ENGLISH AND AMERICAN OPINION OF THE VALUE OF THE NORTHWEST
TERRITORY--THE NEGLECT OF AMERICAN STATESMEN.
The history briefly recited in the previous chapter, fully reveals the
status of the United States as to ownership of Oregon. Prior to the
date to which our story more specifically relates, the United States
had gone on perfecting her titles by the various means already
described. For the Nation's interest, it was a great good fortune at
this early period that a broad-minded, far-seeing man like Thomas
Jefferson was President. It was his wisdom and discretion and
statesmanship that enabled the country to overcome all difficulties
and to make the Louisiana purchase.
Looking deeper into the years of the future than his contemporaries,
he organized the expedition of Lewis and Clarke and surveyed the
Columbia River from its source to its mouth. It was regarded by many
at the time as a needless and unjustifiable expense; and their report
did not create a ripple of applause, and it was an even nine years
after the completion of the expedition, and after the death of one of
the explorers, before the report was printed and given to the public.
But no reader of history will fail to see how important the expedition
was as a link in our chain of evidence. The great misfortune of that
time was, that there were not more Jeffersons. True, it did not people
Oregon, nor was it followed by any legislation protecting any interest
the United States held in the great territory.
There were Congressmen and Senators, who, from time to time, made
efforts to second the work of Jefferson. Floyd, of Virginia, as early
as 1820, made an eloquent plea for the occupation of the territory and
a formal recognition of our rights as rulers. In 1824 a bill passed
the lower house of Congress embodying the idea of Floyd stated four
years previously, but upon reaching the Senate it fell on dull ears.
When the question was before the Senate in 1828, renewing the treaty
of 1818 with England, Floyd again attempted to have a bill passed to
give land to actual settlers who would emigrate to Oregon, and as
usual, failed.
In February, 1838, Senator Linn, of Missouri, always the friend of
Oregon, introduced a bill with the main features of the House bill
which passed that body in 1824, but again failed in the Senate. The
Government, however, was moved to send a special commissioner to
Oregon to discover its real conditions and report. But nothing
practical resulted.
It is not a pleasant thing to turn the pages of history made by
American statesmen during the first third of the century, and even
nearly to the end of its first half. There is a lack of wisdom and
foresight and broad-mindedness, which shatters our ideals of the
mental grandeur of the builders of the Republic.
Diplomatically they had laid strong claim to the now known grand
country beyond "the Stony Mountains." They had never lost an
opportunity by treaty to hold their interests; and yet from year to
year and from decade to decade, they had seen a foreign power, led by
a great corporation, ruling all the territory with a mailed hand.
While they made but feeble protest in the way we have mentioned, they
did even worse, they turned their shafts of oratory and wit and
denunciation loose against the country itself and all its interests.
[Illustration: MAP SHOWING OREGON IN 1842, WHITMAN'S RIDE, THE
RETURN TRIP TO OREGON, THE SPANISH POSSESSIONS AND THE LOUISIANA
PURCHASE.]
Turn for a brief review of the political record of that period. Among
the ablest men of that day was Senator Benton. He, in his speech of
1825, said, that "The ridge of the Rocky Mountains may be named as a
convenient, natural and everlasting boundary. Along this ridge the
western limits of the Republic should be drawn, and the statue of
the fabled God Terminus should be erected on its highest peak, never
to be thrown down." In quoting Senator Benton of 1825, it is always
but fair to say he had long before the day of Whitman's arrival in
Washington greatly modified his views.
But Senators equally intelligent and influential--such as Winthrop, of
Massachusetts, as late as 1844, quoted this sentence from Benton and
commended its wisdom and statesmanship. It was in this discussion and
while the treaty adopted in 1846 was being considered, that General
Jackson is on record as saying, that, "Our safety lay in a compact
government."
One of the remarkable speeches in the discussion of the
Ashburton-Webster Treaty was that made by Senator McDuffie. Nothing
could better show the educating power of the Hudson Bay Company in the
United States, and the ignorance of our statesmen, as to extent and
value of the territory.
McDuffie said: "What is the character of this country?" (referring to
Oregon). "As I understand it there are seven hundred miles this side
of the Rocky Mountains that are uninhabitable; where rain never falls;
mountains wholly impassable, except through gaps and depressions, to
be reached only by going hundreds of miles out of the direct course.
