THE QUARTERLY
OF THE
OREGON HISTORICAL SOCIETY.
=====================================
VOLUME I ] SEPTEMBER, 1900 [ NUMBER 3
=====================================
------------------------------------------------------------------------
CONTENTS
THE OREGON QUESTION II.—_Joseph R. Wilson_ 213
REMINISCENCES OF HUGH COSGROVE—_H. S. Lyman_ 253
REMINISCENCES OF WM. M. CASE—_H. S. Lyman_ 269
THE NUMBER AND CONDITION OF THE NATIVE RACE IN OREGON 296
WHEN FIRST SEEN BY WHITE MEN—_John Minio_
INDIAN NAMES—_H. S. Lyman_ 316
DOCUMENTS—Oregon articles reprinted from a file of the 327
N. Y. _Tribune_, 1812.
Letter by William Plumer, Senator from N. H. 336
* * * * *
PRICE: THIRTY-FIVE CENTS PER MONTH, ONE DOLLAR PER YEAR
------------------------------------------------------------------------
THE OREGON HISTORICAL SOCIETY
ORGANIZED DECEMBER 17, 1898
---------------------
H. W. SCOTT PRESIDENT
C. B. BELLINGER VICE-PRESIDENT
F. G. YOUNG SECRETARY
CHARLES E. LADD TREASURER
GEORGE H. HIMES, Assistant Secretary.
---------------------
DIRECTORS
THE GOVERNOR OF OREGON, _ex officio_.
THE SUPERINTENDENT OF PUBLIC INSTRUCTION, _ex officio_.
Term Expires at Annual Meeting in December, 1900,
H. W. SCOTT, MRS. HARRIET K. McARTHUR.
Term Expires at Annual Meeting in December, 1901,
F. G. YOUNG, L. B. COX.
Term Expires at Annual Meeting in December, 1902,
JAMES R. ROBERTSON, JOSEPH R. WILSON.
Term Expires at Annual Meeting in December, 1903,
C. B. BELLINGER, MRS. MARIA L. MYRICK.
---------------------
_The Quarterly_ is sent free to all members of the Society. The annual
dues are two dollars. The fee for life membership is twenty-five
dollars.
Contributions to _The Quarterly_ and correspondence relative to
historical materials, or pertaining to the affairs of this Society,
should be addressed to
F. G. YOUNG,
EUGENE, OREGON. _Secretary_.
Subscriptions for _The Quarterly_, or for the other publications of the
Society, should be sent to
GEORGE H. HIMES,
CITY HALL, PORTLAND, OREGON. _Assistant Secretary_.
------------------------------------------------------------------------
VOLUME I] SEPTEMBER, 1900 [NUMBER 3
THE QUARTERLY
OF THE
OREGON HISTORICAL SOCIETY.
------------------------------------------------------------------------
THE OREGON QUESTION.
II.
The conventions of 1824 and 1825 marked the formal and final withdrawal
of Russia as claimant to the sovereignty of the Oregon country, or of
any part of it. The convention of the former year pledged her withdrawal
as claimant against the United States, that of the latter year as
claimant against Great Britain. The boundaries of the territories in
question were thus finally determined, and the parties to the dispute
were reduced to the two nations by whom the question at issue was
ultimately to be decided.
It was a great step taken toward settlement when the claims of all
nations but Great Britain and the United States were eliminated from the
question. But elimination of claims was not the only respect in which
progress towards settlement had been made during the period which closed
with the convention between Great Britain and Russia. The ten years
between the treaty of Ghent and this convention show a substantial
approach to agreement between Great Britain and America. The events of
the year 1818 in particular mark this approach. This year, so important
in the history of the relations between Great Britain and America,
opened with the issue of the order of January 26 by the British
government for the restitution of Fort George, the post at the mouth of
the Columbia, which, under the name of Astoria, had been taken
possession of by the British early in the late war. This order, which
was formally carried out in October of that year, gains in significance
the more closely the whole history of the case is examined. Astoria, it
will be remembered, was the name of the trading post established in 1811
by the Pacific Fur Company, of which John Jacob Astor, of New York, was
founder and chief stockholder. It was nominally an American company,
and was established under the American flag; but of the party of
thirty-three that landed April 12, 1811, to form the settlement, all
except three are said to have been British subjects. On the twelfth
day of November, 1813, in the absence of Mr. Astor’s agent, who was an
American, Mr. McDougall, his sub-agent, a British subject, representing
himself and the other partners present, likewise British subjects,
signed the bills of sale, and delivered up Astoria to the Northwest
Company, a British company. One month later, Captain Black, of the
British navy, in the sloop-of-war, Racoon, arrived in the Columbia, and
took possession of Astoria in the name of his sovereign, and in honor
of his sovereign changed the name to Fort George. He seems to have been
chagrined not a little to find that, instead of the glory of battering
down an American fort, nothing awaited him but to take peaceful
possession in the name of his king of a British settlement.
