IN CONGRESS.--VINDICATING HIS COURSE
Governor Stevens lost no time in hastening to Washington, and the very
next day after his arrival called upon the Commissioner of Indian
Affairs in regard to the funds for, and accounts of, Superintendent
Nesmith. The large numbers of Indians, chiefly in Oregon, still being
restricted to reservations and partially supported by the government,
necessitated heavy expenditures, some of which were made without
previous authorization, and it was essential for the peace of the
country that they should be approved and Nesmith sustained. Following
the matter up with his accustomed energy and thoroughness, he calls upon
the commissioner and Secretary of the Interior again and again; he has
all the suspended accounts, estimates, and papers brought together, and,
having mastered them, he sits down with the chief clerk,--"an old friend
of mine," he writes Nesmith,--posts him up and satisfies him on all
points, and secures his favorable report, and then convinces the
commissioner and secretary. By the very next steamer the funds for
Washington Territory liabilities are sent to Nesmith, and during the
next few months, by unremitting and painstaking efforts, his deficiency
payments are allowed, his estimates approved, and ample funds remitted.
This was an extremely difficult and laborious task, for the expenditures
for the Indian service in the two Territories were unexpectedly large,
the department was naturally reluctant to authorize them, and the
difficulties were largely increased by the rasping and peppery, if not
insubordinate, letters which Nesmith, indignant at the neglect of his
recommendations, addressed to the commissioner, and which the governor
ingeniously neutralized by personally vouching for Colonel Nesmith, and
submitting extracts of Nesmith's letters to himself evincing the
superintendent's devotion to duty.
The still more important duty of vindicating his Indian treaties and
procuring their ratification engaged his closest attention. In one short
fortnight, by his clear exposition of their wise and beneficent
provisions, and by his graphic portrayal of the conditions in the
Pacific Northwest, he satisfies Commissioner Mix, Secretary Thompson,
and President Buchanan that the treaties ought to be confirmed, and
secures their urgent recommendations to the Senate in favor of
confirming them without delay. He seemed to take his former attitude of
personal influence with the highest officers of the government at a
bound, despite the serious charges that had been made against him. On
December 2 he writes Nesmith:--
"We have had many conferences with the commissioner, and two with
the President and Secretary of War, in regard to Indian affairs. I
am working very hard with the department in order to have everything
completely in train against the meeting of Congress.
"I have been most cordially received in all quarters since my
arrival, and I hope I shall be useful to our Territories."
And again, on December 17:--
"Lane and myself will canvass the Indian committees. Have seen
Senator Sebastian, chairman Senate committee. Pushing armed steamer
for the Sound. Indian and War departments and President all concur.
I have had a most attentive and courteous hearing from all these
gentlemen. Years since, I learned brevity and directness in the
transaction of business here, and I find no difficulty whatever in
effecting a good deal in very brief interviews."
His old friends in Washington--Professors Bache, Henry, and Baird,
General Totten, Mr. John L. Hayes, former brother officers, and
others--welcomed him back, and were glad and proud to observe that he
was unchanged except in increased maturity and strength of character,
and that his very presence, with his simple, earnest, and dignified
demeanor, refuted the infamous slanders that had been circulated against
him. General Joseph Lane, the delegate from Oregon, received him with
open arms, delighted to have so able a coadjutor to fight the battles of
the far-distant and neglected Northwestern Territories. General Lane was
highly esteemed by all parties, and had much influence with the
Democratic leaders. The governor said he was a tower of strength. A
devoted friendship grew up between the two whole-souled and patriotic
men.
