Whatever may have been his motives, Floyd stated with vividness the significance of western advance in relation to the Pacific coast. He showed that, while in 1755, nearly a hundred and fifty years after the foundation of Jamestown, the population of Virginia had spread but three hundred miles into the interior of the country, during the last forty-three years population had spread westward more than a thousand miles. He recalled the days when more than a month was required to furnish Kentucky with eastern goods, by way of Pittsburgh, and when it required a voyage of over a month to pass from Louisville to New Orleans and nearly three months for the upward voyage. This had now been shortened by steamboat to seven days down and sixteen days up. From these considerations and the time from St. Louis to the mouth of the Columbia by steamboat and wagon, he argued that Oregon was no more distant from St. Louis in 1822 than St. Louis was twenty years before from Philadelphia. The fur-trade, the whale and seal fisheries, the trade with China, and the opportunity for agricultural occupation afforded by Oregon were all set forth.[Footnote: Annals of Cong., 17 Cong., 2 Sess., 397.]
Against the proposal, his opponents argued inexpediency rather than our treaties with Great Britain. Tracy, of New York, doubted the value of the Oregon country, and, influenced perhaps by Long's report, declared that "nature has fixed limits for our nation; she has kindly introduced as our Western barrier, mountains almost inaccessible, whose base she has skirted with irreclaimable deserts of sand."[Footnote: Ibid., 590.] In a later debate, Smyth, of Virginia, amplified this idea by a proposal to limit the boundaries of the United States, so that it should include but one or two tiers of states beyond the Mississippi. He would remove the Indians beyond this limit, and, if American settlements should cross it, they might be in alliance with, or under the protection of, the United States, but outside of its bounds. [Footnote: Register of Debates, 18 Cong., 2 Sess., I., 37.]
Baylies, of Massachusetts, declared that there were living witnesses "who have seen a population of scarcely six hundred thousand swelled into ten millions; a population which, in their youth, extended scarcely an hundred miles from the ocean, spreading beyond the mountains of the West, and sweeping down those mighty waters which open into regions of such matchless fertility and beauty." "Some now within these walls may, before they die, witness scenes more wonderful than these; and in aftertimes may cherish delightful recollections of this day, when America, almost shrinking from the 'shadows of coming events,' first placed her feet upon untrodden ground, scarcely daring to anticipate the grandeur which awaited her." Tucker, of Virginia, agreed that settlement "marches on, with the increasing rapidity of a fire, and nothing will stop it until it reaches the shores of the Pacific," which he estimated would be by 1872. But he was loath to see it accelerated, believing that the people on the east and the west side of the Rocky Mountains would have a permanent separation of interests. [Footnote: Annals of Cong., 17 Cong., 2 Sess., 422.] Nor were even western men sanguine that the nation could retain the Pacific coast as an integral part of its vast empire. Senator Benton, of Missouri, was the congressional champion of the far west. Born in interior North Carolina, he had followed the frontier to Tennessee, and then, after killing his man in a duel and exchanging pistol-shots in a free fight with Jackson, he removed to the new frontier at St. Louis. Pedantic and ponderous, deeply read in curious historical lore, in many ways he was not characteristic of the far west, but in the coarse vigor with which he bore down opposition by abuse, and in the far horizon line of the policies he advocated, he thoroughly represented its traits.
Familiar as he was with frontier needs and aspirations, he urged the United States to block England's control of the northwest, and to assert title to the Oregon territory, with the idea of ultimately founding a new and independent American nation there. It is true that he admitted that along the ridge of the Rocky Mountains "the western limit of this republic should be drawn, and the statue of the fabled god Terminus should be raised upon its highest peak, never to be thrown down." [Footnote: Register of Debates, I., 712.]
Nevertheless, in his utterances the ideal of expansion was not to be mistaken. He spoke bravely in favor of the protection and extension of the fur-trade, [Footnote: Annals of Cong., 17 Cong., 1 Sess., I., 416; cf. ibid., 18 Cong., I Sess., I., 456.] pointing out that inasmuch as England occupied Oregon, she would, under the law of nations, have the right of possession until the question of sovereignty were decided. He warned his countrymen, in 1823, that Great Britain would monopolize the Pacific Ocean, and by obtaining control of the Rocky Mountain fur-trade would be able to launch the Indians of the north and west against the frontiers of Missouri and Arkansas, Illinois and Michigan, upon the first renewal of hostilities between the United States of America and the king of Great Britain. [Footnote: Ibid., 17 Cong., 2 Sess., 246-251.]
Benton believed that, within a century, a population greater than that of the United States of 1820 would exist on the west side of the Rocky Mountains; and he saw in the occupation of the northwest coast the means of promoting a trade between the valley of the Mississippi, the Pacific Ocean, and Asia. Upon the people of eastern Asia, he thought, the establishment of a civilized power on the opposite coast of America would produce great benefits. "Science, liberal principles in government, and the true religion, might cast their lights across the intervening sea. The valley of the Columbia might become the granary of China and Japan, and an outlet to their imprisoned and exuberant population…. Russia and the legitimates menace Turkey, Persia, China, and Japan; they menace them for their riches and dominions; the same Powers menace the two Americas for the popular forms of their Governments. To my mind the proposition is clear, that Eastern Asia and the two Americas, as they have become neighbors, should become friends." [Footnote: Register of Debates, I., 712.]
With true western passion he denounced the relinquishment of Texas by the treaty of 1819. "The magnificent valley of the Mississippi is ours," he proclaimed, "with all its fountains, springs, and floods and woe to the statesman who shall undertake to surrender one drop of its water, one inch of its soil, to any foreign power." He was ready for a war with Spain, believing that it would give the United States the Floridas and Cuba, "the geographical appurtenance of the valley of the Mississippi"; that it would free the New from the Old World; and that it would create a cordon of republics across the two continents of North and South America. He pointed to the west as the route to the east—the long-sought way to India; and, in imagination, he outlined the states to be laid off "from the center of the valley of the Mississippi to the foot of the shining mountains." "It is time," he wrote, "that Western men had some share in the destinies of this republic." [Footnote: Meigs, Benton, 98, 99, cf. 91.]
CHAPTER IX
THE CRISIS OF 1819 AND ITS RESULTS (1819-1820)
In 1820 the United States had a population of about nine and one- half millions; in 1830, nearly thirteen millions. It was spread out from east to west like a page in the history of society. On the Atlantic seaboard were the centers of American civilization that had grown up in colonial days in close touch with Europe. From this region of commerce and manufacture, the nation, on its march towards the west, changed through successive types of industrial life until in the Rocky Mountains the frontier fur-trader mingled with the Indians. The successive stages of social evolution which at first were exhibited in narrow belts on the Atlantic coast had now spread nearly across the continent. [Footnote: Turner, "Significance of the Frontier," in Am. Hist. Assoc., Report 1893, pp. 200, 206, 208.]