66

by the United States; how in 1821 Mr. Canning, then Minister, when the question of occupation was before Congress, had twice attempted to arrest discussion; and how, inspired by British agents, the National Intelligencer had published essay after essay ridiculing the claim of the United States to any part of the northwest coast of America. With a fleet on the coast, with a fort at the mouth of the Columbia, with batteries along its banks, with a line of posts to Canada and 140,000 Indians at her command, does any man suppose that when 1828 comes Great Britain will give up possession of the country she is doing so much to secure?

"But gentlemen ask, What are the advantages to be derived from occupation? I answer, The advantages will be securing of the fur trade of the Columbia, the Rocky Mountains, and the upper Missouri; preventing the Russians and the British getting control of the Indians on the Columbia; a naval station for us on the Pacific; communication between the valley of the Mississippi and the Pacific; and, chief of all, the exclusion of foreign powers from Oregon.

"Gentlemen ask again, What effect will a new territory or a new State have on the Union? I answer, It will be the nucleus of a new and independent power. This Republic should have limits. Where they should be on the north or the south is not now for me to say. But westward they are fixed by the hand of Nature, and the ridge of the Rocky Mountains may be named as offering a convenient, natural, and everlasting boundary. In planting the seed of a new power on the western coast, it should be well understood that when strong enough to take care of itself the new Government should separate from the mother empire as the child separates from the parent. You think this is looking far into the future. It is not. Within a century from this day a population greater than that of the present United States will exist on the west side of the Rocky Mountains.

"But the question now before us is, Shall we execute the Treaty of Ghent, expel the British from the Columbia, perfect our title, and take possession of the country? What use shall then be made of it is to be settled later. But on one point there should be no doubt-the people of the United

1824.

THE DESERT REGION.

27

States will neither be tricked nor bullied out of this territory, nor suffer a monarchical power to grow upon it."

The manly speech of Benton fell on dull ears. The report of Major Long had done its work.* That magnificent stretch of rolling prairie which lies between Missouri and Iowa on the east and the Rocky Mountains on the west, and extends from Texas to our northern frontier-a region now cut up into eight States, supporting a population of more than five millions, dotted with towns and cities, five of which may each boast of more inhabitants than any city in the Union in 1825; a land of wheat fields and cornfields and mines and rancheswas condemned as a wilderness, over which buffaloes and Indians might roam, but on which civilized man could find no habitation. With such a desert barrier between the States and Oregon, it seemed idle to the senators to give any heed to the Pacific coast, and the bill for the occupation of the mouth of the Columbia river was laid upon the table by a vote of twenty-five to fourteen.

"The vast region commencing near the sources of the Sabine, Trinity, Brazos, and Colorado, and extending northwardly to the forty-ninth degree of north latitude, by which the United States territory is limited in that direction, is, throughout, of a similar character. The whole of this region seems peculiarly adapted as a range for buffaloes, wild goats, and other wild game, incalculable multitudes of which find ample pasturage and subsistence upon it.

"This region, however, viewed as a frontier, may prove of infinite importance to the United States, inasmuch as it is calculated to serve as a barrier to prevent too great an extension of our population westward."-Long's Expedition, vol. ii, p. 361.

CHAPTER XLI.

GROWTH OF THE MONROE DOCTRINE.

THE refusal of Great Britain to come to an agreement concerning the boundary of Oregon in 1824 may be ascribed. in large part to her denial of a principle of colonization asserted by Monroe in 1823. The story of the origin, growth, and final announcement of the famous doctrine of which this principle is a part-the doctrine which bears the name of President Monroe-is a long one, but the great results to which it has led in our time require that the story, long as it is, should be told.

When France declared war on Great Britain in 1793, and sent Citizen Genet to be her Minister in the United States, our country was called on for the first time to decide once for all what part it should play in the politics of Europe. The question was a hard one to settle. We were bound to France by ties of gratitude, by a treaty of amity and commerce, and by a treaty of alliance in which we had solemnly guaranteed to his most Christian Majesty, and so to the French Republic as his successor, "the possessions of the French Crown in America." We were bound to Great Britain by no tie of gratitude and by no treaty of amity and commerce. But the cautious, far-sighted, hard-headed man who filled the presidential chair met the issue squarely, and, taking the politic, not the sentimental, course, issued his proclamation of neutrality.

For that act he was denounced and slandered as no other President from his day down to that of Lincoln was ever slandered. But he held fast to his purpose, and when the time came to retire from office reasserted the policy of not med

1796.

VIEWS OF WASHINGTON.

