EMIGRATION TO THE COLUMBIA RIVER, AND FOUNDATION OF ITS
SETTLEMENT BY AMERICAN CITIZENS: FREMONT'S FIRST EXPEDITION.
The great event of carrying the Anglo-Saxon race to the shore of
the Pacific Ocean, and planting that race firmly on that sea, took
place at this time, beginning in 1842, and largely increasing in
1843. It was not an act of the government, leading the people
and protecting them; but, like all the other great emigrations
and settlements of that race on our continent, it was the act of
the people, going forward without government aid or countenance,
establishing their possession, and compelling the government to
follow with its shield, and spread it over them. So far as the
action of the government was concerned, it operated to endanger
our title to the Columbia, to prevent emigration, and to incur
the loss of the country. The first great step in this unfortunate
direction was the treaty of joint occupation, as it was called, of
1818; by which the British, under the fallacious idea of mutuality,
where there was nothing mutual, were admitted to a delusive joint
occupation, with ourselves, intended to be equal--but which quickly
became exclusive on their part: and was obliged to become so, from
the power and organization of their Hudson Bay Company, already
flanking the country and ready to cross over and cover it. It is
due to the memory of President Monroe, under whose administration
this unfortunate treaty was made, to say that, since the publication
of the first volume of this View, the author has been informed by
General Jesup (who had the fact from Mr. Monroe himself at the
time), that his instructions had not authorized this arrangement
(which in fact the commissioners intimated in their correspondence),
and only after much hesitation prevailed on himself to send it to
the Senate. That treaty was for ten years, and the second false step
was in its indefinite extension by another of 1828, until one or the
other of the parties should give notice for its discontinuance--the
most insidious and pernicious of all agreements, being so easy to be
adopted, and so hard to be got rid of. The third great blunder was
in not settling the Oregon question in the Ashburton negotiation,
when we had a strong hold upon the British government in its earnest
desire to induce us to withdraw our northeastern boundary from the
neighborhood of Lower Canada, and to surrender a part of Maine for
the road from Halifax to Quebec. The fourth step in this series of
governmental blunders, was the recommendation of President Tyler
to discountenance emigration to Oregon, by withholding land from
the emigrants, until the two governments had settled the title--a
contingency too remote to be counted upon within any given period,
and which every year's delay would make more difficult. The title
to the country being thus endangered by the acts of the government,
the saving of it devolved upon the people--and they saved it. In
1842, incited by numerous newspaper publications, upwards of a
thousand American emigrants went to the country, making their long
pilgrimage overland from the frontiers of Missouri, with their
wives and children, their flocks and herds, their implements of
husbandry and weapons of defence--traversing the vast inclined
plane to the base of the Rocky Mountains, crossing that barrier
(deemed impassable by Europeans), and descending the wide slope
which declines from the mountains to the Pacific. Six months would
be consumed in this journey, filled with hardships, beset by dangers
from savage hostility, and only to be prosecuted in caravans of
strength and determination. The Burnets and Applegates from Missouri
were among the first leaders, and in 1843, some two thousand more
joined the first emigration. To check these bold adventurers was
the object of the government: to encourage them, was the object of
some Western members of Congress, on whom (in conjunction with the
people) the task of saving the Columbia evidently devolved. These
members were ready for their work, and promptly began. Early in the
session, Mr. Linn, a senator from Missouri, introduced a bill for
the purpose, of which these were the leading provisions:
"That the President of the United States is hereby authorized
and required to cause to be erected, at suitable places and
distances, a line of stockade and blockhouse forts, not
exceeding five in number, from some point on the Missouri and
Arkansas rivers into the best pass for entering the valley of
the Oregon; and, also, at or near the mouth of the Columbia
River.
"That provision hereafter shall be made by law to secure and
grant six hundred and forty acres, or one section of land, to
every white male inhabitant of the territory of Oregon, of
the age of eighteen years and upward, who shall cultivate and
use the same for five consecutive years; or to his heir or
heirs-at-law, if such there be, in case of his decease. And to
every such inhabitant or cultivator (being a married man) there
shall be granted, in addition, one hundred and sixty acres to
the wife of said husband, and the like quantity of one hundred
and sixty acres to the father for each child under the age of
eighteen years he may have, or which may be born within the five
years aforesaid.
"That no sale, alienation, or contract of any kind, shall be
valid, of such lands, before the patent is issued therefor; nor
shall the same be liable to be taken in execution, or bound by
any judgment, mortgage, or lien, of any kind, before the patent
is so issued; and all pretended alienations or contracts for
alienating such lands, made before the issuing of the patents,
shall be null and void against the settler himself, his wife, or
widow, or against his heirs-at-law, or against purchasers, after
the issuing of the patent.
"That the President is hereby authorized and required to appoint
two additional Indian agents, with a salary of two thousand
dollars each, whose duty it shall be (under his direction and
control) to superintend the interests of the United States with
any or every Indian tribe west of any agency now established by
law.
"That the sum of one hundred thousand dollars be appropriated,
out of any money in the Treasury not otherwise appropriated, to
carry into effect the provisions of this act.