By the first article of the treaty of Ghent, “all territory, places, and
possessions whatsoever, taken by either party from the other during the
war” should be restored. In view of the history just given, it is not
strange that the British government, when called upon by the United
States to make restitution of Astoria in accordance with this article of
the treaty, objected, on the ground that the place was already a British
settlement when taken possession of by a British officer. And yet, in
the course of the negotiations that followed, Great Britain yielded this
point, and through her representative, Lord Castlereagh, “admitted, in
the most ample extent, our right to be reinstated, and to be the party
in possession while treating of the title.” Accordingly, October, 1818,
the order first issued January 26 preceding, was executed, and Fort
George was formally handed over to an American officer specially sent to
the Columbia to receive it, and once more the American flag floated over
this British settlement.
This act of restitution, under these circumstances, can hardly be
regarded as less than a concession on the part of Great Britain, a
concession the full significance of which appears only when the act of
restitution is taken in connection with the convention of joint
occupation entered into by the two governments that year, and with
certain intimations made by the British Plenipotentiaries in the
conferences which led up to that convention. It was in this convention
that the boundary between the two countries west from Lake of the Woods
to the Rocky Mountains on the forty-ninth parallel was agreed upon. In
the preliminary conferences the representatives of Great Britain
insisted that the boundary west of the Rocky Mountains should be settled
at the same time with the boundary eastward; that the two should stand
or fall together. In response to this wish, the American representatives
proposed that the same line of the forty-ninth parallel be extended
westward to the Pacific. This the representatives of Great Britain
refused to accept, nor would they themselves propose a line; but they
did intimate that the Columbia River itself was the most convenient
boundary that could be adopted, and that they would not agree to any
boundary that did not give to Great Britain a harbor at the mouth of the
Columbia River in common with the United States. The American
representatives not consenting to this, after further proposals and
counter proposals, none of which were acceptable to both governments, it
was finally agreed to adopt the now celebrated plan of joint occupation
as that plan is embodied in the third article of the convention of that
year.
Thus it is that the order of the British government for the restitution
of Astoria at the opening of the year 1818, taken in connection with all
the circumstances of the case, and the convention of joint occupation
made by the two governments at the close of the year, taken in
connection with concessions in conferences made by both parties, make
this year an era in the history of the Oregon Question. In particular,
two important lines had been proposed and discussed, each proposal
showing an important concession on the part of the party making it, and
each line proposed practically setting a limit for the future, in its
direction, to the territory that remained in question. For it may safely
be said that from this time the extreme limits of the claims of the
several parties were fixed; that henceforth the United States would not
press their claim to territory north of latitude 49°, nor would Great
Britain press hers to territory south of the Columbia. The territory
longer in question lay between these two lines, and it is doubtful
if ever after this year there was a time when the question might not
have been settled by Great Britain’s consenting to the line of the
forty-ninth parallel, or by the United States’ consenting to that of
the Columbia. With these limits to their several claims practically
agreed upon by Great Britain and the United States, and a plan of joint
occupation adopted at the close of the year 1818, it remained only to
eliminate claims of other nations to the territory in order to reduce
the question to its simplest terms. This elimination, as we have seen,
was effected by the conventions of 1819, of 1824, and of 1825, the
last of which left Britain and America free to settle the question of
sovereignty between themselves.
The conditions of the Oregon Question at the close of the period ending
1825 were, upon the whole, not unfavorable to America. It is true Great
Britain was the party in possession at this time through the settlements
of the Hudson’s Bay Company, but when it is remembered that these
settlements were made even before the more important concessions of the
conventions were made, these concessions are only the more strongly
significant of the disposition of the government of Great Britain to
treat fairly, at least, the claims of America. It is especially
significant of this disposition that the settlement at Fort George was
abandoned in the spring of 1825 by the British company in the
expectation that the Americans would speedily occupy it, and, though the
Americans failed at once to occupy it, it was left by the British
unoccupied for five years, as if they were waiting for the Americans to
come and claim their own. When we remember Britain’s well known
doctrine, of occupation within a reasonable time as necessary to
establish full title to lands claimed on the ground of prior discovery
and exploration, this can hardly be regarded as else than an invitation
on the part of Britain to the United States to come and make good their
title to at least that part of Oregon that lay south of the Columbia.
