“The results of the survey may be summed up as follows: Three lines run from the Mississippi River to the Rocky Mountains; nine passes explored in the Rocky Mountains; three lines run from the Rocky Mountains to the Columbia River and Puget Sound; the Cascades explored from the Columbia to the 49th parallel; Puget Sound examined with reference to a railroad depot; the fact that not the slightest obstruction will occur from snow established beyond controversy.”
After a short stay in San Francisco, Governor Stevens took the steamer for the Isthmus, and reached New York in May, and the next morning had a joyful reunion with his wife and little girls in Newport. After his severe and long-continued labors, the sea voyage compelled him to a much-needed rest. On such voyages he threw off his wonted intense, high pressure mood of work, and, with mind relaxed, enjoyed the soothing influence of old Neptune.
He proceeded immediately to Washington with his family, except his son, who was at school at Phillips Academy in Andover, and who joined him later at the summer vacation, and took rooms at the National Hotel on Pennsylvania Avenue. A great deal was still to be done to complete the report of the exploration, and with Tinkham, Osgood, and other assistants he drove it with his accustomed vigor. On June 30 he submitted it to the department, the first report of all the routes, although it covered the greatest field, and was by far the most comprehensive and exhaustive.
Secretary Davis, recognizing that in his measures for prosecuting the survey Governor Stevens was actuated solely by zeal for the public service, submitted an estimate to cover the deficiency, which was duly appropriated, and the protested drafts were honored. General Hunt gives the following incident, which shows the confidence Governor Stevens’s old friends had in his ability to carry his points:—
“I followed him in the thorough work he made of the Northern Pacific Railway survey,—of his row with Jeff Davis for overrunning in his expenditures the amount assigned him, and so preventing Jeff’s designs of defeating that road. In 1854 I had, at Fort Monroe, occasion to describe your father to old Major Holmes, a classmate of Jeff. He went to Washington, and on his return told me, ‘Your friend Stevens is ruined. Davis refuses to recommend to Congress to make good the expenditures as contrary to orders. It will ruin Stevens.’ ‘Wait awhile,’ said I; ‘I see by the last “Union” that Stevens has just arrived en route to Washington at Panama. He will leave Jeff nowhere!’ Soon after he arrived in Washington, was followed by an appropriation covering all his bills, and so Jeff failed all round.”
Secretary Davis was in fact astonished and deeply disappointed at the results of the survey, and the very favorable picture of the Northern route and country given in Governor Stevens’s report. A leader among the Southern public men, who were so soon to bring on the great rebellion, of which he was to be the official head, he had set his heart upon the Southern route, and was anxious to establish its superiority to all others and secure its adoption as the national route, in order to aggrandize his own section. He could ill brook, therefore, Governor Stevens’s clear and vivid description of the Northern route, showing its great superiority in soil and climate, the easy grades, absence of snow, and accessibility by inland river navigation. He chose to consider the accounts overdrawn as the best way of sustaining his chosen route. In his report to Congress, transmitting the surveys of the several routes, he took great pains to belittle the results of Governor Stevens’s labors and disparage the Northern route. In his comparison of routes, he arbitrarily increased the governor’s estimate of cost from $117,121,000 to $150,871,000, or nearly $38,000,000; magnified the physical difficulties; condemned the agricultural resources; declared that “the country west of the Rocky Mountains to the Pacific slope may likewise be described as one of general sterility,” and that “the severely cold character of the climate throughout the whole route, except the portion west of the Cascade Mountains, is one of its unfavorable features.” He ignored the governor’s statements, and Tinkham’s reconnoissance as to the snow in the Snoqualmie Pass, and the practicability of the latter, and, quoting McClellan with approval, declared that “the snow is twenty feet deep, the pass barely practicable, and the information now possessed is sufficient to decide against this route.” It is significant that he pays a warm compliment to McClellan, remarking that “his examination presents a reconnoissance of great value, and, though performed under adverse circumstances, exhibits all the information necessary to determine the practicability of this portion of the route.” And this of an officer who had consumed a whole month in moving one hundred and eighty miles; lay another month in camp in the Yakima valley, making only the most cursory examinations; found the passes non-existent, or “impracticable;” reported the snow twenty to twenty-five feet deep on the credit of Indians; ignobly quailed at inclement weather and snows, which other men bravely faced and overcame; and generally condemned the country, and vilified the hardy pioneers. In sober truth McClellan found credit in the eyes of the Secretary, not for what he accomplished, but for what he failed to accomplish, for his unfavorable and condemnatory report on the route and the country, which was precisely the kind of testimony the Secretary wanted. The country, stigmatized as one of “general sterility,” and which Governor Stevens pronounced a fine, arable region of great fertility, is now one of the great wheat-fields of the country, yielding twenty to thirty million bushels a year.