"SEC. 2. _And be it further enacted_, That the civil and
criminal jurisdiction of the supreme court and district courts
of the territory of Iowa, be, and the same is hereby, extended
over that part of the Indian territories lying west of the
present limits of the said territory of Iowa, and south of the
forty-ninth degree of north latitude, and west of the Rocky
Mountains, and north of the boundary line between the United
States and the Republic of Texas, not included within the
limits of any State; and also, over the Indian territories
comprising the Rocky Mountains and the country between them
and the Pacific Ocean, south of fifty-four degrees and forty
minutes of north latitude, and north of the forty-second degree
of north latitude; and justices of the peace may be appointed
for the said territory, in the same manner and with the same
powers as now provided by law in relation to the territory of
Iowa: _Provided_, That any subject of the government of Great
Britain, who shall have been arrested under the provisions of
this act for any crime alleged to have been committed within
the territory westward of the Stony or Rocky Mountains, while
the same remains free and open to the vessels, citizens, and
subjects of the United States and of Great Britain, pursuant to
stipulations between the two powers, shall be delivered up, on
proof of his being such British subject, to the nearest or most
convenient authorities having cognizance of such offence by the
laws of Great Britain, for the purpose of being prosecuted and
tried according to such laws.
"SEC. 3. _And be it further enacted_, That one associate judge
of the supreme court of the territory of Iowa, in addition to
the number now authorized by law, may, in the discretion of
the President, be appointed, to hold his office by the same
tenure and for the same time, receive the same compensation,
and possess all the powers and authority conferred by law
upon the associate judges of the said territory; and one
judicial district shall be organized by the said supreme
court, in addition to the existing number, in reference to the
jurisdiction conferred by this act; and a district court shall
be held in the said district by the judge of the supreme court,
at such times and places as the said court shall direct; and the
said district court shall possess all the powers and authority
vested in the present district courts of the said territory, and
may, in like manner, appoint its own clerk.
"SEC. 4. _And be it further enacted_, That any justice of the
peace, appointed in and for the territories described in the
second section of this act, shall have power to cause all
offenders against the laws of the United States to be arrested
by such persons as they shall appoint for that purpose, and
to commit such offenders to safe custody for trial, in the
same cases and in the manner provided by law in relation to
the Territory of Iowa; and to cause the offenders so committed
to be conveyed to the place appointed for the holding of a
district court for the said Territory of Iowa, nearest and most
convenient to the place of such commitment, there to be detained
for trial, by such persons as shall be authorized for that
purpose by any judge of the supreme court, or any justice of the
peace of the said Territory; or where such offenders are British
subjects, to cause them to be delivered to the nearest and most
convenient British authorities, as hereinbefore provided; and
the expenses of such commitment, removal, and detention, shall
be paid in the same manner as provided by law in respect to the
fees of the marshal of the said territory."
These provisions are all just and necessary for the accomplishment
of their object, and carefully framed to promote emigration, and to
avoid collisions with the British, or hostilities with the Indians.
The land grants were the grand attractive feature to the emigrants:
the provision for leaving British offenders to British jurisdiction
was to avoid a clash of jurisdictions, and to be on an equality with
the British settlers over whom the British Parliament had already
extended the laws of Canada; and the boundaries within which our
settlers were to be protected, were precisely those agreed upon
three years later in a treaty between the two powers. The provisions
were all necessary for their object, and carefully framed to avoid
infraction of any part of the unfortunate treaty of 1818; but the
bill encountered a strenuous, and for a long time a nearly balanced,
opposition in the Senate--some opposed to the whole object of
settling the country at any time--some to its present settlement,
many to the fear of collision with the British subjects already
there, or infraction of the treaty of 1818. Mr. McDuffie took broad
ground against it.
"For whose benefit are we bound to pass this bill? Who are to go
there, along the line of military posts, and take possession of
the only part of the territory fit to occupy--that part lying
upon the sea-coast, a strip less than one hundred miles in
width; for, as I have already stated, the rest of the territory
consists of mountains almost inaccessible, and low lands which
are covered with stone and volcanic remains, where rain never
falls, except during the spring; and even on the coast no rain
falls, from April to October, and for the remainder of the year
there is nothing but rain. Why, sir, of what use will this be
for agricultural purposes? I would not for that purpose give a
pinch of snuff for the whole territory. I wish to God we did
not own it. I wish it was an impassable barrier to secure us
against the intrusion of others. This is the character of the
country. Who are we to send there? Do you think your honest
farmers in Pennsylvania, New York, or even Ohio or Missouri,
will abandon their farms to go upon any such enterprise as this?
God forbid! if any man who is to go to that country, under the
temptations of this bill, was my child--if he was an honest
industrious man, I would say to him, for God's sake do not go
there. You will not better your condition. You will exchange
the comforts of home, and the happiness of civilized life, for
the pains and perils of a precarious existence. But if I had a
son whose conduct was such as made him a fit subject for Botany
Bay, I would say in the name of God, go. This is my estimate of
the importance of the settlement. Now, what are we to gain by
making the settlement? In what shape are our expenditures there
to be returned? When are we to get any revenue from the citizens
of ours who go to that distant territory--3,300 miles from the
seat of government, as I have it from the senator from Missouri?
