THE LEWIS AND CLARK EXPEDITION

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country, to be led by Meriwether Lewis (Jefferson's private secretary) and Captain William Clark (a brother of George Rogers Clark). Before the expedition was ready, the purchase of Louisiana made much of the territory to be explored our own, and gave us possessions contiguous to the unoccupied and almost unclaimed Oregon district.

Lewis and Clark set out from St. Louis with thirty-five men, in the spring of 1804. Sixteen hundred miles up the Missouri, near the modern Bismarck, they wintered among the Mandan Indians. The next spring, guided by the "Bird Woman" with her papoose on her back, they continued up the river to the water shed, and followed streams down the western slope until they found a mighty river. When they reached its mouth in November, four thousand miles from St. Louis, this river proved to be Captain Gray's Columbia. This exploration was the second basis for American claim to Oregon; and the scientific observations, maps, and journals of the expedition revealed a vast region never before known to White men.

In 1811 Astoria was founded on the south bank of the Columbia, by John Jacob Astor, as a station for the fur trade. This occupation by American citizens made a third basis for a claim to the country.

Unhappily, when the United States sought to establish its claim, a few years later (p. 406), the government tried to strengthen its case by holding that Oregon was part of the Louisiana Purchase. There was really no ground whatever for arguing that "Louisiana" ever extended beyond the Rocky Mountains; but the government maps kept up the pretense until 1901.

Foreign

relations, 1806-1812

CHAPTER XXI

THE WAR OF 1812

THE foreign relations of the United States from 1806 to 1812 were disgraceful. After brief truce, the European war began again in 1803, and the commercial clauses of the Jay treaty expired soon after. Napoleon was soon master of the continent, with all the coast line from Italy to Denmark. His sole antagonist, England, ruled supreme on the sea. The only neutral power with any shipping interests was the United States. That shipping fattened on its monopoly; but each of the mighty combatants strove to force it into an ally, and to prevent its aiding his foe. English "Order in Council" followed French "Decree"; and whatever American shipping the one did not declare subject to capture, the other did. Meantime, our own government lacked decision to take sides, or power to defend its citizens.

The story is not a pleasant one. It is a tale of outrageous robbery by both European powers, and of American vacillation and disgrace. Jefferson and Madison, great in peace, were not suited for emergencies of this kind. Well-meaning, gentle, trustful, not particularly decisive, they were buffeted pitifully back and forth between the arrogance and indifference of English Pitt and Canning, and the duplicity and insolent greed of French Napoleon and Talleyrand.

If war is ever justifiable for any provocation short of armed invasion, we had abundant cause to fight both countries or either, at any time between 1806 and 1810. Our government shilly-shallied, in impotent indecision, until the energetic part of the nation rose wrathfully to demand that we fight some one at once to win back self-respect. Then we chose the wrong time and, apparently, the wrong

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ENGLISH " ORDERS” AND FRENCH “DECREES 381.

foe. Unfortunately, too, our choice of a foe arrayed us on the side of the European despot against the only hope for European freedom. The rise of Napoleon had reversed the position of England and France, as compared with that of 1793. Says Professor Hart (Foundations of American Foreign Policy, 27): "The United States waited till the European system . . . was on the point of falling to pieces of its own weight, and then made war on the power which, on the whole, had done us the least harm." To the same "To effect Professor Channing says (Jeffersonian System, 200):

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The intention of the English government seems to have been to treat the neutral fairly, to give him ample warning, and to mitigate his losses by permitting him to seek another destination for his cargo. The French administration of the decrees was peculiarly harsh and unjust. . . . In short the French seemed to have acted with the least consideration for the rights of neutrals; but the English confiscated so many more neutral vessels, owing to the activity and strength of their cruisers and privateers, that the greater hostility was aroused against the British."

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To complicate the picture further, that section of the country immediately interested - the section whose ships were being confiscated and sailors impressed Growth of did not want war at any time, certainly not New Engwith England, and talked freely of preferring merce, secession from the Union. In 1790, before the 1793–1810 wars of the French Revolution began, 550 English merchant ships entered American harbors. In 1799, when the first series of wars closed, the number had sunk to 100. Meantime, New England shipping had increased fivefold. During the second series of wars, until America itself became engaged, — American shipping continued to absorb the former English carrying trade with the world. Between 1803 and 1812, England seized a thousand American merchantmen, — many of them very properly, for violations of recognized principles of international law; and France captured more than half that number, — the greater