It will be remembered how inflexibly Governor Stevens insisted upon the
trial and punishment of the Indian murderers who so treacherously
massacred unoffending settlers, deeming the example absolutely
necessary, to deter the commission of outrages by the Indians in the
future. Having brought Leschi and the Sound murderers to condign
punishment, in spite of the efforts of the regular officers to shield
them, he now urged the Indian Department to make requisition upon the
War Department for the arrest and delivery to the civil courts, for
trial, of the Yakima murderers, whose atrocious slaying of their agent,
Bolon, and the miners, precipitated the war, but who thus far had been
virtually safeguarded by the pacific and temporizing policy of the
regular officers. After a number of interviews with the Indian
commissioner and the two secretaries, the demand was about to be
complied with, for all agreed that the murderers ought to be punished,
when the objection was raised by the military authorities on the Pacific
that an attempt to seize the offenders would lead to further
hostilities, and it was intimated that the Indians regarded the
quasi-peace operations of Colonel Wright in 1856 as promising them
immunity for the murders. The Secretary of the Interior, doubtful how
far the good faith of the government might be involved, was consequently
reluctant to make the necessary requisition on the War Department. The
governor thereupon addressed an able letter to the commissioner, in
which he pointed out that an inflexible adherence to the policy of
punishing perpetrators of unprovoked murders was the only course to
impress savage tribes with respect, and deter them from the commission
of similar outrages; that, while such a course in this case might be
attended with the renewal of hostilities on a small scale with the
recalcitrant faction of the Yakimas, it would do more than all else to
strengthen the hands of peaceful and friendly Indians in other tribes.
He declared that he had always understood, from repeated interviews with
Colonel Wright, that that officer had given no immunity to murderers.
Moreover, the very manner in which the military objected showed
conclusively that no such immunity was ever granted; for, if it had been
granted, they would have avowed it positively as their own act, and not
merely have referred to it hypothetically, as it were, and as
subordinate to the question of expediency. For if the faith of the
government had been pledged, questions of expediency were subordinate.
He concluded:--
"I must therefore urge the requisition, unless the military will
take the responsibility of saying, 'We did make a pacification on
the ground of immunity to the murderers,' in which case I shall
press the matter no further, except to suggest that measures be
taken to prevent such pacifications hereafter."
Thus ably and ingeniously the governor forced upon the military the onus
of acknowledging having patched up a fictitious peace by granting
immunity to murderous savages, whom it was their duty to punish. This
they could not bring themselves to do; they were obliged to abandon
their protégés to their fate, and the requisition was made. One cannot
but think, after a careful study of all the evidence, that the Indian
murderers were led to believe in the promise of immunity, if it was not
explicitly promised them.
At the end of December he broke away from these engrossing cares and
labors for a few days, and went North for his family, having leased a
commodious brick house, No. 510, on the north side of Twelfth Street,
between E and F, at $200 a month; but on January 4 he is again at his
post in the House. He installed Mr. James G. Swan as his secretary, set
apart the upper rooms in the house as an office, and plunged with
redoubled energy into the important and multifarious duties and objects
he had undertaken, chief of which was the confirmation of the Indian
treaties; payment of the Indian war debt; advocacy of the Northern
route, separate Indian superintendency for Washington Territory, armed
steamer for Puget Sound, mail route, military roads, appropriations for
Indian service, and for other needs of the Territory; and pressing
before the departments many private claims growing out of the Indian
war. Besides all these, he published, February 1, a circular letter to
emigrants, giving useful information for those wishing to move to the
Territory. In this month he also wrote a strong appeal to the Indian
Department, urging that the farms promised the Blackfeet by the treaty
of the Blackfoot council be established without further delay, and
suggesting that the commissioner confer with Alexander Culbertson, who
was then visiting Washington,--an appeal which bore fruit, for the
commissioner immediately sent for Mr. Culbertson, and took steps to
start the farms. The governor also gave effective aid to Mr. Culbertson
in collecting an account due him from the government.
The appropriation of $30,000 for a wagon-road between Fort Benton and
Walla Walla--made in 1855--had never been used, in consequence of the
Indian hostilities, and the governor now induced the Secretary of War to
authorize the commencement of the road, and to place Lieutenant Mullan
in charge of it. The topographical engineers of the army were not a
little put out at the governor's action in Mullan's behalf, claiming
that the duty rightfully belonged to one of their corps, and that he was
disregarding the rights of the engineers in bestowing it upon a line
officer; but he had found Mullan one of the most zealous and efficient
officers of the Exploration, and one, moreover, especially conversant
with the country. His recommendation had great weight with the War
Department, thus to overcome the influence of the corps and the almost
invariable usage. Another incident which occurred at this time afforded
further evidence of his influence. An officer of General Wool's staff,
Captain T.J. Cram, in 1857 made a report to him upon the upper Columbia
country, much of which was taken from Governor Stevens's exploration
reports without acknowledgment. Moreover, the navigability of the great
river was pronounced utterly impracticable, and the country itself
stigmatized as essentially barren and worthless; and the report was made
the vehicle for reiterating all Wool's exploded charges against the
territorial authorities, people, and volunteers, and collecting and
retailing all the stories of outrage upon Indians by whites that could
be trumped up. This precious "topographical memoir" was widely published
in the newspapers, and was submitted by General Wool to the War
Department, with the evident design of defeating the confirmation of
the treaties and the payment of the war debt. When the report arrived,
the governor filed a statement in the department exposing its character;
and at his instance Captain A.A. Humphreys, who had charge of all the
Pacific Railroad reports, also filed a similar statement, pointing out
Cram's unreliability and plagiarisms, so thoroughly discrediting the
report that the department would never give it out, and it failed of its
intended effect.