29

dling in the affairs of Europe, and in his farewell address gave reasons for assuming such a position.*

The stormy years of Adams's administration, the expul

*Washington's Farewell Address, September, 1796.-The great rule of conduct for us in regard to foreign nations is, in extending our commercial relations, to have with them as little political connection as possible. So far as we have already formed engagements, let them be fulfilled with perfect good faith. Here let us stop.

Europe has a set of primary interests which to us have none or a very remote relation. Hence, she must be engaged in frequent controversies, the causes of which are essentially foreign to our concerns. Hence, therefore, it must be unwise in us to implicate ourselves by artificial ties in the ordinary vicissitudes of her politics, or the ordinary combinations and collisions of her friendships or enmities. Our detached and distant situation invites and enables us to pursue a different course. If we remain one people, under an efficient government, the period is not far off when we may defy material injury from external annoyance; when we may take such an attitude as will cause the neutrality we may at any time resolve upon to be scrupulously respected; when belligerent nations, under the impossibility of making acquisitions upon us, will not lightly hazard the giving us provocation; when we may choose peace or war as our interests, guided by justice, shall counsel.

Why forego the advantages of so peculiar a situation? Why quit our own to stand on foreign ground? Why, by interweaving our destiny with that of any part of Europe, entangle our peace and prosperity in the toils of European ambition, rivalship, interest, humor, or caprice?

It is our true policy to steer clear of permanent alliances with any portion of the foreign world, so far, I mean, as we are now at liberty to do it; for let me not be understood as capable of patronizing infidelity to existing engagements. I hold the maxim no less applicable to public than to private affairs, that honesty is always the best policy. I repeat, therefore, let those engagements be observed in their genuine sense. But, in my opinion, it is unnecessary and would be unwise to extend them.

Taking care always to keep ourselves by suitable establishments on a respectable defensive posture, we may safely trust to temporary alliances for extraordinary emergencies.

Although it is very true we ought not to involve ourselves in the political system of Europe, but keep ourselves always distinct and separate from it if we can, yet to effect this separation, early, punctual, and continual information of the current chain of events, and of the political projects in contemplation, is no less necessary than if we were directly concerned in them. It is necessary, in order to the discovery of the efforts made to draw us in the vortex, in season to make preparations against them. However we may consider ourselves, the maritime and commercial powers of the world will consider the United States of America as forming a weight in that balance of power in Europe which can never be forgotten or neglected.-Williams, Statesman's Manual, vol. i, p. 111.

sion of Pinckney from France, the insult to the X. Y. Z. commissioners, the naval war with France, served but to prove the wisdom of Washington's policy and the soundness of his reasons, and drew from Jefferson on two occasions indorsements both vigorous and precise. On the day he was inaugurated the first time he took occasion to remind his countrymen of the happiness of their lot, of the fact that much of that happiness was due to separation from Europe, and told them that the essential principles of our Government-the principles which should shape his administration-were peace, commerce, and honest friendship with all nationsentangling alliances with none." *

When Jefferson spoke these words Europe was fast being pacified by Napoleon. But when he met Congress in December, 1803, peace had been broken, the Napoleonic wars had opened, our country was again called on to declare her position. toward Europe, and for the second time he asserted his policy of "peace, commerce, and friendship with all-entangling alliances with none." +

Thus, before the days of the Long Embargo and our

*Jefferson's Inaugural Address, March 4, 1801.-Kindly separated by Nature and a wide ocean from the exterminating havoc of one quarter of the globe; too high-minded to endure the degradations of the others; possessing a chosen country, with room enough for our descendants to the hundredth and thousandth generation; entertaining a due sense of our equal right to the use of our own faculties, to the acquisitions of our industry, to honor and confidence from our fellow-citizens, resulting not from birth but from our actions and their sense of them; enlightened by a benign religion, professed, indeed, and practised in various forms, yet all of them including honesty, truth, temperance, gratitude, and the love of man; acknowledging and adoring an overruling Providence, which by all its dispensations proves that it delights in the happiness of man here and his greater happiness hereafter; with all these blessings, what more is necessary to make us a happy and prosperous people? . . . It is proper that you should understand what I deem the essential principles of our Government, and consequently those which ought to shape its administration . . . peace, commerce, and honest friendship with all nations-entangling alliances with none.

+ Jefferson's Annual Message, October 17, 1803.-Separated by a wide ocean from the nations of Europe, and from the political interests which entangle them, together with productions and wants which render our commerce and friendship useful to them, and theirs to us, it cannot be the interest of any to assail us, nor ours to disturb them.