Moreover, Mr. Davis manifested a dissatisfied and fault-finding spirit towards the governor. On one occasion, when the latter was calling on him, and asking his attention to some matter of importance connected with the survey, Davis interrupted him with marked impatience, and intimated that he had no time to hear him. “I do not come here to talk with Jefferson Davis,” exclaimed the governor with dignity, “but to confer with the Secretary of War upon the public business intrusted to my charge, and I demand his attention.” The Secretary at once gave him full and considerate hearing until the matter was fully gone into, and as the governor took his leave, followed him to the door, and frankly apologized for his momentary rudeness. Jefferson Davis was not without generous and magnanimous traits, and appreciated the earnest and sincere character of his caller. But he put a stop to further work on the Northern route, prevented any more appropriations for it, and kept up his fight against it. Some time afterwards, in speaking of the route to a mutual friend,[8] he declared: “Governor Stevens is a man of great ability, and of upright and high-toned character, but he has entirely misconceived and exaggerated the agricultural resources of the Northern route. The fact is, he has no knowledge of agricultural soils or conditions.” When this was repeated to the governor he remarked: “Indeed, perhaps Mr. Davis does not know that I was brought up on a farm until my seventeenth year.”
But Governor Stevens indulged in no complaints at this unworthy treatment. He knew that the information given in his report was too well founded and abundant to be refuted by mere official rancor. Despite the deprivation of funds, he continued the work of exploration, survey, and observation for the next three years, making free use of the Indian agents and volunteer troops under his command, and unsparing in his own personal exertions, and on February 7, 1859, submitted to the War Department “My final report of the explorations made by me and under my direction in the years 1853, 1854, and 1855, to determine the practicability of the Northern route for a railroad to the Pacific.” This report, published by order of Congress in two large quarto volumes, as Parts I. and II., vol. xii., Pacific Railroad Reports, contains over eight hundred pages, with plates, tables, and views, and most fully sustains the earlier report, besides adding an immense amount of new information. And this was Governor Stevens’s answer to Secretary Davis.
But the governor found the sultry summer in Washington a very trying one, in cramped quarters, overburdened with the voluminous data and details of the report, and subject to many annoyances. Unfortunately, the meteorological and astronomical observations, while in care of Lieutenant Donelson, were lost, presumably on the Isthmus, by the carelessness of the express company, and could not be recovered, although that officer returned to San Francisco expressly in search of them, and this loss caused serious embarrassment. The governor found, too, that some of the scientific corps were proposing to publish as their own separate work the materials gathered as members of the exploration, and had to adopt decided and severe measures to prevent the barefaced attempt. During great part of July he was seriously ill, and incapacitated from work.
In addition to all these labors and cares, he obtained the sanction of the government for holding the Blackfoot council he had so much at heart, for which he was appointed a commissioner, and allotted $10,000 for assembling and bringing the western Indians to Fort Benton. His views and recommendations in regard to treating with the Indians of Washington Territory, and purchasing their lands, were also adopted, and he was appointed the commissioner to make such treaties. As already stated, his recommendations in regard to the claims of the Hudson Bay Company were adopted by the Secretary of State. Congress appropriated $30,000 for a wagon-road from Fort Benton to Walla Walla, a matter which the governor strenuously urged; and also amended the land laws, created the office of surveyor-general, and made appropriations for universal surveys and mail service. To all these matters “Governor Stevens addressed himself with the energy, ability, and straightforwardness which were his characteristics, supplementing the feebler efforts of Lancaster, and, with Lane of Oregon, coming to the rescue of the most important bills for Washington, and really doing the work of the delegate.”[9] Notwithstanding Secretary Davis’s attitude on the Northern route, Governor Stevens seems to have lost none of his influence with the administration. When about to return to the Pacific coast, President Pierce invited him to write him personally and frequently.