On the 5th of April, 1824, the negotiations between the United States and Russia were terminated by a convention signed at St. Petersburg, which, among other provisions, contained one to the effect that "neither the United States nor their citizens shall, in future, form an establishment on those coasts or on the adjacent islands north of the latitude of 54° 40', and the Russians shall make none south of that latitude." These concessions on the part of Spain and Russia left the United States and Great Britain sole claimants for the entire territory under consideration, the claim of Great Britain having been fortified by a treaty with Russia in 1825, in which the Russian Government agreed, as it had done with our Government the previous year, that the line of 54° 40′ should be the boundary between their respective possessions. The period of ten years' joint occupation by our Government and Great Britain agreed upon in 1818 was now approaching a termination. A new negotiation was opened, and after submitting and rejecting several propositions for a settlement, it was finally agreed between the two Governments that they should continue in the joint occupancy of the territory for an indefinite period, either party being at liberty to demand a new negotiation on giving the other one year's notice of its intention. The relations thus established between the two Governments continued without interruption until the attention of Congress was called to the subject by President Tyler in his message read at the opening of the session of 1842. The subject was referred to the committees on foreign affairs in both houses of Congress, and a bill was introduced in the Senate for the occupation and settlement of the territory, and extending the laws of the United States over it. A protracted debate followed, the bill passed the Senate and was sent to the House of Representatives, where a report against it was made by Mr. Adams, chairman of the committee on foreign affairs, and the session expired without any debate on the subject. When the report of the debates in Congress reached England, it produced some excitement in the House of Commons, and in February, 1844, the Honorable Richard Packenham, plenipotentiary from Great Britain, arrived in Washington with full instructions to treat definitively on all disputed points relative to the country west of the Rocky Mountains. In August following the British minister opened the negotiation by a proposition which would have given Great Britain two-thirds of the entire territory of Oregon, including the free navigation of the Columbia and the harbors on the Pacific. This was promptly rejected, and no further attempt at adjustment was made until the following year. An offer was then made by President Polk, which being rejected, closed the door to further negotiation. The President recommended to Congress that the agreement for joint occupation be terminated. FINAL SETTLEMENT OF BOUNDARY. A very animated debate, which continued until near the close of the session, sprang up, in which the question of boundary lost most of its national features in the sharp party conflict to which it was subjected. The Democrats, generally adopting the recommendations of the President, advocated the extreme northern boundary of 54° 40′, and were ready, if necessary, to declare that as the ultimatum. A few leaders among them, of whom Thomas Benton was, perhaps, the most prominent, united with the Whigs in opposition to this extreme demand, and the line was finally established by treaty on the 49th parallel. Hon. James G. Blaine, in a speech delivered at Lewiston, Maine, on August 25, 1888, said: "The claim of the Democrats to the whole of what now constitutes British Columbia up to latitude 54° 40', was a pretense put forth during the presidential canvass of 1844 as a blind, in order to show that they were as zealous to secure Northern territory as they were bent on acquiring Southern territory. President Polk made his campaign on this claim. The next thing the country heard was that Mr. Polk's administration was compelled to surrender the whole territory to Great Britain, confessing that it had made pretenses which it was unable to maintain or defend. Had his party not forced the question to a settlement, the joint occupation which had come down from Jefferson to that hour would have peacefully continued, and with our acquisition of California two years afterwards and the immediate discovery of gold, the thousands of American citizens who swarmed to the Pacific coast would have occupied British Columbia, and the final settlement would doubtless have been in favor of those who were in actual posssession; and but for the blundering diplomacy of the Democratic party, which prematurely and without any reason forced the issue, we should to-day see our flag floating over the Pacific front, from the Gulf of California to Behring's Straits." This mode of settlement probably averted a war between Great Britain and the United States, but after a careful survey of all the facts, including discoveries, explorations and settlements, I cannot but feel that the concessions were all made by the United States, whose title to the whole of the territory was much more strongly fortified than that of Great Britain to any portion of it. As from our present vantage ground we look back a half century in review of the debates and discussions in Congress upon this boundary question, we marvel at the seeming lack of prescience which the wisest of the public men of that day displayed in estimating the value of these possessions. Even as enlightened and sagacious a statesman as Daniel Webster, in his famous speech delivered on the floor of the United States Senate, on April 6, 1846, while defending his course in advocating the treaty of Washington, in speaking of the value of the privilege granted by England to the citizens of Aroostook County, in the State of Maine, in allowing them free navigation of the River St. John, to the ocean, said: "We have heard a great deal lately of the immense value and importance of the Columbia river and its navigation;-but I will undertake to say that for all purposes of human use, the St. John is worth a hundred times as much as the Columbia is, or ever will be." Standing to-day in the valley of the Mississippi and casting our eyes over the Louisiana Purchase and our later acquisitions, upon this continent, we talk of the West,-its cities,its agriculture,-its progress, with rapture;—a land where but half a century ago, nearly all was bare creation;-whose valleys, now teeming with fruition, had then never cheered the vision of civilized man;-whose rivers, which now afford the means of employment to thousands, and which are bordered by myriads of happy homes, then rolled in solitary grandeur to their union with the Missouri and the Columbia;-to all this we point with pride as the latest and noblest illustration of our republican system of government. But beyond this West, which we so much admire and eulogize, there has come to us from the islands of the Pacific, another West, where the real work of development is just commencing;-a land whose rugged features, American civilization with all its attendant blessings will soften;-insuring respect for individual rights and the practice of orderly industry, security for life and property, freedom of religion and the equal and just administration of law; and where man, educated, intellectual man, will plant upon foundations as firm as our mountains, all the institutions of a free, enlightened and happy people;—a land where all the advantages and resources of the West of yesterday will be increased, and varied, and spread out, by educational, industrial and social development, upon a scale of magnificence which has known no parallel, and which will fill the full measure of Berkeley's prophecy: "Westward the course of Empire takes its way. The first four acts already past, A fifth shall close the drama with the day. SOME LEGACIES OF THE ORDINANCE OF 1787.* BY HON. JAMES OSCAR PIERCE. It is not the aim of this paper to explain the place of the Ordinance of 1787 as a constitutional document, or the details of the movement of which it was the culmination. The general history of that period has been abundantly written, and the evolution of the Ordinance has been elaborately traced. While the present age has recognized this as one of the great constitutional acts in the larger history of our country, the extent of our indebtedness to it has not been generally observed. We are now so far removed from that epoch that we can distinguish some of the legacies which that Ordinance has left for the welfare and prosperity of the present generation, and for which it and its wise promoters deserve our gratitude. NATIONALITY. It is not often possible to mark the precise time when a people became a Nation, or the final step which made it such. All students recognize historical processes as gradual, including those by which great governments grow. The historian sees a people at a certain date unformed, with no institutions definitely or permanently established, and he does not ascribe to them statehood. At a later period, the same people are recog nized as a fully formed nation. In the intervening time, one can note only a general progress from the earlier status toward the later, without being able to assign any particular date as that when the change was consummated. There is a period in American history which presents difficulties of this character. On July 4th, 1776, our country ceased to be thirteen British colonies, and she never reverted to that status. The adoption *Read at the monthly meeting of the Executive Council, March 13, 1899. |