_Why Did the United States Dicker with England for Half a
Century, before Asserting her Rights to Oregon? The
Answer--American Statesmen had no Appreciation of Oregon, and
Determinedly Opposed Expansion._
It is no pleasure for an American to call in question and criticise
the wisdom and statesmanship of the men of the first half of the
nineteenth century. But history is made of stubborn facts.
From 1792, the time of discovery of the Columbia River, up to 1845,
the United States government never, by an official act in any way
aided Oregon, or attempted to control it. Time and time again some
statesman in Congress offered a resolution, or framed an act looking
to that end, and upon several occasions one branch of Congress
permitted the act to pass, simply to avoid discussion, knowing that
it would fall dead in the other house. Thus, year by year our
statesmen went on such record, as for their credit and wisdom it
would be well if it could be obliterated from the records. They were
men, brave and true; they had guided the nation to an honorable
place among the nations of the earth, but they were, after all,
willing to stand still, and let well enough alone. They regarded
their territory as already vaster and larger than would ever be
peopled. The readers can best understand the canny sentiment of the
period by a few quotations from speeches made in Congress from time
to time when the Oregon question was brought before them. Senator
Winthrop of Massachusetts, in one of his great speeches, said:
"What do we want with Oregon? We will not need elbow room for a
thousand years."
Another senator, second to none in influence, Benton of Missouri, in
a speech, while in Congress in 1825, said:
"The ridge of the Rocky Mountains may be named as a convenient,
natural, and everlasting boundary. Along this ridge the western
limits of the Republic should be drawn, and the statue of the
fabled god Terminus should be erected upon its highest peak,
never to be thrown down."
In justice to Benton, we may observe he later on was convinced of the
unwisdom of the sentiment, and became, with his co-worker, Senator
Linn of Missouri, an ardent friend of Oregon. But his colleague,
Senator Winthrop of Massachusetts, as late as 1846, when the Oregon
treaty was before the Senate, and when the question had reached
almost a war stage, repeated the words of Benton's speech of 1825,
and commended it for its wisdom and statesmanship.
General Jackson, who was a power in the nation's counsels in that
day, in a letter to President Monroe, concisely stated his opinion in
these words:
"It should be our policy to concentrate our population, and
confine our frontier to proper limits, until our country in those
limits is filled with a dense population. It is denseness of
population that gives strength and security to our frontier."
That was a diplomatic and conservative opinion, which doubtless
reflected the sentiment of the multitude. The Calhouns, the Websters,
the Daytons, and a host of others were more pronounced, and less
diplomatic. They pointedly hated the very name of Oregon, and did not
propose to endanger the nation's safety or defile its garments by
making it a part of the Union.
To all that class, and I shall mention but few of them in
illustration, Oregon was an aversion. The great Webster said:
"Oregon is a vast worthless area, a region of savages, wild
beasts, deserts of shifting sands, cactus, and prairie dogs. What
can we ever hope to do with a coast of three thousand miles, rock
bound, cheerless, and not a harbor on it. What use have we for
such a country?"
Senator McDuffie of South Carolina, was fiery with his oratory, and
can easily be understood. He said in one of his several speeches:
"The whole of Oregon is not worth a pinch of snuff."
Again he said:
"As I understand it, there are seven hundred miles this side of
the Rocky Mountains uninhabitable, where rain never falls,
mountains wholly impassable except through gaps. What are you
going to do in such a case? Can you apply steam? Have you
estimated the cost of a railroad to the mouth of the Columbia?
The wealth of the Indies would not build it. I wish the Rocky
Mountains were an impassable barrier. If there was an embankment
five feet high to be removed, I would not vote five dollars to
remove it, and encourage our people to go there."
That speech was delivered in Congress only a few months before
Whitman's memorable ride to save Oregon. Senator Dayton of New Jersey
was marked as an able man, and yet his knowledge of Oregon was as
limited as that of Webster, Winthrop, or McDuffie. In one of his
speeches he called "Oregon a Sahara, except along the little streams
and bottom lands!"
We have in modern times had some eloquent opponents to expansion, but
they were "childlike and bland" when compared with the old statesmen
of the first half of the nineteenth century, who easily saw ruin to
the country by acknowledging practical ownership of that distant
territory.