Occupation had been attempted, it will be remembered, in the case of the
establishments of the Pacific Fur Company at Astoria and other points on
the south and east of the Columbia. The whole conduct of England in
regard to these establishments, made for the purposes of trade, goes to
show that she regarded them as belonging to a legitimate mode of
occupation, the right of which she not only assumed to herself, but was
ready to allow to America. The failure of the settlements and their
ultimate abandonment as a mode of American occupation were due to the
accidents of war, not to the interference of diplomacy. The convention
of 1818, of joint occupation, was the embodiment of no new principle,
but simply the formal assent of both parties to a principle of
occupation assumed by America in the Astoria settlements, and by Great
Britain in those in the valley of the Columbia, and by each tacitly
allowed to the other.
In 1821, however, three years after the convention of joint occupation,
a movement was begun in the Congress of the United States toward an
occupation of the territory in dispute, of a very different character,
which, if it had actually been adopted as a measure enjoined upon the
executive, and once been attempted to be carried out, would have met
from Great Britain a very different response. In the house of
representatives, December 10, 1821, on motion of Mr. Floyd, of Virginia,
a committee was appointed to inquire into the expediency of occupying
the Columbia River and the country adjacent thereto; and the committee
had leave to report by bill or otherwise. Later in the same session this
committee reported a bill providing for the occupation of the mouth of
the Columbia. The occupation contemplated by this bill was to be, first
of all, military occupation, or, as one of the advocates of the bill
wished to make it by amendment, “an occupation by military force only,
with some encouragement to settlers.” The view of the territorial rights
of the United States in that region on which the bill was based was
briefly and clearly put by another of its advocates: “The bill under
consideration does not attempt a colonial settlement. The territory
proposed to be occupied is already a part of the United States.” The
convention of joint occupation of 1818 left the question of sovereignty
of the entire territory westward of the Rocky Mountains in abeyance. All
occupation, therefore, of any part of this territory, to be lawful under
this convention, must be of such a nature as to leave the question of
sovereignty to be settled by agreement of the powers participant in the
convention. Whatever rights either of the two parties to the convention
had, or conceived that it had, by the act of entering into the
convention it agreed, so long as the convention was in force, neither to
assert sovereignty, nor to do any act in the territory covered by the
convention that could be justly construed as an act of sovereignty. What
acts the two powers might lawfully do under the convention were not
clear at first, but it is difficult at this day to understand how anyone
who looked carefully into the question could have failed to see that the
acts contemplated in this first bill providing for occupation were not
such as could lawfully be done under the convention. The same may be
said of all the measures proposed in congress in regard to the
occupation of the territory during the earlier period of the convention.
There were men in congress who saw the unlawful character of each
measure as it was proposed, and opposed it on this ground. Others joined
these actively, on the ground that the Oregon Territory, if settled,
because of its distance and the barriers which separated it from the
United States, never could become a part of the union. To these were
added enough who based their opposition on other grounds to defeat every
such measure, either in the senate or in the house, or, as was the case
in the early history of congressional agitation, in both houses of
congress.
This early discussion in congress of our interests in Oregon, though it
failed to reach any practicable plan of occupation, was not without
valuable results. It served to clarify the minds of men in congress, and
out of it, on the nature of the question involved, and through the
information brought out and published in the course of the debates and
reports went far toward enlightening the public mind on the character
and resources of the territory in dispute. In the course of the
negotiations that preceded the convention of 1818, and led up to it, Mr.
Adams, as Secretary of State, in a letter of instructions to the
American Plenipotentiaries, had expressed his government’s low estimate
of the interests involved in the Oregon Question. “It may be proper,” he
then wrote, “to remark the minuteness of the present interests, either
to Great Britain or to the United States, involved in this concern, and
the unwillingness, for this reason, of this government to include it
among the objects of serious discussion with them.”
Such words, written on the eve of the first congressional agitation of
the question, could hardly have been written at the close of that
discussion. For at that time the Oregon Question had become a matter of
widespread interest, and both government and people were disposed to
include it among objects of serious discussion. Agitation of the
question in congress had the further effect of bringing the two
governments to make another attempt to effect a settlement by
convention. In 1824, when measures providing for occupation had been
discussed in congress for three years, Mr. Adams, Secretary of State,
wrote that though the government was aware that the convention of 1818
between the United States and Great Britain had four years to run, the
President was of the opinion that the present was not an unsuitable
moment for attempting a new and more definite adjustment of the claims
of the two powers in question; that the Oregon Territory was a country
daily assuming an aspect political, commercial, and territorial of more
and more interest to the United States. Negotiations were at this time
renewed between the two governments, but failed to issue in any
agreement. Two years later they were resumed, on motion of the British
government, but the two governments adhering substantially to their
several positions of 1818, no settlement was reached. The third article
of the convention of 1818 was, however, renewed for an indefinite
period. In the communications of Mr. Clay to Mr. Gallatin during this
period of negotiation, there is manifested an increase of interest in
the question on the part of the American government, even over that of
two years before.