What return are they going to make us for protecting them with
military posts, at the expense at the outset of $200,000, and
swelling hereafter God knows how much--probably equalling the
annual expenses of the Florida war. What will they return us for
this enormous expense, after we have tempted them, by this bill,
to leave their pursuits of honest industry, to go upon this wild
and gambling adventure, in which their blood is to be staked?"
Besides repulsing the country as worthless, Mr. McDuffie argued that
there was danger in taking possession of it--that the provisions of
the bill conflicted with the stipulations of the treaty of 1818--and
that Great Britain, though desirous of peace with the United States,
would be forced into war in defence of her rights and honor. Mr.
Calhoun was equally opposed as his colleague to the passage of the
bill, but not for the same reasons. He deemed the country well worth
having, and presenting great commercial advantages in communicating
with China and Japan, which should not be lost.
"I do not agree with my eloquent and able colleague that the
country is worthless. He has underrated it, both as to soil
and climate. It contains a vast deal of land, it is true,
that is barren and worthless; but not a little that is highly
productive. To that may be added its commercial advantages,
which will, in time, prove to be great. We must not overlook
the important events to which I have alluded as having recently
occurred in the Eastern portion of Asia. As great as they are,
they are but the beginning of a series of a similar character,
which must follow at no distant day. What has taken place in
China, will, in a few years, be followed in Japan, and all
the eastern portions of that continent. Their ports, like the
Chinese, will be opened, and the whole of that large portion of
Asia, containing nearly half of the population and wealth of the
globe, will be thrown open to the commerce of the world, and be
placed within the pales of European and American intercourse
and civilization. A vast market will be created, and a mighty
impulse will be given to commerce. No small portion of the
share that would fall to us with this populous and industrious
portion of the globe, is destined to pass through the ports of
the Oregon Territory to the valley of the Mississippi, instead
of taking the circuitous and long voyage round Cape Horn; or the
still longer, round the Cape of Good Hope. It is mainly because
I place this high estimate on its prospective value, that I am
so solicitous to preserve it, and so adverse to this bill, or
any other precipitate measure which might terminate in its loss.
If I thought less of its value, or if I regarded our title less
clear, my opposition would be less decided."
Infraction of the treaty and danger of war--the difficulty and
expense of defending a possession so remote--the present empty
condition of the treasury--were further reasons urged by Mr. Calhoun
in favor of rejecting the bill; but having avowed himself in favor
of saving our title to the country, it became necessary to show his
mode of doing so, and fell upon the same plan to ripen and secure
our title, which others believed was wholly relied upon by Great
Britain to ripen and secure hers--Time! an element which only worked
in favor of the possessor; and that possessor was now Great Britain.
On this head he said:
"The question presents itself, how shall we preserve this
country? There is only one means by which it can be; but that,
fortunately, is the most powerful of all--_time_. _Time_ is
acting for us; and, if we shall have the wisdom to trust its
operation, it will assert and maintain our right with resistless
force, without costing a cent of money, or a drop of blood.
There is often in the affairs of government, more efficiency
and wisdom in non-action, than in action. All we want to effect
our object in this case, is 'a wise and masterly inactivity.'
Our population is rolling towards the shores of the Pacific,
with an impetus greater than what we realize. It is one of
those forward movements which leaves anticipation behind. In
the period of thirty-two years which have elapsed since I took
my seat in the other House, the Indian frontier has receded a
thousand miles to the West. At that time, our population was
much less than half what it is now. It was then increasing at
the rate of about a quarter of a million annually; it is now not
less than six hundred thousand; and still increasing at the rate
of something more than three per cent. compound annually. At
that rate, it will soon reach the yearly increase of a million.
If to this be added, that the region west of Arkansas and the
State of Missouri, and south of the Missouri River, is occupied
by half civilized tribes, who have their lands secured to them
by treaty (and which will prevent the spread of population
in that direction), and that this great and increasing tide
will be forced to take the comparatively narrow channel to
the north of that river and south of our northern boundary,
some conception may be formed of the strength with which the
current will run in that direction, and how soon it will reach
the eastern gorges of the Rocky Mountains. It will soon--far
sooner than anticipated--reach the Rocky Mountains, and be ready
to pour into the Oregon Territory, when it will come into our
possession without resistance or struggle--or, if there should
be resistance, it would be feeble and ineffectual. We would then
be as much stronger there, comparatively, than Great Britain, as
she is now stronger than we are; and it would then be as idle
in her to attempt to assert and maintain her exclusive claim to
the territory against us, as it would now be in us to attempt
it against her. Let us be wise, and abide our time, and it will
accomplish all that we desire, with far more certainty and with
infinitely less sacrifice, than we can without it."
Mr. Calhoun averred and very truly, that his opposition to the
bill did not grow out of any opposition to the growth of the
West--declared himself always friendly to the interests of that
great section of our country, and referred to his course when he was
Secretary at war to prove it.