The public press was not behindhand with statesmen in ridiculing
Oregon. The Louisville Journal and the National Intelligencer, then
the two most influential newspapers in the land, were bitter. The
Journal wrote, and the Intelligencer copied and approved:
"Of all the countries upon the face of the earth, Oregon is the
one least favored by heaven. It is the riddlings of creation. It
is almost as barren as Sahara, and quite as unhealthy as the
Campana of Italy. Russia has her Siberia, and England her Botany
Bay, and if the United States should ever need a country to which
to banish her rogues and scoundrels, the utility of such a region
as Oregon would be demonstrated. Until then, we are perfectly
willing to leave this magnificent country to the Indians and
trappers and buffalo-hunters that roam over its sand banks."
One passing over that beautiful and fertile land, after only half a
century and ten years have passed, can easily conceive how dense was
the ignorance of the common people upon the subject, when a man,
eminent in letters, and the wisest journalist of his day, George D.
Prentice, would give expression to such sentiments.
The English press if possible was even more pronounced, and used
every argument to discourage emigration. The Hudson Bay Fur Company
was owned and controlled by the titled nobility of England. It had
made every owner rich by its wealth of furs. It was in full control
of all the territory by the consent of the United States, and only
desired "to be let alone" and in peace to enjoy the monopoly.
[Illustration: LAKE CHELAN--FIRST VIEW OF THE SNOWY PEAKS. (Photo.
Lyman.)]
The London Examiner, in 1842, just when the United States was waking
from its lethargy, wrote:
"Ignorant Americans are disposed to quarrel over a country, the
whole of which in dispute not being worth, to either party,
twenty thousand pounds."
About the same time the Edinburgh Review wrote:
"Only a small portion of the land is capable of cultivation. It
is a case where the American people have been misled, as to soil
and climate. In a few years all that gave life to the country,
both the hunter and his prey, will be extinct, and their places
supplied by a thin half-breed population, scattered along the
fertile valleys, who will gradually degenerate into a barbarism
far more offensive than backwoodsmen."
In view of the utterances of the American press and statesmen, we
remain silent in any criticism of England. It was acting no
dishonorable part in Oregon. They were simply using to their great
profit a vast territory the United States owned, but did not want to
be troubled with. They, it is true, knew more of its worth than did
Americans, but as far as the Hudson Bay people were concerned, they
did not covet immigration, even of their own kind, only enough to
hold the balance of power, and keep themselves in readiness to
organize the territory, and retain it under terms of the treaty of
1818. They had great interests at stake.
Modern writers have asserted over and over again that "the United
States was never in any danger of losing Oregon, and needed no
Whitman and his missionaries to save it!" But they cannot do away
with the record which I have only tersely recited.
A volume could be written, along the same line, to prove the utter
lack of interest in that country. But if statesmen, in Congress and
out, and the press had been silent, the single official act of the
government, in signing the treaty of 1818, giving entire control of
the land to England (for the Hudson Bay Company represented England),
would tell the whole story of the neglect of Oregon. When ever before
or since has the United States made such a deal, giving by solemn
treaty, a country thirty times as large as Massachusetts, for a full
twenty years and more, without a dollar of compensation, to a great
foreign nation, and unresistingly seen American traders driven out or
starved out of the entire country? Those making the charge of "no
danger of losing Oregon by the United States" would do well to
explain _this one act, which was official_, even if they make light
of the utterances of the men who refused, for more than fifty years,
to legislate by a single act for Oregon. It is true the treaty said:
"It should not be to the prejudice of either of the high
contracting parties, the only object being to prevent disputes
and differences among themselves!"
Who does not see and acknowledge that the treaty was a virtual
acknowledgment of England's ownership by "discovery" as claimed at
that time? These modern critics find no flaw in the title of the
United States, they simply shout "no danger" for no other conceivable
purpose than to attempt to dishonor and disparage the heroic work of
the missionaries and pioneers of early Oregon, in which they have
succeeded only too well. They were poor men, who made no claim for
honors. The leading, heroic actor made no demands for his services,
neither money nor official recognition. Our historians, until modern
justice cried out in shame, have sought to bolster up the statesmen,
lawmakers and molders of public opinion of that day, only giving
sneers to a man who sacrificed ease, comfort, home and life to
patriotic Christian duty.