Well, now, what are you going to do in such a case? How are you going
to apply steam? Have you made an estimate of the cost of a railroad to
the mouth of the Columbia? Why the wealth of the Indies would be
insufficient. Of what use would it be for agricultural purposes? I
would not, for that purpose, give a pinch of snuff for the whole
territory. I wish the Rocky Mountains were an impassable barrier. If
there was an embankment of even five feet to be removed I would not
consent to expend five dollars to remove it and enable our population
to go there. I thank God for his mercy in placing the Rocky Mountains
there."
Will the reader please take notice that the speech was delivered on
the 25th day of January, 1843, just about the time that Whitman, in
the ever-memorable ride, was floundering through the snow drifts of
the Wasatch and Uintah Mountains, deserted by his guide and surrounded
by discouragements that would have appalled any man not inspired by
heroic purpose.
It was at this same session of 1843, prior to the visit of Whitman,
that Linn, of Missouri, had offered a bill which made specific legal
provisions for Oregon, and he succeeded in passing the bill, which
went to the House and as usual was defeated. The prevailing idea was
that which was expressed by General Jackson to President Monroe, and
before referred to, in which Jackson says, "It should be our policy to
concentrate our population and confine our frontier to proper limits
until our country, in those limits, is filled with a dense population.
It is the denseness of our population that gives strength and security
to our frontier." That "interminable desert," those "arid plains,"
those "impassable mountains," and "the impossibility of a wagon road
from the United States," were the burdens of many speeches from the
statesmen of that time. And then they emphasized the whole with the
clincher that, after overcoming these terrible obstacles that
intervened, we reached a land that was "worthless," not even worth a
"pinch of snuff."
Senator Dayton, of New Jersey, in 1844, in the discussion of the
Oregon boundary question, said: "With the exception of land along the
Willamette and strips along other water courses, the whole country is
as irreclaimable and barren a waste as the Desert of Sahara. Nor is
this the worst; the climate is so unfriendly to human life that the
native population has dwindled away under the ravages of malaria."
The National Intelligencer, about the same date, republished from the
Louisville Journal and sanctioned the sentiments, as follows:
"Of all the countries upon the face of the earth Oregon is one of the
least favored by heaven. It is the mere riddlings of creation. It is
almost as barren as Sahara and quite as unhealthy as the Campagna of
Italy. Russia has her Siberia and England has her Botany Bay and if
the United States should ever need a country to which to banish her
rogues and scoundrels, the utility of such a region as Oregon would be
demonstrated. Until then, we are perfectly willing to leave this
magnificent country to the Indians, trappers and buffalo hunters that
roam over its sand banks."
In furtherance of the Jackson sentiment of "a dense population,"
Senator Dayton said: "I have no faith in the unlimited extensions of
this government. We have already conflicting interests, more than
enough, and God forbid that the time should ever come when a state on
the shores of the Pacific, with its interests and tendencies of trade
all looking toward Asiatic nations of the east, shall add its jarring
claims to our already distracted and over-burdened confederacy. We are
nearer to the remote nations of Europe than to Oregon."
The Hudson Bay Company had done its educating work well. If they had
graduated American statesmen in a full course of Hudson Bay training
and argument and literature, they could not have made them more
efficient. Our statesmen did not doubt that the honest title of the
property was vested in the United States; for they had gone on from
time to time perfecting this title; yet they had no idea of its value
and seemed to hold it only for diplomatic purposes or for prospective
barter.
The United States had no contestant for the property except England,
but in 1818 she was not ready to make any assertion of her rights. In
1828 she still postponed making any demand and renewed the treaty,
well knowing that the little island many thousands of miles across the
Atlantic, was the supreme ruler of all the vast territory.
Again, when the Ashburton Treaty was at issue, and the question of
boundary which had been for forty-eight years a bone of contention,
the government again ignored Oregon, and was satisfied with settling
the boundaries between a few farms up in Maine.
But it requires no argument in view of this long continued series of
acts, to reach the conclusion that American interests in Oregon were
endangered most of all from the apathy and ignorance of our own
statesmen.
