1823. OREGON. 21 and listened again to speeches in which the manifest intention of Great Britain to seize and hold the country, the great value of the fur trade of the upper Missouri and Columbia valleys, and the many advantages to be derived from a settlement on the Pacific coast were once more set forth with argument and statistics, all to no purpose. The House flatly refused to consider it. Failure in the House did not discourage the friends of the idea in the Senate, and a couple of weeks later Benton moved that the Committee on Foreign Relations be instructed to inquire into the expediency of making an appropriation to enable the President to take and hold possession of our Territories on the northwest coast. To this the Senate agreed. But the session soon ended, and no report was made. Two months after the members had gone to their homes Adams received a note from the Baron de Tuyl, who had succeeded the Chevalier de Politica, asking that the American Minister at St. Petersburg be given power to settle the differences by negotiation.* The invitation was accepted, and instructions were duly drawn and despatched.† While Adams was busy preparing them, the baron called one morning at the Department of State, and, in the course of conversation, was told that Russia's claim to a right to colonize on the Pacific coast could not be listened to, because both North and South America, in consequence of the independent position the nations of this hemisphere had assumed and maintained, were closed to colonization by European powers. From this doctrine the baron dissented most heartily; but it seems to have impressed Mr. Adams so strongly that it was reasserted by him in a letter to our Minister at St. Petersburg. Mr. Middleton was to admit no part of the Russian claims, and rest those of the United States on the Spanish treaty of 1819, which secured all the rights and pretensions of Spain to the coast north of forty-two degrees; on the discovery of the Columbia by Gray, on the exploration of the country by * Baron de Tuyl to Adams, April 24, 1823. Lewis and Clark, and on the settlement at Astoria. He might, however, agree that no citizen of the United States should land at any Russian settlement without permission of the Russian commander, that no subjects of the Emperor should land at any American settlements without consent of the American authorities, and that no American settlements should be made north and no Russian settlements should be established south of fifty-five degrees north latitude. Meantime Great Britain had protested against the imperial ukase, and had in like manner been invited to an amicable negotiation for the adjustment of her claims. It was supposed that, as England and America held the country in joint occupation, the two nations would carry on a joint negotiation with Russia. But when it was found that the British envoy had power to discuss but not to conclude anything, and that authority to act jointly was not likely to be given him, Henry Middleton began the negotiation on behalf of the United States alone by offering fifty-five degrees as a boundary or line of demarcation. Russia then offered fiftyfour degrees forty minutes, which was accepted and incorporated in the convention signed in April, 1824. The discussion thus raised by Russia made it most fitting that the United States and England should come to an understanding as to their respective pretensions. Adams therefore instructed Richard Rush to bring up the matter and to state definitely the grounds on which the United States took her stand. The Russian application of the colonial principle of exclusion was not to be admitted as lawful on any part of the northwest coast of America. Indeed, it was to be denied that such a principle could be applied by any European nation. It was true that, by the Nootka Sound Convention of 1790, England had agreed that, so far as Spanish settlements extended in North and South America, Spain possessed the exclusive rights territorial, and of navigation and fishery, to a distance of ten miles from the coasts so actually occupied. But the independence of the South American nations and of Mexico had extinguished, said Adams, the exclusive colonial rights of Spain in North and South America, and "the American continents henceforth will no longer be subjects 1824. FIFTY-FOUR-FORTY. 23 of colonization. Occupied by civilized independent nations, they will be accessible to Europeans on that footing alone, and the Pacific Ocean and every part of it will remain open to the navigation of all nations, in like manner with the Atlantic." As to the boundary, Rush was to offer to stipulate that no settlements be made in future by the Russians south of fifty-five degrees, by citizens of the United States north of fifty-one degrees, or by British subjects either south of fiftyone or north of fifty-five degrees. He might, however, if England insisted on it, accept forty-nine degrees as the boundary from the Rocky Mountains to the sea. These two propositions were accordingly made by Rush, and were met, the one with a declination and the other with a flat denial. Great Britain, it was answered, considered the whole of the unoccupied parts of America open to her for settlement in the future just as they had been in the past, and would make no exception of the northwest coast, whether north of forty-two degrees or south of fifty-one. Yet she would from pure goodness, from a desire to close sources of disagreement which the future might multiply and aggravate, waive her rights and suggest a line of demarcation. This line was the parallel of forty-nine degrees from the summit of the Rocky Mountains to the northeasternmost branch of the Columbia river, and thence down the Columbia to the Pacific Ocean. Rush rejected it as promptly as England had rejected that of the United States, and tendered forty-nine degrees from the mountains to the sea. Again England declined the offer, and the negotiation came to naught.