Thirty Years' View (Vol. II of 2)

"The question presents itself, how shall we preserve this country? There is only one means by which it can be; but that, fortunately, is the most powerful of all – time. Time is acting for us; and, if we shall have the wisdom to trust its operation, it will assert and maintain our right with resistless force, without costing a cent of money, or a drop of blood. There is often in the affairs of government, more efficiency and wisdom in non-action, than in action. All we want to effect our object in this case, is 'a wise and masterly inactivity.' Our population is rolling towards the shores of the Pacific, with an impetus greater than what we realize. It is one of those forward movements which leaves anticipation behind. In the period of thirty-two years which have elapsed since I took my seat in the other House, the Indian frontier has receded a thousand miles to the West. At that time, our population was much less than half what it is now. It was then increasing at the rate of about a quarter of a million annually; it is now not less than six hundred thousand; and still increasing at the rate of something more than three per cent. compound annually. At that rate, it will soon reach the yearly increase of a million. If to this be added, that the region west of Arkansas and the State of Missouri, and south of the Missouri River, is occupied by half civilized tribes, who have their lands secured to them by treaty (and which will prevent the spread of population in that direction), and that this great and increasing tide will be forced to take the comparatively narrow channel to the north of that river and south of our northern boundary, some conception may be formed of the strength with which the current will run in that direction, and how soon it will reach the eastern gorges of the Rocky Mountains. It will soon – far sooner than anticipated – reach the Rocky Mountains, and be ready to pour into the Oregon Territory, when it will come into our possession without resistance or struggle – or, if there should be resistance, it would be feeble and ineffectual. We would then be as much stronger there, comparatively, than Great Britain, as she is now stronger than we are; and it would then be as idle in her to attempt to assert and maintain her exclusive claim to the territory against us, as it would now be in us to attempt it against her. Let us be wise, and abide our time, and it will accomplish all that we desire, with far more certainty and with infinitely less sacrifice, than we can without it."

Mr. Calhoun averred and very truly, that his opposition to the bill did not grow out of any opposition to the growth of the West – declared himself always friendly to the interests of that great section of our country, and referred to his course when he was Secretary at war to prove it.

"I go back to the time when I was at the head of the War Department. At that early period I turned my attention particularly to the interest of the West. I saw that it required increased security to its long line of frontier, and greater facility of carrying on intercourse with the Indian tribes in that quarter, and to enable it to develope its resources – especially that of its fur-trade. To give the required security, I ordered a much larger portion of the army to that frontier; and to afford facility and protection for carrying on the fur-trade, the military posts were moved much higher up the Mississippi and Missouri rivers. Under the increased security and facility which these measures afforded, the fur-trade received a great impulse. It extended across the continent in a short time, to the Pacific, and north and south to the British and Mexican frontiers; yielding in a few years, as stated by the Senator from Missouri [Mr. Linn], half a million of dollars annually. But I stopped not there. I saw that individual enterprise on our part, however great, could not successfully compete with the powerful incorporated Canadian and Hudson Bay Companies, and that additional measures were necessary to secure permanently our fur-trade. For that purpose I proposed to establish a post still higher up the Missouri, at the mouth of the Yellow Stone River, and to give such unity and efficiency to our intercourse and trade with the Indian tribes between our Western frontier and the Pacific ocean, as would enable our citizens engaged in the fur-trade to compete successfully with the British traders. Had the measures proposed been adopted, we would not now have to listen to the complaint, so frequently uttered in this discussion, of the loss of that trade."

The inconsistent argument of Mr. McDuffie, that the country was worthless, and yet that Great Britain would go to war for it, was thus answered by Mr. Linn:

"The senator from South Carolina somewhat inconsistently urges that the country is bleak, barren, volcanic, rocky, a waste always flooded when it is not parched; and insists that, worthless as it is, Great Britain will go at once to war for it. Strange that she should in 1818 have held so tenaciously to what is so worthless! Stranger still, that she should have stuck yet closer to it in 1827, when she had had still ampler time to learn the bootlessness of the possession! And strangest of all, that she should still cling to it with the grasp of death! Sir, I cannot for my life help thinking that she and the senator have formed a very different estimate of the territory, and that she is (as she ought to be) a good deal the better informed. She knows well its soil climate, and physical resources, and perfectly comprehends its commercial and geographical importance. And knowing all this, she was ready to sink all sense of justice, stifle all respect for our clear title, and hasten to root her interests in the soil, so as to secure the strong, even when most wrongful, title of possession."

