Joseph R. Wilson

“ 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 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. ”

“ The question of sovereignty was not left to Great Britain and the United States alone, on the withdrawal of Spain. More than two decades before, Russia had entered this region with an assertion of her right to make settlement on unoccupied territory, and recently had grown somewhat imperious in the tone of her assertion of that right. This intrusion of Russia followed close upon the Nootka Convention, and was the logical consequence of the principle for which Great Britain had secured recognition in that convention. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ Spain had long claimed exclusive sovereignty over this region, with the right to forbid the encroachment of other nations, on the ground that it belonged to that region allotted to her by the bull of Pope Alexander VI. England had never recognized Spain's claim to exclusive sovereignty based upon papal authority, but had asserted her right to settle upon any lands included within the limits prescribed by the papal bull, even if discovered by Spain, if, after a reasonable time allowed for settlement had passed, such lands remained unoccupied. ”

“ The negotiations of this time show a zealous purpose on the part of the President to effect a settlement, but show no real progress toward that end. The same may be said of the measures in congress of this period. Discussion of the question had been resumed in the house, and went on in the senate, but since negotiations on the part of the government with a view to a speedy settlement were almost continuously pending, congress was induced to refrain from any action that might thwart or trammel the government in its efforts. ”

“ 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. ”

“ The first of the principles adopted defined clearly what the convention understood by the Oregon Territory which it was sought to occupy and settle, asserting, as it did, the right of the United States from the line of latitude 42 to that of 54 and 40'. Among letters read in the convention from prominent men unable to be present was one from Mr. Cass, in which he declared that no one would be present who would concur more heartily with the convention in the measures that might be adopted than should he; he would take and hold possession of the territory of the Pacific Coast, come what might. ”

“ At the beginning of the year 1792, the United States had no claim to the region of the Oregon, but by an event of this year they were destined to become one of the chief parties to the question of its sovereignty. This year Capt. Robert Gray, of Boston, was for the second time on the coast, trading and exploring, under sanction of congress. At some time during his previous voyage, or in the earlier part of his second voyage, while sailing close in shore, Gray had discovered in a bay or indentation of the coast in latitude 46° 10 ́ what seemed to him to be the mouth of a large river. ”

“ England was interested in Texas, was even thought by many in the United States to be contemplating making it a colony; England had influence with Mexico, her capitalists having loaned the Mexican government to the amount of $50,000,000 on security of lands in New Mexico, California, and other of her possessions; and England was urgent in all negotiations on the Oregon boundary that she be allowed free navigation of the Columbia, if not that that river be her southern boundary. ”

“ The fact of this great array of American families fast moving toward the intervening barrier, and all but pressing upon it, with myriads 2 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. ”

“ In the United States, the slave states were desirous of Texas; the Western States pressed for the Oregon Territory at least to the forty-ninth parallel, while there was a growing desire in commercial centers in the North Atlantic States to have in American possession what was then regarded as the only ample and safe harbor on the North Pacific Coast south of the Straits of Fuca. Out of these various interests in England and America, President Tyler and Mr. Webster, his Secretary of State, shaped the policy of the administration. ”

“ Thus closely joined in time, if not otherwise intimately connected, were these two measures of Jefferson's earlier administration, the Louisiana purchase and the Lewis and Clark exploration. The promptness, energy, and efficiency with which the exploration was carried out under the able and courageous leadership of the man placed in charge, were altogether worthy of its distinguished projector. ”

“ 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. ”

“ The answer of Russia was, that the Russian-American Company claimed the whole coast of America on the Pacific, and the adjacent islands, from Bering's Strait southward toward and beyond the mouth of the Columbia River. With this declaration of Russia's claim negotiations were broken off, and were not resumed until September, 1821, when Emperor Alexander issued a ukase, in which he declared all the Northwest Coast of America north of latitude 51° exclusively Russian, and warned all other nations against intrusion within those limits. ”

“ As given by Count Nunyez, Spanish Ambassador at Paris, to M. de Montmorin, Secretary of the Foreign Department of France, June 1, 1790, it was claimed, "that, by treaties, demarkations, taking of possessions, and the most decided acts of sovereignty exercised by the Spaniards in those stations from the reign of Charles II, and authorized by that monarch in 1692, all the coast to the north of Western America, on the side of the South Sea, as far as beyond what is called Prince William's Sound, which is in the sixty-first degree, is acknowledged to belong exclusively to Spain." ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ Early in the year 1801, when Jefferson had but just taken his seat as President, Rufus King, Minister of the United States to England, wrote to Madison, Secretary of State, that the opinion at that time prevailed both at Paris and at London that Spain had ceded Louisiana and the Floridas to France. Immediately on receipt of this information Madison wrote to Pinckney, American Minister to Spain, advising him of the rumor, and of the President's urgent wish that he make the whole subject the object of early and vigilant inquiries. ”

“ Jefferson suggested to him the exploration of the northwest region of America. The plan was, as Jefferson himself gives it, that Ledyard "go by land to Kamchatka, cross in Russian vessels to Nootka Sound, fall down into the latitude of the Missouri, and penetrate to and through that to the United States." Jefferson's proposal was accepted by Ledyard, and steps were at once taken to secure from the Empress of Russia permission for him to cross her dominions. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ Every effortwas 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. ”

“ He, with others, finding themselves unable to induce the President to change his attitude on this point, and finding that in the present mood of congress the resolution of notice was likely to pass, used every endeavor to induce him to consent to a renewal of the proposition for compromise on the line of the forty-ninth parallel, or to invite such a proposal from the British government. ”

“ It was an influence to be bid for, and what more natural than that it should be bid for, as it was bid for, by the party seeking a means of reconciling northern and western voters to its more distinctly southern policy of the annexation of Texas?
On becoming President, Mr. Polk seems not to have felt himself bound by the extreme statement of his party's position on the Oregon Question. The tone of his inaugural is rather more conservative upon this subject than might have been expected from the circumstances of his election. ”

“ 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 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. ”

“ 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. ”