That loyal old pioneer, Rev. Jason Lee, the chief of the Methodist
Mission in Oregon, visited Washington in 1838 and presented the
conditions of the country and its dangers forcibly. With funds
contributed by generous friends he succeeded in taking back with him
quite a delegation of actual settlers for Oregon. But neither
Congress nor the people were aroused.
For all practical purposes Oregon was treated as a "foreign land."
There was not even a show of a protectorate over the few American
immigrants who had gathered there. The "American Board," which sent
missionaries only to foreign lands, had charge of the mission fields,
and carefully secured passports for their missionaries before starting
them upon their long journey. The Rev. Myron Eells in his interesting
volume entitled "Father Eells," gives a copy of the passport issued to
his father. It records--
"The Rev. Cushing Eells, Missionary and Teacher of the American Board
of Commissioners for Foreign Missions to the tribes west of the Rocky
Mountains, having signified to this department his desire to pass
through the Indian Country to the Columbia River, and requested the
permission required by law to enable him so to do, such permission is
hereby granted; and he is commended to the friendly attention of civil
and military agents and officers and of citizens, if at any time it
shall be necessary to his protection. Given under my hand and the seal
of the War Department this 27th day of February, 1838.
"J. R. POINSETT,
"Secretary of War."
It is a truth so plain as to need no argument, that during all these
earlier years the whole effort of the fur traders had been to deceive
all nationalities as to the value of the Northwestern country. In
their selfishness they had deceived England as well as America. Their
idea and hope was to keep out emigration. But England had been better
informed than the United States, for the reason that all the commerce
was with England, and English capitalists who had large interests in
the Hudson Bay Company, very naturally were better informed, but even
they were not anxious for English colonization and an interference
with their bonanza.
They controlled the English press, and so late as 1840 we read in the
"British and Foreign Review," that "upon the whole, therefore, the
Oregon country holds out no great promise as an agricultural field."
The London Examiner in 1843 wonders that "Ignorant Americans" were
"disposed to quarrel over a country, the whole in dispute not being
worth to either party twenty thousand pounds."
The Edinburgh Review, generally fair, said: "Only a very small portion
of the land is capable of cultivation. It is a case in which the
American people have been misled as to climate and soil. In a few
years all that gives life to the country, both the hunter and his prey
will be extinct, and their places will be supplied by a thin white
and half-breed population scattered along the fertile valleys
supported by pastures instead of the chase, and gradually degenerating
into barbarism, far more offensive than backwoodsmen." Our English
friends, it may be observed, had long had a poor opinion of
"backwoodsmen."
The Edinburgh Review, in 1843, says: "However the political question
between England and the United States as to their claim on Oregon
shall be determined, Oregon will never be colonized overland from the
United States. The world must assume a new phase before the American
wagons make a plain road to the Columbia River."
In this educating work of the English press, we can easily understand
how public opinion was molded, and how our statesmen were misinformed
and misdirected. It was, no doubt, largely due to the shrewd work of
the great monopoly in Oregon backed up by the English Government. Its
first object was to keep it unsettled as long as possible, for on that
depended the millions for the Hudson Bay Company's treasury, but
beyond that, the government plainly depended upon the powerful
organization to hold all the land as a British possession.
In the war of 1812, one of the first moves was to dispatch a fleet to
the Columbia, with orders, as the record shows, "to take and destroy
everything American on the northwest coast."
The prosperous people of Oregon, Washington and Idaho are in a
position now to enjoy such prophetic fulminations, but they can easily
see the dangers that were escaped. It was a double danger, danger from
abroad and at home, and of the latter most of all. The Nation had been
deceived. It must be undeceived.
The outlook was not hopeful. The year 1843 had been ushered in. The
long-looked-for and talked-of treaty had been signed, and Oregon again
ignored. There was scarcely a shadow cast of coming events to give
hope to the friends of far-away Oregon.
Suppose some watchman from the dome of the Capitol casting his eyes
westward in 1843, could have seen that little caravan winding through
valleys and over the hills and hurrying eastward, but who would dream
that its leader was "a man of destiny," bearing messages to a nation
soon to be aroused? Of how little or how much importance was this
messenger or his message, turn to "The Ride to Save Oregon" and judge.
But certain it is, a great change, bordering on revolution, was
portending.