It was a hard fight over the treaties before the Senate committee.
Wool's charges, widely spread in the newspapers, had excited much
prejudice against them, and they were strenuously opposed by most of the
regular officers on the Pacific. But by the middle of March the governor
was equally successful in convincing that committee that they ought to
be confirmed, and was able to write Nesmith that the committee would
report favorably, and that there was every prospect of confirmation.
The Northwestern boundary, with the disputed question of the San Juan
archipelago, also claimed his attention. His resolute letter of May,
1855, to Sir James Douglass, declaring that he would sustain the
American right to the islands to the full force of his authority, having
been submitted to both governments with Sir James's protests, had
brought home to them the risk of armed collision unless the boundary
question were speedily settled. Accordingly commissioners were appointed
on both sides to determine and delimit the boundary as drawn by the
treaty of 1846. But as the controversy turned on the construction of the
treaty itself, it could not be settled by any survey, and in this, the
most important part of their task, the commissioners soon became clever
disputants, each advocating his own side of the question. Jefferson
Davis, now a senator of great influence, writes Governor Stevens, March
18, requesting him "to call on the President and Secretary of State, and
give them your views as to the importance and necessity of marking the
boundary," etc. The American commissioner was Mr. Archibald Campbell,
and Captain J. G. Parke, of the engineers, was the chief surveyor, both
old friends of Governor Stevens. With his thorough knowledge of the
islands in dispute, and of the astute, grasping, and persistent
character of the Hudson Bay Company and British officials, the governor
strove to stiffen the backbone of the administration, and to expedite
the boundary survey.
Governor Stevens's first speech in the House occurred May 12, on his
bill to create additional land districts in his Territory, and was a
brief one. The next day a bill came up to reimburse Governor Douglass
for the supplies he had furnished in the Indian war, and the governor
seized the opportunity to deliver a powerful speech in behalf of the war
debt. He referred to Sir James's emphatic testimony that his, the
governor's, course was the only one which could have protected the
settlements, or prevented their depopulation, and vigorously defended
the people and volunteers:--
"During the whole course of that war, not a friendly Indian, nor an
Indian prisoner, was ever maltreated in the camp of the volunteers
of Washington. For six months the people of Washington had to live
in blockhouses; and yet so obedient were the people to law, so proud
of their country, doing such high homage to the spirit of humanity
and justice, that during all that time the life of the Indian was
safe in the camp of the volunteers. Why, sir, there were nearly five
thousand disaffected Indians during all this time on the
reservations lying along the waters of the Sound, and not a man ever
went there to do them harm.
"I trust that the same measure of justice, which the committee
propose to deal out to Governor Douglass, will be dealt out to the
people of the Territories of Oregon and Washington. The debt in all
the cases rests upon the same foundation. Our people furnished
supplies and animals and shipping, and rendered their own services,
on the faith of the government."
On the 31st he delivered a long and exhaustive speech on the same
subject, giving the history of the war, vindicating his own course, and
the patriotism and conduct of the volunteers and people.
On May 25 he delivered a speech of an hour upon the Pacific Railroad,
the subject of all others in which he took the greatest interest and
expended the greatest exertions. He took the broad national view,
embracing the whole country, and advocated three routes, and then
pointed out the superior advantages of the Northern route, and dwelt
upon its value for gaining the trade of Asia:--
"Therefore I would not carve our way to the Pacific by a single
route. It would not satisfy the country. It is not for its peace and
harmony politically. It could not do the business of the country. It
is not up to the exigencies of the occasion. But carve your way to
the Western ocean with at least three roads.