"I go back to the time when I was at the head of the War
Department. At that early period I turned my attention
particularly to the interest of the West. I saw that it
required increased security to its long line of frontier,
and greater facility of carrying on intercourse with the
Indian tribes in that quarter, and to enable it to develope
its resources--especially that of its fur-trade. To give the
required security, I ordered a much larger portion of the
army to that frontier; and to afford facility and protection
for carrying on the fur-trade, the military posts were moved
much higher up the Mississippi and Missouri rivers. Under the
increased security and facility which these measures afforded,
the fur-trade received a great impulse. It extended across
the continent in a short time, to the Pacific, and north and
south to the British and Mexican frontiers; yielding in a few
years, as stated by the Senator from Missouri [Mr. Linn], half
a million of dollars annually. But I stopped not there. I saw
that individual enterprise on our part, however great, could not
successfully compete with the powerful incorporated Canadian
and Hudson Bay Companies, and that additional measures were
necessary to secure permanently our fur-trade. For that purpose
I proposed to establish a post still higher up the Missouri,
at the mouth of the Yellow Stone River, and to give such unity
and efficiency to our intercourse and trade with the Indian
tribes between our Western frontier and the Pacific ocean, as
would enable our citizens engaged in the fur-trade to compete
successfully with the British traders. Had the measures proposed
been adopted, we would not now have to listen to the complaint,
so frequently uttered in this discussion, of the loss of that
trade."
The inconsistent argument of Mr. McDuffie, that the country was
worthless, and yet that Great Britain would go to war for it, was
thus answered by Mr. Linn:
"The senator from South Carolina somewhat inconsistently urges
that the country is bleak, barren, volcanic, rocky, a waste
always flooded when it is not parched; and insists that,
worthless as it is, Great Britain will go at once to war for
it. Strange that she should in 1818 have held so tenaciously to
what is so worthless! Stranger still, that she should have stuck
yet closer to it in 1827, when she had had still ampler time
to learn the bootlessness of the possession! And strangest of
all, that she should still cling to it with the grasp of death!
Sir, I cannot for my life help thinking that she and the senator
have formed a very different estimate of the territory, and that
she is (as she ought to be) a good deal the better informed.
She knows well its soil climate, and physical resources,
and perfectly comprehends its commercial and geographical
importance. And knowing all this, she was ready to sink all
sense of justice, stifle all respect for our clear title, and
hasten to root her interests in the soil, so as to secure the
strong, even when most wrongful, title of possession."
The danger of waiting for Great Britain to strengthen her claim was
illustrated by Mr. Linn, by what had happened in Maine. In 1814 she
proposed to purchase the part she wanted. She afterwards endeavored
to negotiate for a right of way across the State. Failing in that
attempted negotiation, as in the offer to purchase, she boldly set
up a claim to all she wanted--demanded it as matter of right--and
obtained it by the Ashburton treaty--the United States paying
Massachusetts and Maine for the dismembered part. Deprecating a like
result from temporizing measures with respect to Oregon, Mr. Linn
said:
"So little before 1813 or 1814 did Great Britain ever doubt your
claim to the lately contested territory in Maine, that in 1814
she proposed to _purchase_ that part of it which she desired.
She next treated for a right of way. It was refused; and she
then set up a claim to the soil. This method has sped no ill
with her; for she has got what she wanted, AND MADE YOU PAY FOR
IT. Her Oregon game is the same. She has set her heart upon a
strip of territory north of the Oregon, and seems determined
to pluck it from us, either by circumvention or force. Aware
of the political as well as legal advantages of possession,
she is strengthening hers in every way not too directly
responsible. She is selecting and occupying the best lands, the
most favorable sites. These she secures to the settlers under
contracts. For any counteraction of yours, she may take, and is
taking, possession of the whole territory. She has appropriated
sites for mills, manufactories, and farms. If one of these has
been abandoned for a better, she reverts to it, if a citizen of
yours occupies it, and ejects him. She tells her people she will
protect them in whatever they have laid, or may lay, their hands
upon. If she can legitimately do this, why may not we? Is this
a joint occupation of which she is to have the sole benefit?
Had you as many citizens there as she, you would be compelled
to protect them; and if you have not, why is it but because she
keeps them off, and you refuse to offer them the inducements
which she holds out? Give them a prospective grant of lands,
and insure them the shelter of your laws, and they will soon
congregate there in force enough to secure your rights and their
own."
The losses already sustained by our citizens from the ravages of
Indians, incited against them by the British Hudson Bay company,
were stated by Mr. Linn upon good authority, to be five hundred
men in lives taken in the first ten years of the joint occupation
treaty, and half a million of dollars in property robbed or
destroyed, besides getting exclusive possession of our soil, and
the command of our own Indians within our own limits: and he
then contrasted this backwardness to protect our own citizens on
their own soil with the readiness to expend untold amounts on the
protection of our citizens engaged in foreign commerce; and even in
going to the coast of Africa to guard the freedom of the negro race.
"Wherever your sails whiten the sea, in no matter what clime,
against no matter whom, the national arm stretches out its
protection. Every where but in this unhappy territory, the
persons and the pursuits of your citizens are watched over.