The danger of waiting for Great Britain to strengthen her claim was illustrated by Mr. Linn, by what had happened in Maine. In 1814 she proposed to purchase the part she wanted. She afterwards endeavored to negotiate for a right of way across the State. Failing in that attempted negotiation, as in the offer to purchase, she boldly set up a claim to all she wanted – demanded it as matter of right – and obtained it by the Ashburton treaty – the United States paying Massachusetts and Maine for the dismembered part. Deprecating a like result from temporizing measures with respect to Oregon, Mr. Linn said:

"So little before 1813 or 1814 did Great Britain ever doubt your claim to the lately contested territory in Maine, that in 1814 she proposed to purchase that part of it which she desired. She next treated for a right of way. It was refused; and she then set up a claim to the soil. This method has sped no ill with her; for she has got what she wanted, AND MADE YOU PAY FOR IT. Her Oregon game is the same. She has set her heart upon a strip of territory north of the Oregon, and seems determined to pluck it from us, either by circumvention or force. Aware of the political as well as legal advantages of possession, she is strengthening hers in every way not too directly responsible. She is selecting and occupying the best lands, the most favorable sites. These she secures to the settlers under contracts. For any counteraction of yours, she may take, and is taking, possession of the whole territory. She has appropriated sites for mills, manufactories, and farms. If one of these has been abandoned for a better, she reverts to it, if a citizen of yours occupies it, and ejects him. She tells her people she will protect them in whatever they have laid, or may lay, their hands upon. If she can legitimately do this, why may not we? Is this a joint occupation of which she is to have the sole benefit? Had you as many citizens there as she, you would be compelled to protect them; and if you have not, why is it but because she keeps them off, and you refuse to offer them the inducements which she holds out? Give them a prospective grant of lands, and insure them the shelter of your laws, and they will soon congregate there in force enough to secure your rights and their own."

The losses already sustained by our citizens from the ravages of Indians, incited against them by the British Hudson Bay company, were stated by Mr. Linn upon good authority, to be five hundred men in lives taken in the first ten years of the joint occupation treaty, and half a million of dollars in property robbed or destroyed, besides getting exclusive possession of our soil, and the command of our own Indians within our own limits: and he then contrasted this backwardness to protect our own citizens on their own soil with the readiness to expend untold amounts on the protection of our citizens engaged in foreign commerce; and even in going to the coast of Africa to guard the freedom of the negro race.

"Wherever your sails whiten the sea, in no matter what clime, against no matter whom, the national arm stretches out its protection. Every where but in this unhappy territory, the persons and the pursuits of your citizens are watched over. You count no cost when other interests are concerned, when other rights are assailed; but you recoil here from a trifling appropriation to an object of the highest national importance, because it enlists no sectional influence. Contrast, for instance, your supineness about the Oregon Territory, with your alacrity to establish, for guarding the slave coast and Liberia, a squadron costing $600,000 annually, and which you have bound yourself by treaty to keep up for five years, with great exposure of lives and vessels. By stipulation, eighty guns (one-twelfth of your force afloat) is kept upon this service; and, as your naval expenditure amounts to about seven millions a year, this (its twelfth part) will make, in five years, three millions bestowed in watching the coast of Africa, and guarding the freedom of the negro race! For this you lavish millions; and you grudge $100,000 to the great American and national object of asserting your territorial rights and settling your soil. You grant at once what furthers the slave policy of a rival power, and deny the means of rescuing from its grasp your own property and soil."