* So the matter stood when Monroe, in December, 1824, met Congress for the last time. In his message he once more called attention to our interests on the Pacific coast, once more urged the establishment of a military post at the mouth of the Columbia river, and the House once more went back to the matter. The old bill was taken up, and, when the objections had been made and answered, it was passed. In the Senate, however, it encountered strong opposition from men * Negotiations ended in July, 1824. whose ideas were best expressed by a senator from New Jersey. He objected because the ten years of joint occupation under the convention of 1818 had not yet expired; because till it had expired, to take possession by military force would be highly improper; because we had never yet spread our laws over a territory but with the intention of sooner or later making it a State, and a State Oregon never could be. Our union, said Mr. Dickerson, is already too extensive. The distance from the mouth of the Columbia to the mouth of the Missouri is 3,555 miles. But the mouth of the Missouri is 1,148 miles from Washington, which city is therefore 4,703 miles from the mouth of the Columbia. Suppose now that Oregon is a State in the Union, and that a member of Congress from the far western confines of our country sets out from his home to make the journey of 4,700, or say 4,650 miles to Washington. At the rate members of Congress travel, according to law that is, twenty miles a day-he would require, to come to the seat of government and go home again, four hundred and sixty-five days. If he should lie by on Sundays—say sixty-six of them-he would spend five hundred and thirtyone days on the way. But suppose he made haste, and travelled thirty miles each day and rested every Sunday, he would then consume three hundred and fifty days. This would enable a young and energetic traveller to leave his home, come to Washington, spend two weeks attending to his duties in the House, and get back home again in the course of just one year to a day. For this long and perilous journey he would receive $3,720 dollars as mileage. He might come by water around Cape Horn, or by Behring Strait around the north coast of our continent to Baffin's Bay, and so to Washington. True, this northwest passage had not been discovered except on the maps. But it would be before Oregon became a State. Benton answered him. Ignoring what he was pleased to consider Mr. Dickerson's wit, the senator from Missouri reviewed at great length the claims of the two countries to Oregon, declared ours to be incontestable, and to rest on the discovery of the Columbia by Captain Gray in 1790; on the purchase of Louisiana in 1803; on the exploration or discovery 1824. ASTORIA NOT GIVEN UP. 25 of the Columbia from its head to its mouth by Lewis and Clark in 1805; on the settlement at Astoria in 1811; and on the Spanish treaty of 1819. The question of title disposed of, Benton turned to that of occupation. On this he took four positions: That the United States had the right of possession; that Great Britain had actual possession; that she resisted occupation by the United States; and that after 1828 the party in possession would have the right of possession till ownership was settled by negotiation or by arms. After touching briefly on the first point, Benton passed to the second, and reminded the Senate that the delivery of Astoria to the United States was a pretence and a shame. Mr. Prevost, said Benton, was carried on a British sloop of war from Lima to Astoria where he stayed just five days. During this time he signed a receipt for the delivery of the post, and accepted a remonstrance from the British, protesting against the delivery till the question who owns Oregon had once and for all been decided. This was all he did. The actual control of the fort was not changed for an hour. The British flag was hauled down and the Stars and Stripes were run up to satisfy the words of the Treaty of Ghent. But Mr. Prevost could not man the fort himself. He brought no sailors and no soldiers to do so for him, and on the day he sailed away it was as much under the crown of Great Britain as on the day he came. Over it at this moment the British flag is flying. It still bears the name of Fort George, and at it the medals of George the Fourth are still distributed to the chiefs of the surrounding Indian tribes. And more than this: Five other posts have since been built along the banks of the Columbia from the sea to the mountains, as part of a great cordon three thousand miles in length stretching along our frontier for a purpose which every citizen and every Indian of the West well understands, and which the United States makes no effort to counteract. In evidence of his third point, Benton cited the public documents. He recalled to the Senate how, in 1815, the British chargé d'affaires, Mr. Baker, had refused to give an order for the delivery of Astoria; how in 1817 Mr. Bagot, the Minister, had remonstrated against the occupation of the country |