You count no cost when other interests are concerned, when
other rights are assailed; but you recoil here from a trifling
appropriation to an object of the highest national importance,
because it enlists no sectional influence. Contrast, for
instance, your supineness about the Oregon Territory, with
your alacrity to establish, for guarding the slave coast and
Liberia, a squadron costing $600,000 annually, and which you
have bound yourself by treaty to keep up for five years, with
great exposure of lives and vessels. By stipulation, eighty guns
(one-twelfth of your force afloat) is kept upon this service;
and, as your naval expenditure amounts to about seven millions
a year, this (its twelfth part) will make, in five years, three
millions bestowed in watching the coast of Africa, and guarding
the freedom of the negro race! For this you lavish millions; and
you grudge $100,000 to the great American and national object of
asserting your territorial rights and settling your soil. You
grant at once what furthers the slave policy of a rival power,
and deny the means of rescuing from its grasp your own property
and soil."
This African squadron has now been kept up more than twice five
years, and promises to be perpetual; for there was that delusive
clause in the article, so tempting to all temporizing spirits,
that after the lapse of the five years, the squadron was still to
be kept up until the United States should give notice to terminate
the article. This idea of notice to terminate a treaty, so easy
to put in it, and so difficult to be given when entanglement and
use combine to keep things as they are, was shown to be almost
impossible in this treaty of joint occupation of the Columbia.
Mr. Calhoun had demanded of Mr. Linn, why not give the notice to
terminate the treaty before proceeding to settle the country? to
which he answered:
"The senator from South Carolina [Mr. CALHOUN], has urged that
we should, first of all, give the twelve months' notice of our
renunciation of the treaty. He [Mr. LINN] could only answer
that he had repeatedly, by resolutions, urged that course in
former years; but always in vain. He had ever been met with the
answer: 'This is not the proper time--wait.' Meanwhile, the
adverse possession was going on, fortifying from year to year
the British claim and the British resources, to make it good.
Mr. Madison had encouraged the bold and well-arranged scheme
of Astor to fortify and colonize. He was dispossessed; and the
nucleus of empire which his establishments formed, passed into
the hands of the Hudson Bay Company, now the great instrument
of English aggrandizement in that quarter. The senator insists
that, by the treaty, there should be a joint possession. Be it
so, if you will. But where is our part of this joint possession?
In what does it consist, or has it consisted? We have no posts
there, no agent, no military power to protect traders. Nay,
indeed, no traders! For they have disappeared before foreign
competition; or fallen a sacrifice to the rifle, the tomahawk,
or the scalping knife of those savages whom the Hudson Bay
Company can always make the instruments of systematic massacre
of adventurous rivals."
Mr. Benton spoke at large in defence of the bill, and first of the
clause in it allotting land to the settlers, saying:
"The objections to this bill grew out of the clause granting
land to the settlers, not so much on account of the grants
themselves, as on account of the exclusive jurisdiction over
the country, which the grants would seem to imply. This was
the objection; for no one defended the title of the British
to one inch square of the valley of Oregon. The senator from
Arkansas [Mr. SEVIER], who has just spoken, had well said that
this was an objection to the whole bill; for the rest would be
worth nothing, without these grants to the settlers. Nobody
would go there without the inducement of land. The British
had planted a power there--the Hudson Bay Fur Company--in
which the old Northwest Company was merged; and this power was
to them in the New World what the East India company was to
them in the Old World: it was an arm of the government, and
did every thing for the government which policy, or treaties
prevented it from doing for itself. This company was settling
and colonizing the Columbia for the British government, and we
wish American citizens to settle and colonize it for us. The
British government gives inducement to this company. It gives
them trade, commerce, an exclusive charter, laws, and national
protection. We must give inducement also; and our inducement
must be land and protection. Grants of land will carry settlers
there; and the senator from Ohio [Mr. TAPPAN] was treading in
the tracks of Mr. Jefferson (perhaps without having read his
recommendation, although he has read much) when he proposed, in
his speech of yesterday, to plant 50,000 settlers, with their
50,000 rifles, on the banks of the Oregon. Mr. Jefferson had
proposed the same thing in regard to Louisiana. He proposed
that we should settle that vast domain when we acquired it;
and for that purpose, that donations of land should be made to
the first 30,000 settlers who should go there. This was the
right doctrine, and the old doctrine. The white race were a
land-loving people, and had a right to possess it, because they
used it according to the intentions of the Creator. The white
race went for land, and they will continue to go for it, and
will go where they can get it. Europe, Asia, and America, have
been settled by them in this way. All the States of this Union
have been so settled. The principle is founded in their nature
and in God's command; and it will continue to be obeyed. The
valley of the Columbia is a vast field open to the settler. It
is ours, and our people are beginning to go upon it. They go
under the expectation of getting land; and that expectation must
be confirmed to them. This bill proposes to confirm it; and if
it fails in this particular, it fails in all. There is nothing
left to induce emigration; and emigration is the only thing
which can save the country from the British, acting through
their powerful agent--the Hudson Bay Company."