This African squadron has now been kept up more than twice five years, and promises to be perpetual; for there was that delusive clause in the article, so tempting to all temporizing spirits, that after the lapse of the five years, the squadron was still to be kept up until the United States should give notice to terminate the article. This idea of notice to terminate a treaty, so easy to put in it, and so difficult to be given when entanglement and use combine to keep things as they are, was shown to be almost impossible in this treaty of joint occupation of the Columbia. Mr. Calhoun had demanded of Mr. Linn, why not give the notice to terminate the treaty before proceeding to settle the country? to which he answered:

"The senator from South Carolina [Mr. Calhoun], has urged that we should, first of all, give the twelve months' notice of our renunciation of the treaty. He [Mr. Linn] could only answer that he had repeatedly, by resolutions, urged that course in former years; but always in vain. He had ever been met with the answer: 'This is not the proper time – wait.' Meanwhile, the adverse possession was going on, fortifying from year to year the British claim and the British resources, to make it good. Mr. Madison had encouraged the bold and well-arranged scheme of Astor to fortify and colonize. He was dispossessed; and the nucleus of empire which his establishments formed, passed into the hands of the Hudson Bay Company, now the great instrument of English aggrandizement in that quarter. The senator insists that, by the treaty, there should be a joint possession. Be it so, if you will. But where is our part of this joint possession? In what does it consist, or has it consisted? We have no posts there, no agent, no military power to protect traders. Nay, indeed, no traders! For they have disappeared before foreign competition; or fallen a sacrifice to the rifle, the tomahawk, or the scalping knife of those savages whom the Hudson Bay Company can always make the instruments of systematic massacre of adventurous rivals."

Mr. Benton spoke at large in defence of the bill, and first of the clause in it allotting land to the settlers, saying:

"The objections to this bill grew out of the clause granting land to the settlers, not so much on account of the grants themselves, as on account of the exclusive jurisdiction over the country, which the grants would seem to imply. This was the objection; for no one defended the title of the British to one inch square of the valley of Oregon. The senator from Arkansas [Mr. Sevier], who has just spoken, had well said that this was an objection to the whole bill; for the rest would be worth nothing, without these grants to the settlers. Nobody would go there without the inducement of land. The British had planted a power there – the Hudson Bay Fur Company – in which the old Northwest Company was merged; and this power was to them in the New World what the East India company was to them in the Old World: it was an arm of the government, and did every thing for the government which policy, or treaties prevented it from doing for itself. This company was settling and colonizing the Columbia for the British government, and we wish American citizens to settle and colonize it for us. The British government gives inducement to this company. It gives them trade, commerce, an exclusive charter, laws, and national protection. We must give inducement also; and our inducement must be land and protection. Grants of land will carry settlers there; and the senator from Ohio [Mr. Tappan] was treading in the tracks of Mr. Jefferson (perhaps without having read his recommendation, although he has read much) when he proposed, in his speech of yesterday, to plant 50,000 settlers, with their 50,000 rifles, on the banks of the Oregon. Mr. Jefferson had proposed the same thing in regard to Louisiana. He proposed that we should settle that vast domain when we acquired it; and for that purpose, that donations of land should be made to the first 30,000 settlers who should go there. This was the right doctrine, and the old doctrine. The white race were a land-loving people, and had a right to possess it, because they used it according to the intentions of the Creator. The white race went for land, and they will continue to go for it, and will go where they can get it. Europe, Asia, and America, have been settled by them in this way. All the States of this Union have been so settled. The principle is founded in their nature and in God's command; and it will continue to be obeyed. The valley of the Columbia is a vast field open to the settler. It is ours, and our people are beginning to go upon it. They go under the expectation of getting land; and that expectation must be confirmed to them. This bill proposes to confirm it; and if it fails in this particular, it fails in all. There is nothing left to induce emigration; and emigration is the only thing which can save the country from the British, acting through their powerful agent – the Hudson Bay Company."

Mr. Benton then showed from a report of Major Pilcher, Superintendent of Indian Affairs, and who had visited the Columbia River, that actual colonization was going on there, attended by every circumstance that indicated ownership and the design of a permanent settlement. Fort Vancouver, the principal of these British establishments, for there are many of them within our boundaries, is thus described by Major Pilcher:

"This fort is on the north side of the Columbia, nearly opposite the mouth of the Multnomah, in the region of tide-water, and near the head of ship navigation. It is a grand position, both in a military and commercial point of view, and formed to command the whole region watered by the Columbia and its tributaries. The surrounding country, both in climate and soil, is capable of sustaining a large population; and its resources in timber give ample facilities for ship-building. This post is fortified with cannon; and, having been selected as the principal or master position, no pains have been spared to strengthen or improve it. For this purpose, the old post near the mouth of the river has been abandoned. About one hundred and twenty acres of ground are in cultivation; and the product in wheat, barley, oats, corn, potatoes, and other vegetables, is equal to what is known in the best parts of the United States. Domestic animals are numerous – the horned cattle having been stated to me at three hundred; hogs, horses, sheep, and goats, in proportion; also, the usual domestic fowls: every thing, in fact, indicating a permanent establishment. Ship-building has commenced at this place. One vessel has been built and rigged, sent to sea, and employed in the trade of the Pacific Ocean. I also met a gentleman, on my way to Lake Winnipec, at the portage between the Columbia and Athabasca, who was on his way from Hudson's Bay to Fort Colville, with a master ship-carpenter, and who was destined for Fort Vancouver, for the purpose of building a ship of considerable burden. Both grist and saw-mills have been built at Fort Vancouver: with the latter, they saw the timber which is needed for their own use, and also for exportation to the Sandwich Islands; upon the former, their wheat is manufactured into flour. And, from all that I could learn, this important post is silently growing up into a colony; and is, perhaps, intended as a future military and naval station, which was not expected to be delivered up at the expiration of the treaty which granted them a temporary and joint possession."

Mr. Benton made a brief deduction of our title to the Columbia to the 49th parallel under the treaty of Utrecht, and rapidly traced the various British attempts to encroach upon that line, the whole of which, though earnestly made and perseveringly continued, failed to follow that great line from the Lake of the Woods to the shores of the Pacific. He thus made this deduction of title:

"Louisiana was acquired in 1803. In the very instant of signing the treaty which brought us that province, another treaty was signed in London (without a knowledge of what was done in Paris), fixing, among other things, the line from the Lake of the Woods to the Mississippi. This treaty, signed by Mr. Rufus King and Lord Hawkesbury, was rejected by Mr. Jefferson, without reference to the Senate, on account of the fifth article (which related to the line between the Lake of the Woods and the head of the Mississippi), for fear it might compromise the northern boundary of Louisiana and the line of 49 degrees. In this negotiation of 1803, the British made no attempt on the line of the 49th degree, because it was not then known to them that we had acquired Louisiana; but Mr. Jefferson, having a knowledge of this acquisition, was determined that nothing should be done to compromise our rights, or to unsettle the boundaries established under the treaty of Utrecht.

"Another treaty was negotiated with Great Britain in 1807, between Messrs. Monroe and William Pinckney on one side, and Lords Holland and Auckland on the other. The English were now fully possessed of the fact that we had acquired Louisiana, and become a party to the line of 49 degrees; and they set themselves openly to work to destroy that line. The correspondence of the ministers shows the pertinacity of these attempts; and the instructions of Mr. Adams, in 1818 (when Secretary of State, under Mr. Monroe), to Messrs. Rush and Gallatin, then in London, charged with negotiating a convention on points left unsettled at Ghent, condense the history of the mutual propositions then made. Finally, an article was agreed upon, in which the British succeeded in mutilating the line, and stopping it at the Rocky Mountains. This treaty of 1807 shared the fate of that of 1803, but for a different reason. It was rejected by Mr. Jefferson, without reference to the Senate, because it did not contain an explicit renunciation of the pretension of impressment!

"At Ghent the attempt was renewed: the arrest of the line at the Rocky Mountains was agreed upon, but the British coupled with their proposition a demand for the free navigation of the Mississippi, and access to it through the territories of the United States; and this demand occasioned the whole article to be omitted. The Ghent treaty was signed without any stipulation on the subject of the line along the 49th degree, and that point became a principal object of the ministers charged with completing at London, in 1818, the subjects unfinished at Ghent in 1814. Thus the British were again foiled; but, true to their design, they persevered and accomplished it in the convention signed at London in 1818. That convention arrested the line at the mountains, and opened the Columbia to the joint occupation of the British; and, being ratified by the United States, it has become binding and obligatory on the country. But it is a point not to be overlooked, or undervalued, in this case, that it was in the year 1818 that this arrestation of the line took place; that up to that period it was in full force in all its extent, and, consequently, in full force to the Pacific Ocean; and a complete bar (leaving out all other barriers) to any British acquisition, by discovery, south of 49 degrees in North America."

