Governor Stevens spent the remainder of August and part of September in Olympia. He enjoyed visiting his farms and planning their improvement, for his early and hereditary love of the soil was always strong. In September he started eastward by the Isthmus route with his family, and reached Washington the following month.
CHAPTER XLVI
THE STAND AGAINST DISUNION
The Indian treaties confirmed, Governor Stevens was more determined than ever to secure the payment of the Indian war debt. This had been thoroughly examined and audited by a commission appointed by the Secretary of War, consisting of Captains Rufus Ingalls and A.J. Smith, of the army, and Mr. Lafayette Grover, the brother of Lieutenant Grover and afterwards governor of Oregon, and their report had been referred by the last Congress to the third auditor. It was a long time before he reported, and his report, when made, was a very unjust and condemnatory one, manifestly tinged with the prejudice so widely spread by Wool’s slanders. The friends of the debt for some time were unable to get it before the House, and had to content themselves with enlightening individual members and the public.
The governor followed up the various matters in behalf of the Pacific Northwest with his usual energy this session. He spoke on the Pacific Railroad, on steam vessels for Puget Sound, on Indian appropriations, military post on Red River, appropriations for surveys, separate Indian superintendency for Washington Territory, etc. He succeeded in obtaining an appropriation of $100,000 for the military road between Fort Benton and Walla Walla, which Lieutenant Mullan was now building, $10,000 for a military road between Steilacoom and Vancouver, $4500 for the boundary survey between Oregon and Washington, $95,500 for the Indian service, and secured a new land office and district for the southern part of the Territory. During the session he offered thirteen bills, eight resolutions, and two memorials.
His chief interest and labors, however, were on the Northern Railroad route. He was indefatigable in making known its great national advantages. On April 3 he addressed an elaborate letter on the subject to the railroad convention of the Pacific coast, held at Vancouver. In this he again advocated three routes; showed the national importance of the Northern route, its advantages for securing the trade of Asia, and the danger, if that route were neglected, that the British-Canadians would build a line to the Pacific within their own borders, and thereby forestall this country in developing its Pacific ports and securing the Asiatic commerce. He declared that the explorations thus far made were simply reconnoissances; that two years would be required to complete the surveys, and probably ten years to build the road. He urged the convention to reject absolutely the compromise in the shape of a branch line from some point on the central route to the Columbia River and Puget Sound, which had been urged in Congress and elsewhere, and firmly to insist on the Northern route as a great national work. As published, this letter makes twenty-four printed pages, and Mr. Smalley, the historian of the Northern Pacific Railroad, already quoted, says of it that—
“he gave so clear and condensed an account of the Northern route, its distances and grades, as compared with the line then projected to Benicia, California, its advantageous situation in relation to the China and Japan trade, and the adaptability of the country it would traverse for continuous settlement, that the document, printed in pamphlet form, became a cyclopedia in miniature, from which facts and arguments have ever since been drawn by the friends of that route.”
Governor Stevens had now become the recognized authority on the Northern route, and the acknowledged leader of its advocates in Congress. He was ably supported by General Lane, and by the Minnesota senators, Rice and Ramsay, and was indefatigable in furnishing them with data and points for use in debate. At a dinner party on one occasion, Senator Gwin openly taxed the governor with writing the speech which a certain senator had just delivered in behalf of that route, and which made some stir, declaring that no one could mistake the governor’s style and ideas; and the charge was well founded.
During Governor Stevens’s first term in Congress great efforts were made by the friends of the Central route to pass a bill granting a subsidy in lands and bonds to that route, and the bait of a branch from the vicinity of Salt Lake to the Columbia River and Puget Sound was held out to placate the adherents of the Northern route. Governor Stevens strenuously fought this scheme of a branch instead of the through Northern route. The proposed bill failed.
In the next Congress the adherents of the Central and Southern routes joined forces. The extreme secessionists, on the eve of withdrawing from Congress in order to break up the Union, were ready enough to vote subsidies to the united routes, and the Union sentiment was invoked by the argument that the aid extended to the Southern route would help satisfy the South and strengthen the Union. By this combination the House, on December 20, 1860, passed a bill for a land grant and subsidy to both the Central and Southern routes. The Northern route was completely ignored. An amendment offered by Governor Stevens, granting ten sections of land per mile for a road from Red River to Puget Sound, was rejected. But when the bill came before the Senate, an amendment was offered by Senator Wilkinson, of Minnesota, and adopted, the New England senators aiding those from Minnesota, Wisconsin, and Oregon, giving a subsidy of twenty-five millions for a railroad from Lake Superior to Puget Sound, and a land grant of six alternate sections per mile on each side of the track in Minnesota, and ten alternate sections for the rest of the way. The amendment created the Northern Pacific Railroad Company, and empowered Charles D. Gilfillan, of Minnesota, Nathaniel P. Banks, of Wisconsin, and Isaac I. Stevens, of Washington Territory, to act as a board of commissioners to organize the company. The bill thus amended went back to the House for concurrence, but the session was almost at an end, and repeated efforts to take the bill from the speaker’s table, to get it before the House for consideration, failed for lack of a two thirds vote.