated for this purpose, and the Lewis and Clark expedition was started on its long journey. Then the matter was dropped again, except when some member of the opposi- tion rose in his place to criticise the president for sending good soldiers and brave men on such a perilous undertaking, that promised so little return, or for blindly hoping to find a habitable country in a region so remote as that lying along the shore of the Pacific Ocean.
The negotiations begun or concluded in the admin- istration of Mr. Jefferson and Mr. Madison, in regard to the boundary question, required but little attention from the legislative branch. But during the last year of Mr. Monroe's first term, some members of the lower house began to arouse themselves to the fact that we had some interests on the Columbia that deserved their attention.
From that time forward the subject was not neglected. There is no longer any ground for a charge of want of atten- tion; the difficulty was not that our claims were not fully considered, but that little was done about them. Measures of various kinds for strengthening them, for taking actual
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possession of the country, for encouraging trade in or settle- ment of it, were proposed and ably and fully discussed. The reports of these debates as contained in the Annals of Congress, or even in Benton's Abridgement and his Thirty Years' View occupy many pages, and have a peculiar interest at the present day, because they show that many statesmen of that time were much better informed in regard to the nature and value of Oregon, and the advantages it offered to the settler, than is now generally supposed, and also that their views varied widely as to what its future destiny should be.
The sources from which reliable information could be obtained, when it was first proposed that Congress should legislate for or about the country were few. Vancouver's report of his voyage described the coast, the shores of Puget Sound, of Fuca's Strait, and of the Columbia River for a short distance only above its mouth. The journals of Lewis and Clark, and Sergeant Patrick Gass, described with some detail the physical features of that part of the interior through which the expedition had passed, its flora and fauna, and its climate. Hall J. Kelly, Harvard graduate and Boston schoolteacher, one of those curiously energetic people, who do much to arouse others, and induce them to undertake good or evil enterprises, but who accomplish little or nothing themselves, had published part of the much he wrote during his life to awaken interest in the country which his fellow townsmen had discovered, less than a generation earlier. There were still living members of the Astor party from whom information could be had by letter or otherwise, and a few ship captains who had seen the coast and some of its principal harbors, and knew much about the fur trade and whale fisheries. But our own fur traders had not as yet passed
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the mountains and remained there. Ashley, Lisa, and the Choteaus, Sublette, Smith, Jackson, Dripps and Fitzpatrick were still following the Missouri, and had not begun to ex- plore the Platte. Neither Long nor Pike, nor any other of our earlier explorers, had yet started westward. Missouri, the first State formed west of the Mississippi, was knocking at the door of Congress, but not yet admitted. Mr. Benton, in his Thirty Years' View, says that Ramsay Crooks and Mr. Russel Farnham, both of whom had been in the Astor expedition to the mouth of the Columbia, were at the hotel in Washington at which Dr. John Floyd of Virginia lived during the winter of 1820-21. Dr. Floyd'was a member of the House of Representatives and like Benton, who was a fellow boarder, was much interested in the conversation of these fur traders, who had traveled so far through lands about which so little was then known. He listened atten- tively to all they had to say, and although the joint occupa- tion agreement, made in 1818, still had eight years to run, he resolved to bring up the question of occupying the country, and on December 19th he moved for the appointment of a committee of three "to inquire into the settlements on the Pacific Ocean and the expediency of occupyiny the Columbia River." The committee was granted and Dr. Floyd was made chairman, with Thomas Metcalf of Kentucky and Thomas V. Sewearingen of Western Virginia as the other two members. Within six days after their appointment they had prepared a bill "to Authorize the Occupation of the Columbia River Country, and to Regulate Trade and Inter- course With the Indians," and they presented it to the House, accompanied by an elaborate report, containing much infor- mation in regard to the fur trade, the whale and other fisher- ies, and the resources of the new country, particularly that
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part of it lying on the coast and along the Columbia River. They held that our title to this country was complete, as in accordance with the usage of nations, "the power which dis- covered a country was entitled to the whole extent of land watered by the springs of the principal river, or water course passing through it, provided there was settlement made, or possession taken with the usual formalities."
This report was not discussed at that session, but at the opening of a new Congress in the following December, Messrs. Floyd, Baylies of Massachusetts and Scott of Missouri were appointed a committee to make inquiry, as the former committee had done, and they reported a bill which was debated at considerable length in committee of the whole, Floyd, Baylies and Wright of Maryland speaking in its favor and Mr. Tucker of Virginia opposing. Mr. Floyd and Mr. Baylies presented a surprising array of facts in regard to the fur trade and fisheries of the country, and urged the import- ance of taking immediate possession, so as to secure the trade with China, the Russian possessions and the islands of the Pacific, then just in its infancy, though certain to become important. Mr. Floyd contended that the route to the mouth of the Columbia was easy, safe and expeditious, and pointed out that the country could now be almost as readily reached as Louisville and other points on our western frontier could have been only a few years previously, for steam navigation had already reduced the time of a journey from Louisville to New Orleans and return, from one hundred and twenty, or one hundred and thirty, to twenty-three days, and he believed that in point of time, the mouth of the Colum- bia was already not farther distant from our present settle- ments, than Louisville was thirty years ago from New York, or St. Louis twenty years earlier from Philadelphia.
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Mr. Tucker of Virginia alone opposed the measure with argument. He had no wish to accelerate the progress of population toward the west, although he considered it inevit- able that it must continue to increase. It was in the nature of things, he thought, that there must be a permanent separa- tion of interests between the people on the east side and those on the west side of the Rocky Mountains, when the country there should become settled. Those living on the west coast would have no inducement to trade with those on the east; they would have no interest in common; their connection, if they could remain connected, would be an inconvenience and burden to both. He did not believe in a system of colo- nization; if we established settlements on the Columbia it would be necessary to give large discretionary powers to those who would govern them, and he had no wish to see introduced among us those distant praetorships whose existence was so pernicious in the days of the Roman Empire.
It is noteworthy that in this early debate mention was made of a canal through the Isthmus of Panama. Mr. Wright of Maryland said that such a waterway would be of so great value, and of such importance, that the world would not long permit it to remain neglected.
The bill which the committee presented, and which had been so ably debated, did not succeed. The final vote on it in the House, taken on January 27, 1823, resulted in sixty-one votes in its favor to one hundred against it. It was doubt- less never intended or expected that it would become law. The joint agreement with England still had more than six years to run, and many believed that any attempt on the part of the United States to take possession, as proposed, would have been an act of bad faith, and would almost certainly
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have resulted in war. At this stage no one seemed to per- ceive what Mr. Everett clearly pointed out in a later debate, that the United States had a clear right to take possession in the same form as Great Britain had. The object of the committee in presenting the measure doubtless was to arouse interest and thoroughly inform the country as to the value of our rights on the Columbia.
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