"Considering, therefore, the greater shortness of the Northern
route, and its nearer connections with both Asia and Europe, it must
become the great route of freight and passengers from Asia to
Europe, and even of freight from Asia to the whole valley of the
Mississippi."
These views have become established facts for so many years that it is
hard to realize how far in advance of his contemporaries Governor
Stevens was in holding them. He was one of the first, if not the very
first, to discern the necessity for three transcontinental railroads,
and the opportunity for securing the trade of Asia offered by the
Northern route.
A few days later he sprang to his feet in defense of his friend Nesmith,
who was bitterly assailed by M.R.H. Garnett, of Virginia, and answered
him in a manner so complete and satisfactory as to defeat an amendment
offered by him.
On the 27th he spoke in support of an appropriation for a military
survey of the upper Columbia, and in a sharp and breezy debate had the
satisfaction of exposing Cram's report.
Congress adjourned on June 9. The treaties were not reached, but the
governor writes Nesmith that a test vote showed that the Senate was
strongly in favor of them, and that they would all be confirmed next
session.
During the session Governor Stevens introduced nineteen bills and
resolutions, and offered four amendments. He spoke nine times, making
five considerable speeches, including two on the war debt, one on the
Pacific Railroad, one on the survey of the Columbia, and the defense of
Nesmith. The following synopsis gives the matters which claimed his
attention in Congress:--
Indian war debt.
Military roads.
Additional land districts.
Settlement of accounts of clerks of courts.
Erection of public buildings.
Survey of Columbia River.
Geological survey.
Military road, Columbia to Missouri.
Increased pay for land surveys.
Relief of C.H. Mason.
Additional post and mail routes.
Pacific Railroad.
Port of entry at Vancouver.
Marine hospital.
Land for lunatic asylum.
Port of delivery at Whatcom.
Enrolling clerk for legislature.
As to false reports of Wool.
Bringing on Indian chiefs.
Payment territorial deficiency.
Extending certain acts to Washington Territory.
The above summary gives but a faint idea of the amount of work and
attention involved in the several matters enumerated. With
characteristic thoroughness, the governor always paved the way for his
measures by first obtaining the support and recommendation of the
department to which each pertained, and was equally indefatigable in
following them up before the committees. But nothing engrossed so much
of his time and attention as the numerous claims for losses and services
growing out of the Indian war, sent to him by his constituents, almost
all poor men, all of which he presented and pressed with the greatest
pains and assiduity.
So intent had he become upon all these important measures that, as he
writes Nesmith, he determined to remain in Washington during the recess
of Congress, and prepare for success the next session.
On July 21 Governor Stevens submitted an able and exhaustive memoir to
Lewis Cass, Secretary of State, on the unjust and exorbitant exactions
imposed upon Americans, who were then flocking to the newly discovered
gold fields of New Caledonia,--now British Columbia,--on Fraser and
Thompson rivers, having previously, on May 18 and June 29, informed him
of this emigration, and the impositions placed upon it by Governor
Douglass. The chief of these were, a license tax of five dollars a month
for the privilege of mining, and the prohibition of all navigation and
trading except by license from the Hudson Bay Company, and the
requirement that all supplies must be purchased from that company. He
showed that with forty thousand miners, nearly all of them American
citizens, entering the gold fields, as was the estimate of the most
intelligent gentlemen of the Pacific coast, the license tax would amount
to $2,400,000 per annum; while the Hudson Bay Company, from the
exclusive right of furnishing supplies, would reap the enormous harvest
of $14,000,000 per annum. Moreover, as the bulk of these supplies could
not be furnished from the present resources of that company, they would
have to be drawn by it from California, Oregon, and Washington, so that
in fact those States were compelled to make that company their factor
for the sale of their products, and allow it all the profits from the
sale of their own products to their own citizens.
The governor declared that this state of things could not be submitted
to by American citizens unless imposed by positive and imperative law,
and that the exactions in question had been imposed without any legal
authority which should be respected by the citizens or government of the
United States.
He held that, the British government having passed no law levying a
mining tax, Governor Douglass, as governor of Vancouver Island, was not
given authority by his commission or instructions to impose such tax;
that he was governor of Vancouver Island only, and his political
jurisdiction did not extend to the mainland, where, in fact, he had
always declined to exercise authority over the Indians as governor,
while he had dealt with them as chief factor of the Hudson Bay Company.