Mr. Benton then showed from a report of Major Pilcher,
Superintendent of Indian Affairs, and who had visited the Columbia
River, that actual colonization was going on there, attended by
every circumstance that indicated ownership and the design of a
permanent settlement. Fort Vancouver, the principal of these British
establishments, for there are many of them within our boundaries, is
thus described by Major Pilcher:
"This fort is on the north side of the Columbia, nearly opposite
the mouth of the Multnomah, in the region of tide-water, and
near the head of ship navigation. It is a grand position,
both in a military and commercial point of view, and formed
to command the whole region watered by the Columbia and its
tributaries. The surrounding country, both in climate and soil,
is capable of sustaining a large population; and its resources
in timber give ample facilities for ship-building. This post
is fortified with cannon; and, having been selected as the
principal or master position, no pains have been spared to
strengthen or improve it. For this purpose, the old post near
the mouth of the river has been abandoned. About one hundred and
twenty acres of ground are in cultivation; and the product in
wheat, barley, oats, corn, potatoes, and other vegetables, is
equal to what is known in the best parts of the United States.
Domestic animals are numerous--the horned cattle having been
stated to me at three hundred; hogs, horses, sheep, and goats,
in proportion; also, the usual domestic fowls: every thing,
in fact, indicating a permanent establishment. Ship-building
has commenced at this place. One vessel has been built and
rigged, sent to sea, and employed in the trade of the Pacific
Ocean. I also met a gentleman, on my way to Lake Winnipec,
at the portage between the Columbia and Athabasca, who was
on his way from Hudson's Bay to Fort Colville, with a master
ship-carpenter, and who was destined for Fort Vancouver, for
the purpose of building a ship of considerable burden. Both
grist and saw-mills have been built at Fort Vancouver: with
the latter, they saw the timber which is needed for their own
use, and also for exportation to the Sandwich Islands; upon the
former, their wheat is manufactured into flour. And, from all
that I could learn, this important post is silently growing up
into a colony; and is, perhaps, intended as a future military
and naval station, which was not expected to be delivered up at
the expiration of the treaty which granted them a temporary and
joint possession."
Mr. Benton made a brief deduction of our title to the Columbia to
the 49th parallel under the treaty of Utrecht, and rapidly traced
the various British attempts to encroach upon that line, the whole
of which, though earnestly made and perseveringly continued, failed
to follow that great line from the Lake of the Woods to the shores
of the Pacific. He thus made this deduction of title:
"Louisiana was acquired in 1803. In the very instant of signing
the treaty which brought us that province, another treaty was
signed in London (without a knowledge of what was done in
Paris), fixing, among other things, the line from the Lake of
the Woods to the Mississippi. This treaty, signed by Mr. Rufus
King and Lord Hawkesbury, was rejected by Mr. Jefferson, without
reference to the Senate, on account of the fifth article (which
related to the line between the Lake of the Woods and the head
of the Mississippi), for fear it might compromise the northern
boundary of Louisiana and the line of 49 degrees. In this
negotiation of 1803, the British made no attempt on the line of
the 49th degree, because it was not then known to them that we
had acquired Louisiana; but Mr. Jefferson, having a knowledge of
this acquisition, was determined that nothing should be done to
compromise our rights, or to unsettle the boundaries established
under the treaty of Utrecht.
"Another treaty was negotiated with Great Britain in 1807,
between Messrs. Monroe and William Pinckney on one side,
and Lords Holland and Auckland on the other. The English
were now fully possessed of the fact that we had acquired
Louisiana, and become a party to the line of 49 degrees; and
they set themselves openly to work to destroy that line. The
correspondence of the ministers shows the pertinacity of these
attempts; and the instructions of Mr. Adams, in 1818 (when
Secretary of State, under Mr. Monroe), to Messrs. Rush and
Gallatin, then in London, charged with negotiating a convention
on points left unsettled at Ghent, condense the history of the
mutual propositions then made. Finally, an article was agreed
upon, in which the British succeeded in mutilating the line,
and stopping it at the Rocky Mountains. This treaty of 1807
shared the fate of that of 1803, but for a different reason. It
was rejected by Mr. Jefferson, without reference to the Senate,
because it did not contain an explicit renunciation of the
pretension of impressment!
"At Ghent the attempt was renewed: the arrest of the line at
the Rocky Mountains was agreed upon, but the British coupled
with their proposition a demand for the free navigation of the
Mississippi, and access to it through the territories of the
United States; and this demand occasioned the whole article to
be omitted. The Ghent treaty was signed without any stipulation
on the subject of the line along the 49th degree, and that
point became a principal object of the ministers charged with
completing at London, in 1818, the subjects unfinished at Ghent
in 1814. Thus the British were again foiled; but, true to their
design, they persevered and accomplished it in the convention
signed at London in 1818. That convention arrested the line at
the mountains, and opened the Columbia to the joint occupation
of the British; and, being ratified by the United States, it has
become binding and obligatory on the country. But it is a point
not to be overlooked, or undervalued, in this case, that it was
in the year 1818 that this arrestation of the line took place;
that up to that period it was in full force in all its extent,
and, consequently, in full force to the Pacific Ocean; and a
complete bar (leaving out all other barriers) to any British
acquisition, by discovery, south of 49 degrees in North America."
The President in his message had said that "informal conferences"
had taken place between Mr. Webster and Lord Ashburton on the
subject of the Columbia, but he had not communicated them. Mr.