The depth of this interest and the source of its inspiration appear from
various expressions of these official communications. “The President,”
Mr. Clay writes, “is anxious for a settlement on just principles. Such a
settlement alone would be satisfactory to the people of the United
States, or would command the concurrence of the senate.” “Much better,”
he continues, “that matters of difference should remain unadjusted than
be settled on terms disadvantageous to the United States, and which,
therefore, would be unsatisfactory to the people and to other
departments of government.”
From these words, and words of like tenor, it is evident that from this
out an interested people and an alert congress will have part in shaping
the policy of the government on the Oregon Question. It is to be noted,
too, that the government of the United States did not advance its
demands beyond the terms proposed at first, nor longer minimized the
interest of the question to itself, and that it took a firmer stand on
the boundary proposed. The Secretary of State now wrote of the line of
latitude 49° as a concession on the part of his government, and boldly
declared that as such it was an ultimatum.
After the renewal, in 1827, of the third article of the convention of
1818, with a provision for its indefinite continuance, or its abrogation
by either power on due notice, the subject drops out of congress for a
period of ten years, but only to return at the end of that time on the
demand of that voice which, as we have just observed, the administration
of Mr. Adams had already heard and attended to. This interval is an
important period in the history of the Oregon Territory. The two
governments stand stubbornly each on the boundary line of its own
proposal, the United States for the line of latitude 49°, Great Britain
for the line of the Columbia, seemingly making no approach to an
agreement. Other influences, however, were at work preparing the way for
final settlement, and determining the lines on which that settlement
should be made.
The ten years between the renewal, in 1827, of the convention of 1818,
and the resumption of the discussion of the subject in congress in the
year 1837, present a new phase of the Oregon Question, and may be termed
the period of early American settlement. In thus designating this
period, the settlement of Astoria in 1811 has not been forgotten. It has
already been shown that, though projected and supported by an American
capitalist, and made under letters from the American government and the
protection of the American flag, that settlement was scarcely entitled
to be called an American settlement; that whatever of American character
it had in its inception it lost two years later in its transfer to a
British company and to the protection of the British flag. The
settlement of Astoria, even as a British settlement, was not of a
permanent character. It contributed, it is true, a few settlers to later
communities as they were established, but by far its greatest
contributions to the settlement of the Oregon Question was in the
diplomatic transfer which it was the occasion of under the terms of the
treaty of Ghent. It did serve under the provisions of that treaty to
secure to the United States the valuable concession from Great Britain
of their right to be in possession of this position on the south bank of
the Columbia, pending the final settlement of the question of
sovereignty over the territory. As a permanent American settlement,
however, it has no place in the history of Oregon.
There is reason, therefore, in making the period of early American
settlement begin with the period mentioned. No actual settlement, it is
true, was made at the very first of this period, but about this time the
question of colonizing the region of the Columbia River began to be
seriously agitated in various parts of the United States. A company
having this end in view was organized about this time in Boston, and
another in New Orleans, while in various parts of the country the
propriety of forming such organizations was seriously discussed. Every
effort was made by these societies, and by individuals whose interest in
the subject had been awakened, to obtain and disseminate such
information as should awaken popular interest in the territory and
further the ends of its colonization.
The first enterprise that followed from this agitation, was that of
Nathaniel J. Wyeth, of Boston, for the establishment of a settlement for
trade and agriculture on the Lower Columbia. After the failure of a
first attempt in 1832, Wyeth succeeded in the year 1834 in planting a
small settlement on Wapato Island, at the junction of the Willamette
with the Columbia. Untoward circumstances and disaffection among his
followers defeated his first attempt, and sent him back to the east,
after two years of gallant struggle, feeling that his second was far
from successful. His settlement, while it has had in some sense an
unbroken continuity, and has contributed of its members to the
subsequent settlements in Oregon, can hardly be said to have had the
character of a permanent colony. The largest results of Wyeth’s
enterprise are rather to be looked for in the contribution he made in
various ways to the furtherance of other enterprises than his own.
Substantially the same may be said of the enterprise of Hall J. Kelley,
the leading promoter of one or more of the emigration societies already
mentioned. He contributed materially to the ultimate settlement of the
territory by his persistent and widespread agitation in the east, and
later in some measure by bringing into the Willamette Valley a small
band of men, some of whose number became permanent settlers. No colony,
however, was planted in this region under his leadership, and he did not
himself finally make Oregon his home.