That the company, a mere Indian trading company, had no authority under
its charter to set up a monopoly of selling supplies to white men,
whether American citizens or British subjects, such monopoly, moreover,
being expressly prohibited by British law.
And he concluded by asking, in behalf of the citizens of our whole
Pacific coast, that the government would interpose with the British
authorities for the removal of the restrictions, and would demand the
repayment of all mining taxes collected, and of the value of all vessels
and cargoes confiscated. In the last paragraph he takes pains to
acknowledge the assistance of his friend, John L. Hays, Esq., in the
investigation of the legal questions involved.
The memorial was widely published in the papers, and produced an
excellent effect on the Pacific coast. The Hudson Bay Company
relinquished its attempt to compel the miners to purchase supplies from
it exclusively, and the monthly mining tax was reduced to a moderate
yearly one. The memorial was a timely and much-needed warning to the
Buchanan administration to stand up against the ever greedy and bull-dog
demands of the British upon the Pacific Northwest.
The news of Steptoe's defeat reached Washington in June, and created a
great sensation. It was looked upon as a complete vindication of
Governor Stevens's views and policy in regard to the management of the
Indians, and a convincing proof of the folly and failure of the Wool
military peace policy. The very officers who had condemned and denounced
the governor's plan of punishing and subduing the hostiles in order to
preserve the fidelity and peace of the friendly and doubtful tribes, now
that their weak temporizing had drawn the latter into hostilities,
breathed nothing but war. Writes Colonel Nesmith with glee, natural
enough considering how his request for two howitzers had been brusquely
refused, and himself treated with contumely, by Wool:--
"General Clarke and the whole military are now fully answered, and
they believe there _is a war_. The military now find themselves in
something like your position when the Indians, in violation of all
pledges, attacked your camp in the Walla Walla. I say again, 'Hands
off;' they have a fair field, and I hope they will have a _free
fight_!"
The War Department took energetic measures in consequence of Steptoe's
defeat. Colonel Wright was largely reinforced, and in September led a
thousand troops into the Spokane country, defeated the Indians in two
engagements, and summarily hanged sixteen of them without trial. The
same month Oregon and Washington were constituted a separate military
department, and the veteran general, William S. Harney, was sent out in
command. This appointment was highly satisfactory to Governor Stevens,
for General Harney adopted all his views in regard to the military
problem, the Indians, the opening of the country to settlement, and
later, as will be seen, in regard to defending our right to the San Juan
archipelago. The governor writes Colonel Nesmith and Governor Curry
requesting them to call on the veteran commander on his arrival, and
extend to him their good will and support.
General Harney's first act on reaching his new command was to throw open
to settlement the whole upper country, revoking Wool's orders excluding
settlers therefrom. This was a notable victory for Governor Stevens, and
wiped out the last of Wool's reactionary measures.
The governor spent the whole recess in Washington, except for a flying
visit North in July (when, in passing through New York, he had his
phrenological chart again drawn by Fowler) and a visit of three weeks in
the fall to Newport and Andover.
In the evening of December 2 he delivered before the American
Geographical and Statistical Society, in New York, an elaborate address
on the Northwest, comprising fifty-six printed pages. Mr. E.V. Smalley,
the historian of the Northern Pacific Railroad, says of this address
that "he presented the whole argument in behalf of the Northern route.
Some of his statements were received with a great deal of skepticism,
but time has shown that they were strictly and conscientiously
accurate."
Mr. Swan returned to the Pacific coast in the fall, and a very capable,
faithful, and agreeable young man, Mr. Walter W. Johnson, succeeded him
as secretary. The adjacent house on the south side was occupied by Mr.
Johnson's aunts, Mrs. W.R. Johnson and Miss Donelson, most estimable,
cultivated, and attractive ladies, and the two families contracted the
warmest friendship for each other.
Congress reassembled December 6. During the session Governor Stevens
offered seven bills and five resolutions, and moved four amendments. His
longest and most important speech was on the payment of the war debt,
delivered February 21, 1859. He also spoke on bringing Indian chiefs to
Washington, twice on the Northwest boundary, and on the military road
between Fort Benton and Walla Walla.