Benton obtained a call of the Senate for them: the President
answered it was incompatible with the public interest to make
them public. That was a strange answer, seeing that all claims by
either party, and all negotiations on the subjects between them,
whether concluded or not, and whether successful or not should be
communicated.
"The President, in his message recommending the peace treaty,
informs us that the Columbia was the subject of "_informal
conferences_" between the negotiators of that treaty; but that
it could not then be included among the subjects of formal
negotiation. This was an ominous annunciation, and should
have opened the eyes of the President to a great danger. If
the peace mission, which came here to settle every thing, and
which had so much to gain in the Maine boundary and the African
alliance;--if this mission could not agree with us about the
Columbia, what mission ever can? To an inquiry from the Senate
to know the nature and extent of these "_informal conferences_"
between Mr. Webster and Lord Ashburton, and to learn the reason
why the Columbia question could not have been included among
the subjects of formal negotiation--to these inquiries, the
President answers, that it is incompatible with the public
interest to communicate these things. This is a strange
answer, and most unexpected. We have no political secrets in
our country, neither among ourselves nor with foreigners. On
this subject of the Columbia, especially, we have no secrets.
Every thing in relation to it has been published. All the
conferences heretofore have been made public. The protocols,
the minutes, the conversations, on both sides, have all been
published. The British have published their claim, such as it
is: we have published ours. The public documents are full of
them, and there can be nothing in the question itself to require
secrecy. The negotiator, and not the subject, may require
secrecy. Propositions may have been made, and listened to,
which no previous administration would tolerate, and which it
may be deemed prudent to conceal until it has taken the form
of a stipulation, and the cry of war can be raised to ravish
its ratification from us. All previous administrations, while
claiming the whole valley of the Columbia, have refused to admit
a particle of British claim _south_ of 49 degrees. Mr. Adams,
under Mr. Monroe, peremptorily refused to submit any such claim
even to arbitration. The Maine boundary, settled by the treaty
of 1783, had been submitted to arbitration; but this boundary
of 49 was refused. And now, if, after all this, any proposition
has been made by our government to give up the north bank of the
river, I, for one, shall not fail to brand such a proposition
with the name of treason."
This paragraph was not without point, and even inuendo. The north
bank of the Columbia with equal rights of navigation in the river,
and to the harbor at its mouth, had been the object of the British
from the time that the fur-trader, and explorer, Sir Alexander
McKenzie, had shown that there was no river and harbor suitable
to commerce and settlement north of that stream. They had openly
proposed it in negotiations: they had even gone so far as to tell
our commissioners of 1818, that no treaty of boundaries could be
made unless that river became the line, and its waters and the
harbor at the mouth made common to both nations--a declaration
which should have utterly forbid the idea of a joint occupation,
as such occupation was admitting an equality of title and laying
a foundation for a division of the territory. This cherished idea
of dividing by the river had pervaded every British negotiation
since 1818. It was no secret: the British begged it: we refused
it. Lord Ashburton, there is reason to know, brought out the same
proposition. In his first diplomatic note he stated that he came
prepared to settle all the questions of difference between the two
countries; and this affair of the Columbia was too large, and of
too long standing, and of too much previous negotiation to have
been overlooked. It was not overlooked. The President says that
there were conferences about it, qualified as informal: which is
evidence there would have been formal negotiation if the informal
had promised success. The informal did not so promise; and the
reason was, that the two senators from Missouri being sounded on the
subject of a conventional divisional line, repulsed the suggestion
with an earnestness which put an end to it; and this knowledge of a
proposition for a conventional line induced the indignant language
which those two senators used on the subject in all their speeches.
If they had yielded, the valley of the Columbia would have been
divided; for that is the way the whole Ashburton treaty was made.
Senators were sounded by the American negotiator, each on the point
which lay nearest to him; and whatever they agreed to was put into
the treaty. Thus the cases of the liberated slaves at Nassau and
Bermuda were given up--the leading southern senators agreeing to it
beforehand, and voting for the treaty afterwards. The writer of this
View had this fact from Mr. Bagby, who refused to go with them, and
voted against the ratification of the treaty.
"This pretension to the Columbia is an encroachment upon our
rights and possession. It is a continuation of the encroachments
which Great Britain systematically practises upon us. Diplomacy
and audacity carry her through, and gain her position after
position upon our borders. It is in vain that the treaty of 1783
gave us a safe military frontier. We have been losing it ever
since the late war, and are still losing it. The commission
under the treaty of Ghent took from us the islands of Grand
Menan, Campo Bello, and Indian Island, on the coast of Maine,
and which command the bays of Fundy and Passamaquoddy. Those
islands belonged to us by the treaty of peace, and by the laws
of God and nature; for they are on our coast, and within wading
distance of it. Can we not wade to these islands? [Looking at
senator WILLIAMS, who answered, 'We can wade to one of them.']
Yes, wade to it! And yet the British worked them out of us;
and now can wade to us, and command our land, as well as our
water. By these acquisitions, and those of the late treaty, the
Bay of Fundy will become a great naval station to overawe and
scourge our whole coast, from Maine to Florida. Under the same
commission of the Ghent treaty, she got from us the island of
Boisblanc, in the mouth of the Detroit River, and which commands
that river and the entrance into Lake Erie. It was ours under
the treaty of 1783; it was taken from us by diplomacy. And
now an American ship must pass between the mouths of two sets
of British batteries--one on Boisblanc; the other directly
opposite, at Malden; and the two batteries within three or four
hundred yards of each other. Am I right as to the distance?
