with it is referred to Irving's "Astoria" for one of the most thrilling narratives in American history. In 1818, after Astoria had been sold by the Americans to the British Fur Company and the stockade occupied by British troops, it was restored to the United States under a provision of the Treaty of Ghent, without prejudice to any of the claims that either the United States, Great Britain, Spain or Russia might have to the ultimate sovereignty of the territory. The claims of the respective nations were afterward considered by the plenipotentiaries of Great Britain and the United States. Messrs. Rush and Gallatin, who represented our Government, proposed that the dividing line between the territories should be drawn from the northwestern extremity of the Lake of the Woods north or south, as the case might require, to the 49th parallel of latitude, thence west to the Pacific. The British commissioners, Messrs. Goldburn and Robinson, agreed to admit the line as far west as the Rocky Mountains. Our representatives on that occasion supported the claim of our Government by citing Gray's discovery, the exploration of the Columbia from source to mouth by Lewis and Clark, and the first settlement and occupancy of the country by the Pacific Fur Company. The British The British commissioners asserted superior claims by virtue of former voyages, especially those of Captain Cook, and refused to agree to any boundary which did not give them the harbor at the mouth of the river in common with the United States. Finding it impossible to agree upon a boundary, it was at length agreed that all territories and their waters claimed by either power west of the Rocky Mountains should be free and open to the vessels, citizens and subjects of both for the space of ten years; provided, however, that no claim of either or of any other nation to any part of those territories should be prejudiced by the arrangement. FLORIDA TREATY. On the 22nd of February, 1819, Spain ceded Florida to the United States, and by the treaty it was agreed that a line drawn on the meridian from the source of the Arkansas northward to the 42nd parallel of latitude, and thence along that parallel westward to the Pacific, should form the northern boundary of the Spanish possessions and the southern boundary of those of the United States in that quarter. 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. |