In January he had two hearings before the Senate Indian Committee. The
treaties were all confirmed in the Senate on March 8 without serious
opposition, for by this time their wisdom and merit were recognized on
all hands. J. Ross Browne, special agent sent out by the Interior
Department to investigate matters, strongly urged their confirmation.
Judge G. Mott, another special agent, who had been dispatched to examine
Nesmith's superintendency, did the same. Colonel Mansfield, the
inspector-general of the army, after visiting the upper country and
studying the conditions there, strongly recommended the treaties. And
even General Clarke and Colonel Wright, nobly acknowledging their
mistake in opposing them, joined in the recommendation. At last Governor
Stevens's great work was vindicated by the test of experience, and
approved by its former opponents.
It has already been related how Jefferson Davis, as Secretary of War,
summarily rejected Governor Stevens's plans for continuing the surveys
on the Northern route, throwing the whole influence of the government in
favor of the Southern route, and strove to discredit his report of the
superior advantages of the former; and how the governor, on his
expedition to the Blackfoot council, notwithstanding this rebuff,
indefatigably continued his surveys, taking barometrical observations,
and making careful examinations of different passes and routes, using
the officers and parties of the Indian service for the purpose.
Throughout all the labors and responsibilities of the Indian war he
kept up the determination of important points, and the collection of
data concerning the climate, snows, navigability of the great rivers,
passes, etc., making use in like manner of the volunteer parties.
During this fall and winter he made his final report on the Northern
Pacific Railroad route, giving the results of his labors since the first
report, made some three years before. This final report was published in
two large quarto volumes, containing 797 pages. The first volume
contains the Narrative, 225 pages; Geographical Memoir, 81 pages;
Meteorology, 25 pages; Estimate, 27 pages; and, with the exception of
the meteorological tables and a paper on the hydrography of Washington
Territory, comprising 28 pages, was entirely the governor's own
composition, and equal to about 700 ordinary printed pages. The second
volume contains the botany, zoölogy, ichthyology, etc., with numerous
plates.
The governor expected, on returning from Fort Benton, to devote a year
to the preparation of his final report, but this was interrupted by the
Indian war, and then, with largely increased data, he found himself
absorbed in these congressional duties and labors, which completely
engrossed all his time and attention. It was a physical impossibility
for any man to write out with his own hand in a few months such a
report, even if it lay all composed and arranged in his mind. The way in
which Governor Stevens overcame the difficulty was original, and showed
his remarkable mental grasp and powers of memory. He dictated the whole
report. Every morning an expert stenographer came at six, and the
governor, walking up and down in the dining-room, dictated to him for
one or two hours before breakfast. The reporter then took his notes,
wrote them out, and had the manuscript ready for the governor's revision
at the next sitting. Walter W. Johnson, Dr. J.G. Cooper, and other
assistants were kept hard at work on the report, and on February 7,
1859, the governor had the satisfaction of submitting it to the
Secretary of War, John B. Floyd, Jefferson Davis's successor.
The report is written in a clear and graphic style. The facts presented
in it fully sustained and confirmed the conclusions of the first report,
and made a crushing answer to Jefferson Davis's doubts and criticisms.
And Governor Stevens's views set forth therein have been fully and
strikingly borne out in the subsequent development of the country.
Ten thousand copies of the report were ordered to be printed by the
Senate March 3, and afterwards the House ordered ten thousand extra
copies March 25, and the Senate as many more May 9, 1860. Those first
printed were not satisfactory to the governor in execution, paper, or
binding, and he was at no little pains to have the twenty thousand extra
copies ordered. Being disappointed in a certain senator whom he expected
to pass the desired order in the Senate, the governor frankly applied to
Jefferson Davis to secure the order, and Davis was manly and magnanimous
enough to do so at once. It was characteristic of Governor Stevens, as
has already been pointed out, to base all his action and objects upon
the high ground of public needs and welfare, and therefore, ignoring any
personal considerations, he demanded Davis's aid, on the ground that the
valuable data in his final report ought to be published for the benefit
of the country.
The governor was inclined to attribute good motives to his opponents, or
those who differed from him; was quick to see and admit their points of
view; and never assailed their motives, nor descended to personal
attacks. Indeed, he was inclined to think too well of men, and to expect
too much of them.