The President in his message had said that "informal conferences" had taken place between Mr. Webster and Lord Ashburton on the subject of the Columbia, but he had not communicated them. Mr. Benton obtained a call of the Senate for them: the President answered it was incompatible with the public interest to make them public. That was a strange answer, seeing that all claims by either party, and all negotiations on the subjects between them, whether concluded or not, and whether successful or not should be communicated.

"The President, in his message recommending the peace treaty, informs us that the Columbia was the subject of "informal conferences" between the negotiators of that treaty; but that it could not then be included among the subjects of formal negotiation. This was an ominous annunciation, and should have opened the eyes of the President to a great danger. If the peace mission, which came here to settle every thing, and which had so much to gain in the Maine boundary and the African alliance; – if this mission could not agree with us about the Columbia, what mission ever can? To an inquiry from the Senate to know the nature and extent of these "informal conferences" between Mr. Webster and Lord Ashburton, and to learn the reason why the Columbia question could not have been included among the subjects of formal negotiation – to these inquiries, the President answers, that it is incompatible with the public interest to communicate these things. This is a strange answer, and most unexpected. We have no political secrets in our country, neither among ourselves nor with foreigners. On this subject of the Columbia, especially, we have no secrets. Every thing in relation to it has been published. All the conferences heretofore have been made public. The protocols, the minutes, the conversations, on both sides, have all been published. The British have published their claim, such as it is: we have published ours. The public documents are full of them, and there can be nothing in the question itself to require secrecy. The negotiator, and not the subject, may require secrecy. Propositions may have been made, and listened to, which no previous administration would tolerate, and which it may be deemed prudent to conceal until it has taken the form of a stipulation, and the cry of war can be raised to ravish its ratification from us. All previous administrations, while claiming the whole valley of the Columbia, have refused to admit a particle of British claim south of 49 degrees. Mr. Adams, under Mr. Monroe, peremptorily refused to submit any such claim even to arbitration. The Maine boundary, settled by the treaty of 1783, had been submitted to arbitration; but this boundary of 49 was refused. And now, if, after all this, any proposition has been made by our government to give up the north bank of the river, I, for one, shall not fail to brand such a proposition with the name of treason."

This paragraph was not without point, and even inuendo. The north bank of the Columbia with equal rights of navigation in the river, and to the harbor at its mouth, had been the object of the British from the time that the fur-trader, and explorer, Sir Alexander McKenzie, had shown that there was no river and harbor suitable to commerce and settlement north of that stream. They had openly proposed it in negotiations: they had even gone so far as to tell our commissioners of 1818, that no treaty of boundaries could be made unless that river became the line, and its waters and the harbor at the mouth made common to both nations – a declaration which should have utterly forbid the idea of a joint occupation, as such occupation was admitting an equality of title and laying a foundation for a division of the territory. This cherished idea of dividing by the river had pervaded every British negotiation since 1818. It was no secret: the British begged it: we refused it. Lord Ashburton, there is reason to know, brought out the same proposition. In his first diplomatic note he stated that he came prepared to settle all the questions of difference between the two countries; and this affair of the Columbia was too large, and of too long standing, and of too much previous negotiation to have been overlooked. It was not overlooked. The President says that there were conferences about it, qualified as informal: which is evidence there would have been formal negotiation if the informal had promised success. The informal did not so promise; and the reason was, that the two senators from Missouri being sounded on the subject of a conventional divisional line, repulsed the suggestion with an earnestness which put an end to it; and this knowledge of a proposition for a conventional line induced the indignant language which those two senators used on the subject in all their speeches. If they had yielded, the valley of the Columbia would have been divided; for that is the way the whole Ashburton treaty was made. Senators were sounded by the American negotiator, each on the point which lay nearest to him; and whatever they agreed to was put into the treaty. Thus the cases of the liberated slaves at Nassau and Bermuda were given up – the leading southern senators agreeing to it beforehand, and voting for the treaty afterwards. The writer of this View had this fact from Mr. Bagby, who refused to go with them, and voted against the ratification of the treaty.