The American settlements in Oregon that have thus far been mentioned,
were organized primarily for the purpose of trade, and that, too, trade
of a character that was not likely to bring into the country and
permanently establish there colonists that should become rooted to the
soil. Traders and trappers might in time abandon their pursuits as such,
and, attaching themselves as individuals to a settled community, become
useful members of that community, as more than one such did in the early
history of Oregon, but no aggregation of such men, brought together for
their own peculiar purposes, was likely to become an organic society,
with powers of life and growth.
The American settlements in Oregon thus far lacked the first essential
to the planting even of the germs of a state. In no one of them was
there so much as one American home, nor were there the elements of one.
An American white woman had not yet set foot on Oregon soil, nor any
woman, save the native and her offspring. It was now more than a score
of years since that first settlement at Astoria, but Oregon still waited
the coming of that institution that lies at the foundation of every
American state, the American family.
About the time of Wyeth’s first expedition, there appeared in Saint
Louis what had somewhat of the character of a delegation from the native
tribes west of the Rocky Mountains. It consisted, as the story runs, of
four or five men from the Nez Perce tribe, who, having heard of the
White Man’s God and his Book, were come to ask that men be sent to teach
their people of these. The story of this strange and interesting mission
was taken up by the press and spread throughout the country. It gave a
new impulse and a new direction to the efforts of missionary societies
for the evangelization of the native tribes. One of the first fruits of
this new interest in missions was the organization by the Mission Board
of the Methodist Episcopal Church of a mission to the Oregon Indians.
This mission, as finally constituted, consisted of the Reverend Jason
Lee, as leader, and his nephew, Daniel Lee, and three lay members, Cyrus
Shepard, Philipp L. Edwards, and Courtney M. Walker, five in all, a
mission of men only. Sending their goods and supplies by sea to the
Columbia, they joined Wyeth in the spring of 1834, and traveled with him
overland, reaching Vancouver about the middle of September of that year.
After personal examination of the field by the leader, it was determined
that the mission should settle in the Willamette Valley, and a spot was
fixed upon not far from the site of the present town of Salem, and
within easy reach of a settlement already made by some retired employees
of the Hudson’s Bay Company. The object of the mission was the
evangelization of the Indian tribes of the valley, seemingly with little
thought at first of contributing to the colonization of the country.
This mission, indeed, the first among the Oregon Indians, like the
trading settlements that preceded it, lacked as first constituted one
essential to permanence. It did not include the family. The mistake was
doubtless early seen by the missionaries themselves, but was not
remedied until the arrival of the first reinforcement to the mission,
more than two years later. From the coming of the first reinforcement in
the spring of 1837, and the constitution thereupon of several families,
the mission began to take on somewhat of the character of a permanent
settlement, and with still further reinforcements a year or two later,
became the nucleus of the first permanent American colony in the
Willamette Valley.
In the meantime a second mission had been established east of the
Cascade Mountains. In the summer of 1836, Dr. Marcus Whitman and Mrs.
Whitman, the Rev. Henry H. Spaulding and Mrs. Spaulding, and William H.
Gray, under commission from the American Board of Commissioners for
Foreign Missions, crossed the Rocky Mountains, and settled among the
native tribes of the Upper Columbia. The primary object of this mission,
as was that of the mission to the tribes of the Willamette Valley, was
the evangelization of the Indians. But this mission, unlike that, was
based from the first on the family, and thus brought with it this first
condition of permanence. Within its limited number were the two first
American white families to settle in Oregon, and were included for a
period of six months or more the only American white women dwelling west
of the Rocky Mountains. From its original number, and more largely from
its later reinforcements, the mission made valuable contributions to the
body of permanent settlers, but perhaps its greatest contribution to the
history of Oregon was one incidental to its primary work as a mission,
in its showing to America and the world by its own first treading of the
same, that there was an open pathway for American families through the
Rocky Mountains into the valley of the Columbia. This mission thus
demonstrated for the first the practical contiguity of the Oregon
Territory to the United States. It was this contiguity as it was
subsequently made patent that was, almost more than all else, to
influence the Oregon Question to an issue favorable to the United
States. Whitman seems to have seen this from the first. The settlement
of the Oregon Question came to appear to him simply a matter of prior
settlement of the territory from contiguous states, and such prior
settlement was a question only of an open pathway through the
intervening mountains. To his mind, therefore, the first duty of the
American government was not in military occupation of the region in
question, nor in the extension over it of civil jurisdiction, but in
making the pathway thither already pointed out, a plain and safe highway
for American settlers. This done, the people would do the rest.