[Looking at Senator WOODBRIDGE, who answered, 'The distance is
three hundred yards.'] Then comes the late treaty, which takes
from us (for I will say nothing of what the award gave up beyond
the St. John) the mountain frontier, 3,000 feet in height, 150
miles long, approaching Quebec and the St. Lawrence, and, in
the language of Mr. Featherstonhaugh, 'commanding all their
communications, and commanding and overawing Quebec itself.'
This we have given up; and, in doing so, have given up our
military advantages in that quarter, and placed them in the
hands of Great Britain, to be used against ourselves in future
wars. The boundary between the Lake Superior and the Lake of the
Woods has been altered by the late treaty, and subjected us to
another encroachment, and to the loss of a military advantage,
which Great Britain gains. To say nothing about Pigeon River
as being or not being the '_long lake_' of the treaty of 1783;
to say nothing of that, there are yet two routes commencing in
that stream--one bearing far to the south, and forming the large
island called 'Hunter's.' By the old boundary the line went the
northern route; by the new, it goes to the south; giving to the
British a large scope of our territory (which is of no great
value), but giving them, also, the exclusive possession of the
old route, the best route, and the one commanding the Indians,
which is of great importance. The encroachment now attempted
upon the Columbia, is but a continuation of this system of
encroachments which is kept up against us, and which, until
1818, labored even to get the navigation of the Mississippi, by
laboring to make the line from the Lake of the Woods reach its
head spring. If Great Britain had succeeded in getting this line
to touch the Mississippi, she was then to claim the navigation
of the river, under the law of nations, contrary to her doctrine
in the case of the people of Maine and the river St. John.
The line of the 49th parallel of north latitude is another
instance of her encroaching policy; it has been mutilated by the
persevering efforts of British diplomacy; and the breaking of
that line was immediately followed by the most daring of all her
encroachments--that of the Columbia River."
The strength of the bill was tested by a motion to strike out the
land-donation clause, which failed by a vote of 24 to 22. The bill
was then passed by the same vote--the yeas and nays being:
"YEAS.--Messrs. Allen, Benton, Buchanan, Clayton, Fulton,
Henderson, King, Linn, McRoberts, Mangum, Merrick, Phelps,
Sevier, Smith of Connecticut, Smith of Indiana, Sturgeon,
Tappan, Walker, White, Wilcox, Williams, Woodbury, Wright,
Young."
"NAYS.--Messrs. Archer, Bagby, Barrow, Bates, Bayard, Berrien,
Calhoun, Choate, Conrad, Crafts, Dayton, Evans, Graham,
Huntington, McDuffie, Miller, Porter, Rives, Simmons, Sprague,
Tallmadge, Woodbridge."
The bill went to the House, where it remained unacted upon during
the session; but the effect intended by it was fully produced. The
vote of the Senate was sufficient encouragement to the enterprising
people of the West. Emigration increased. An American settlement
grew up at the mouth of the Columbia. Conventional agreements among
themselves answered the purpose of laws. A colony was planted--had
planted itself--and did not intend to retire from its position--and
did not. It remained and grew; and that colony of self-impulsion,
without the aid of government, and in spite of all its blunders,
saved the Territory of Oregon to the United States: one of the many
events which show how little the wisdom of government has to do
with great events which fix the fate of countries.
Connected with this emigration, and auxiliary to it, was the first
expedition of Lieutenant Frémont to the Rocky Mountains, and
undertaken and completed in the summer of 1842--upon its outside
view the conception of the government, but in fact conceived
without its knowledge, and executed upon solicited orders, of which
the design was unknown. Lieutenant Frémont was a young officer,
appointed in the topographical corps from the class of citizens by
President Jackson upon the recommendation of Mr. Poinsett, Secretary
at War. He did not enter the army through the gate of West Point,
and was considered an intrusive officer by the graduates of that
institution. Having, before his appointment, assisted for two years
the learned astronomer, Mr. Nicollet, in his great survey of the
country between the Missouri and Mississippi, his mind was trained
to such labor; and instead of hunting comfortable berths about the
towns and villages, he solicited employment in the vast regions
beyond the Mississippi. Col. Abert, the chief of the corps, gave him
an order to go to the frontier beyond the Mississippi. That order
did not come up to his views. After receiving it he carried it back,
and got it altered, and the Rocky Mountains inserted as an object
of his exploration, and the South Pass in those mountains named as
a particular point to be examined, and its position fixed by him.
It was through this Pass that the Oregon emigration crossed the
mountains, and the exploration of Lieutenant Frémont had the double
effect of fixing an important point in the line of the emigrants'
travel, and giving them encouragement from the apparent interest
which the government took in their enterprise. At the same time the
government, that is, the executive administration, knew nothing
about it. The design was conceived by the young lieutenant: the
order for its execution was obtained, upon solicitation, from his
immediate chief--importing, of course, to be done by his order, but
an order which had its conception elsewhere.