In the year 1837, after a silence of nearly ten years, the Oregon
Question was again moved in congress. Many things had happened in the
interval since its last appearance there to make it certain that with
its reappearance the question had come to abide until settled. The
settlements already mentioned, small as they were, were not
inconsiderable in their influence at the east. They were the centers of
ties that reached back into various influential communities in the
states of the union; nor were the men who composed the settlements slow
to avail themselves of every such tie to make and influence public
sentiment at home. The same energy and indomitable spirit which they
manifested in reaching the new land were shown again in their efforts to
enlighten the country in regard to the land they had come to possess,
and to persuade others to join them in their efforts to take and keep
possession of it. Never was a new country so much talked of, nor its
excellencies so enthusiastically set forth, when those who could do so
from experience were so few. From the time the first real American
colony was founded in Oregon, and there had been time for word from it
to reach the states from which its members had come, neither the
government nor the country was ever allowed for long at a time to forget
the existence of Oregon, of the Oregon colony, or of the Oregon
Question.
In the late summer of 1835, President Jackson, through certain letters,
as it appears, of William N. Slacum, a paymaster in the navy, who at
that time was spending some months in Alexandria, Virginia, on sick
leave, became strongly of the mind that the bay of San Francisco should
be in the possession of the United States. He almost immediately, on
receipt of these letters, directed Mr. Forsythe, Secretary of State, to
write to Anthony Butler, then in Mexico for the purpose of negotiating
the purchase of Texas, enlarging his instructions so as to include the
purchase of so much of the possessions of Mexico on the coast as would
embrace the bay of San Francisco. A little later the same year President
Jackson commissioned Slacum to visit the North Pacific Coast, directing
him at the earliest opportunity after arriving in the Pacific, “to
proceed to and up the Oregon, to obtain specific and authentic
information in regard to the inhabitants of the country, the relative
number of whites and Indians; the jurisdiction which the whites
acknowledged; the sentiments entertained by all in respect to the United
States and the two European powers having possessions in that region;
and finally all information, political, statistical, and geographical,
that might prove useful and interesting to the government.” The
commission thus specifically and somewhat peremptorily given was
fulfilled with promptness and energy, and, though the chief by whom the
commission had been given had retired from office before Mr. Slacum’s
return, the country was not deprived of the results of the
investigation. In December, 1837, through a memorial presented by Mr.
Slacum to congress, and by congress ordered to be published, coincident
with the recurrence of the discussion in congress of the Oregon
Question, congress and the country had the detailed results of this
first official inquiry into the condition and prospects of the
settlements in the region of the Columbia.
Throughout this period when the question was in abeyance, individual
explorers, American and British, had from time to time visited this
region and had returned to write for eager readers of what they saw and
learned in the strange new land, until a piqued interest on two
continents was alert for the next news from Oregon. The publication at
the close of this period of Irving’s Astoria in 1836, and of his
Adventures of Captain Bonneville in 1837, books which were themselves
the offspring of the widespread and romantic interest already felt,
served in turn to make that interest still more keen, and to awaken it
in minds where else it had never been felt.
But greatest among all the forces that had been at work during this
period toward the solution of this question was one that had worked
silently and unobserved, but persistently and effectively, and withal
wholly in the American interest. In the ten years that followed the
extension of the convention of 1818, more than three hundred thousand
people, immigrants from foreign lands and emigrants from older states,
had crossed the Mississippi and settled in the two states of Arkansas
and Missouri, and the territory of Iowa. At the close of this period,
when congress again took up the question more than half a million of
people were settled between the Mississippi River and the Rocky
Mountains, and of these more than three hundred thousand were in
Missouri alone, the state which stood upon the highway to the new
country, and nearest to the gate of entrance. The fact of this great
array of American families fast moving toward the intervening barrier,
and all but pressing upon it, with myriads of other families in the
older states following after, taken together with the door open no
farther than it had been proved to be open by the few American families
that had passed through, should have been enough to assure any calm
observer of what the issue was to be. There were such observers whom it
did so assure, and their calm faith and clear forecast stood the nation
in good stead in the exciting debates that were to follow.
The second period of the discussion of the Oregon Question in congress
began late in the year 1837, near the close of the first session of the
twenty-fifth congress. It was opened a few days before adjournment by
each house calling upon the President “to furnish at an early period of
the next session any correspondence that may have taken place between
the government and foreign powers in relation to our territory west of
the Rocky Mountains.” To both these resolutions the President, promptly
on the opening of the next congress, replied that no correspondence
whatever had passed between the government of the United States and any
other government in relation to that subject since the renewal in 1827
of the convention of joint occupancy. It thus appeared that while the
subject had been in abeyance in congress it had been equally so in the
executive department of the government, and it was not destined to
reappear in this department for a further period of more than four
years. Meanwhile the subject in one form or another was seldom absent
for long at a time from the discussions of congress. This was especially
true of the senate, where, in the person of Dr. Lewis F. Linn, senator
from Missouri, the title of the United States to Oregon and the cause of
the citizens of the United States who had settled there found an earnest
advocate and a zealous and indefatigable friend. Measures were
introduced in both houses of congress, by Doctor Linn in the senate, and
by Mr. Cushing in the house, looking to the occupation and settlement of
Oregon. These first measures elicited but little debate, and failed of
reaching action. They did, however, by bringing out reports from the
executive and committees, get before congress and the country a large
amount of information on the subject. In the house, after a year of
unavailing effort to reach action on the measures introduced, the
subject remained again in abeyance for two or three years. In the
senate, however, chiefly through the active interest of Doctor Linn, new
measures were introduced each session which, though failing in every
case of reaching the point of action, gained more and more the ear of
the senate and a wider attention in the country. In each of the measures
as thus far proposed there was some vitiating clause or provision which
to the calmer and clearer minds in the senate made it inconsistent with
the terms of the existing convention. It was open to congress to
abrogate that convention by giving due notice to Great Britain, and so
to open the way for a larger action on the part of the government, and
resolutions to this effect were introduced, but neither congress nor the
country as yet was ready for this step. Not yet clear as to what action
should next be adopted, congress was not prepared to remove this bar to
hasty or ill-advised measures. Thus far the convention had certainly
been in the interests of peace, and had not seriously interfered with
the progress of settlement.
The year 1842 was an important one in the history of the Oregon
Question. Early that year Doctor Linn had returned to the contest in the
senate with new zeal and determination, and other friends in congress
and out of it came to his support. His bill, as heretofore, was a bill
for the adoption of means for the occupation and settlement of the
Oregon Territory, and the extension of the jurisdiction of our courts
over our citizens settled there, with a provision promising a large
grant of land to actual settlers. This and previous bills had been
prefaced by a declaration that the United States held its title to the
Oregon country valid, and would not abandon it. The year opened with
better promise of favorable action than heretofore; the preamble, while
its adoption was strongly opposed by the majority in the senate, had
brought from even those who opposed its adoption the declaration that it
was a just expression of the sentiment of the country, while the
provision for the land grant to settlers, though opposed for the present
on the ground that it was not consistent with the convention, was
acknowledged by all to contemplate but a just compensation, which should
be made in due time, to pioneers who had taken the hardships and risks
of early colonization. The bill at this session had been presented under
most favorable auspices; the select committee to which it had been
referred was of great influence in the senate, and had unanimously
instructed their chairman to report the bill with the recommendation
that it pass. And yet, though thus auspiciously introduced, for some
reason as the months of the session went on it failed of being
vigorously pressed. We have the explanation of this in Senator Linn’s
own words, spoken in the senate on the last day of August, the closing
day of the session. After speaking of the favorable circumstances
attending the introduction of the bill, Senator Linn continued: “It was
thus placed in its order upon the calendar, but upon its coming up for
consideration as a special order Lord Ashburton arrived from England, to
enter upon a negotiation touching all points of dispute between the two
countries, boundaries as well as others, Oregon as well as Maine. In
this posture of affairs it was considered indelicate, not to say unwise,
to press the bill to a decision while these negotiations were pending.
They are now over, and a treaty is published to the world between the
United States and Great Britain, in which it seems that the question of
the Oregon Territory has been deferred to some more remote or auspicious
period, for an ultimate decision.” In conclusion Mr. Linn said that he
was confident that there were majorities in both houses for this bill;
and he felt equally certain that it would have passed at this session
but for the arrival of Lord Ashburton, and the pendency of the
negotiations. He gave notice that he would deem it “his imperative duty”
to bring in at an early day of the coming session this same bill, and
press it to a final decision. That the decision would be favorable he
did not entertain the slightest doubt, and he took pleasure in making
that opinion public “for the satisfaction of all those who might take an
interest in this beautiful country, the germ of future states to be
settled by the Anglo-American race, which will extend our limits from
the Atlantic to the Pacific Ocean.”
There is a tone of confidence in the words with which Senator Linn
dismissed the bill of 1842 that was not wholly unwarranted. As he spoke
he was aware that the largest colony of American settlers that had ever
set out for Oregon, a colony of staunch men and women, who had been
encouraged to set out by the assurances which his bill had given, were
then steadily nearing their destination. He was aware, too, that in the
brief time since the publication of the Ashburton treaty, in which no
mention was made of the Oregon boundary, congress and the country had
shown a temper that promised well for his measure when next it should be
introduced.
The interval between the publication of the treaty, August 9, and the
reassembling of congress in December, was one of earnest and often
heated discussion, not only of the provisions of the treaty, but of its
one noted omission. No satisfactory reason had yet been given why the
Oregon boundary had not been included with that of Maine. This omission,
taken together with intimations that soon reached the public that the
two governments were again engaged in negotiations on this subject,
began to awaken, in some quarters, at least, fears for the result. The
nature and ground of these fears, as far as they were capable of being
defined, may be seen in the declaration of the legislature of Illinois,
prefixed to resolutions on the Oregon Question presented to congress
early the next session. That declaration was, that “the safety of the
title of the United States [to Oregon] was greatly endangered by the
concessions made in the late treaty in relation to the boundary of
Maine, by her rights not being persisted in and made part of said
treaty, and will be more endangered by longer delay.”
In his annual message to congress, December 6, 1842, President Tyler,
after giving as the reason for the omission of the Oregon boundary from
the late treaty the fear that its discussion might imperil the treaty as
a whole, went on to express the purpose of the administration to urge
upon the government of Great Britain the importance of an early
settlement of this question. A few days later, the senate passed a
resolution calling upon the President to communicate to the senate the
nature of any “informal communications” that might have passed between
the Secretary of State and the Special Minister of the British
Government on the question of the Oregon boundary. To this resolution
the President, in his message of December 23, answered that measures had
been already taken in pursuance of the purpose expressed in his annual
message, and, under these circumstances, he did not deem it consistent
with the public interest to make any communication on the subject. But
neither the President’s expressed purpose, nor his subsequent
declaration that measures in pursuance of that purpose had already been
taken, stayed the progress of measures in congress.
On the nineteenth of December, in accordance with his promise made at
the close of the last session of congress, Mr. Linn introduced a bill of
like import with that of the former session. This bill was referred to a
select committee, of which Mr. Linn was chairman, and was soon reported
back to the house, when it was made a regular order for immediate
discussion. The discussion was continuous and earnest for more than a
month, when by a vote of twenty-four to twenty-two it passed the senate.
A vote of reconsideration failing to pass, the bill went to the house,
and was referred to the Committee on Foreign Relations, of which John
Quincy Adams was chairman, by whom, a few days later, it was reported to
the house with the recommendation that it should not pass. Thus the bill
failed of finally becoming a law, and doubtless many who advocated it in
the senate, on cooler reflection, felt that it was well that it did
fail. In a wider view, however, the measure was not a failure, for it
served its object well, though not in the way its supporters intended.
Few bills ever have called out from the senate a more earnest or an
abler discussion. The best talent of the body was enlisted in the
discussion, the spirit in which the debate was carried on was broad and
patriotic, and for the progressive illumination of the subject under
discussion the debate has never been surpassed. When it closed there
remained little to be said. The future course of congress in the matter
was practically settled in this debate and the action which followed;
while in the course of the discussion, the pathway by which the question
was ultimately to reach its solution was again and again pointed out.
This was done by no one more clearly than by Calhoun, who spoke twice at
length in opposition to the measure. He opposed the bill with the whole
force of his power of keen analysis and convincing logic, but he opposed
it because he saw in its adoption certain defeat of the very object
which he in common with the promoters of the bill desired to reach. He
counseled patience, and a strict abiding by the terms of the convention,
at the same time assuring his countrymen that time and the sure movement
of population toward and into the region in question were certain to
bring the solution desired. So accurately did he foresee and describe
the course by which the question would advance to its final settlement,
that his words at this day read rather like an epitome of history than
what they were, a forecast of events.
American colonists in Oregon at that moment were not indeed sufficiently
numerous to promise a speedy fulfillment of this prophesy. All told,
they scarcely numbered five hundred, men, women, and children, and
included not more than two score American families. They were enough,
however, to test the excellence of the land, and enough of them had
entered through the gateway of the mountains to prove that the country
was accessible to men and women who were serious in their purpose of
reaching it. Then, too, at the moment when Mr. Calhoun was speaking, at
various centers throughout the union and on the frontiers of Missouri, a
colony was organizing of men and women of the best stuff of which new
states are made, setting their faces toward the new land with the full
purpose of making it their home. This colony, nearly double in its
numbers the total American population then in Oregon, before the year
ended, successfully passed the barrier of the mountains, and with its
whole great caravan safely reached the valley of the Columbia. Thus,
sooner perhaps, and with a stronger and bolder movement than Mr. Calhoun
himself had expected when he spoke, the onward movement of population
began to make good the words of his prophesy.