And again, on December 17:—

“Lane and myself will canvass the Indian committees. Have seen Senator Sebastian, chairman Senate committee. Pushing armed steamer for the Sound. Indian and War departments and President all concur. I have had a most attentive and courteous hearing from all these gentlemen. Years since, I learned brevity and directness in the transaction of business here, and I find no difficulty whatever in effecting a good deal in very brief interviews.”

His old friends in Washington—Professors Bache, Henry, and Baird, General Totten, Mr. John L. Hayes, former brother officers, and others—welcomed him back, and were glad and proud to observe that he was unchanged except in increased maturity and strength of character, and that his very presence, with his simple, earnest, and dignified demeanor, refuted the infamous slanders that had been circulated against him. General Joseph Lane, the delegate from Oregon, received him with open arms, delighted to have so able a coadjutor to fight the battles of the far-distant and neglected Northwestern Territories. General Lane was highly esteemed by all parties, and had much influence with the Democratic leaders. The governor said he was a tower of strength. A devoted friendship grew up between the two whole-souled and patriotic men.

It will be remembered how inflexibly Governor Stevens insisted upon the trial and punishment of the Indian murderers who so treacherously massacred unoffending settlers, deeming the example absolutely necessary, to deter the commission of outrages by the Indians in the future. Having brought Leschi and the Sound murderers to condign punishment, in spite of the efforts of the regular officers to shield them, he now urged the Indian Department to make requisition upon the War Department for the arrest and delivery to the civil courts, for trial, of the Yakima murderers, whose atrocious slaying of their agent, Bolon, and the miners, precipitated the war, but who thus far had been virtually safeguarded by the pacific and temporizing policy of the regular officers. After a number of interviews with the Indian commissioner and the two secretaries, the demand was about to be complied with, for all agreed that the murderers ought to be punished, when the objection was raised by the military authorities on the Pacific that an attempt to seize the offenders would lead to further hostilities, and it was intimated that the Indians regarded the quasi-peace operations of Colonel Wright in 1856 as promising them immunity for the murders. The Secretary of the Interior, doubtful how far the good faith of the government might be involved, was consequently reluctant to make the necessary requisition on the War Department. The governor thereupon addressed an able letter to the commissioner, in which he pointed out that an inflexible adherence to the policy of punishing perpetrators of unprovoked murders was the only course to impress savage tribes with respect, and deter them from the commission of similar outrages; that, while such a course in this case might be attended with the renewal of hostilities on a small scale with the recalcitrant faction of the Yakimas, it would do more than all else to strengthen the hands of peaceful and friendly Indians in other tribes. He declared that he had always understood, from repeated interviews with Colonel Wright, that that officer had given no immunity to murderers. Moreover, the very manner in which the military objected showed conclusively that no such immunity was ever granted; for, if it had been granted, they would have avowed it positively as their own act, and not merely have referred to it hypothetically, as it were, and as subordinate to the question of expediency. For if the faith of the government had been pledged, questions of expediency were subordinate. He concluded:—

“I must therefore urge the requisition, unless the military will take the responsibility of saying, ‘We did make a pacification on the ground of immunity to the murderers,’ in which case I shall press the matter no further, except to suggest that measures be taken to prevent such pacifications hereafter.”

Thus ably and ingeniously the governor forced upon the military the onus of acknowledging having patched up a fictitious peace by granting immunity to murderous savages, whom it was their duty to punish. This they could not bring themselves to do; they were obliged to abandon their protégés to their fate, and the requisition was made. One cannot but think, after a careful study of all the evidence, that the Indian murderers were led to believe in the promise of immunity, if it was not explicitly promised them.

At the end of December he broke away from these engrossing cares and labors for a few days, and went North for his family, having leased a commodious brick house, No. 510, on the north side of Twelfth Street, between E and F, at $200 a month; but on January 4 he is again at his post in the House. He installed Mr. James G. Swan as his secretary, set apart the upper rooms in the house as an office, and plunged with redoubled energy into the important and multifarious duties and objects he had undertaken, chief of which was the confirmation of the Indian treaties; payment of the Indian war debt; advocacy of the Northern route, separate Indian superintendency for Washington Territory, armed steamer for Puget Sound, mail route, military roads, appropriations for Indian service, and for other needs of the Territory; and pressing before the departments many private claims growing out of the Indian war. Besides all these, he published, February 1, a circular letter to emigrants, giving useful information for those wishing to move to the Territory. In this month he also wrote a strong appeal to the Indian Department, urging that the farms promised the Blackfeet by the treaty of the Blackfoot council be established without further delay, and suggesting that the commissioner confer with Alexander Culbertson, who was then visiting Washington,—an appeal which bore fruit, for the commissioner immediately sent for Mr. Culbertson, and took steps to start the farms. The governor also gave effective aid to Mr. Culbertson in collecting an account due him from the government.

The appropriation of $30,000 for a wagon-road between Fort Benton and Walla Walla—made in 1855—had never been used, in consequence of the Indian hostilities, and the governor now induced the Secretary of War to authorize the commencement of the road, and to place Lieutenant Mullan in charge of it. The topographical engineers of the army were not a little put out at the governor’s action in Mullan’s behalf, claiming that the duty rightfully belonged to one of their corps, and that he was disregarding the rights of the engineers in bestowing it upon a line officer; but he had found Mullan one of the most zealous and efficient officers of the Exploration, and one, moreover, especially conversant with the country. His recommendation had great weight with the War Department, thus to overcome the influence of the corps and the almost invariable usage. Another incident which occurred at this time afforded further evidence of his influence. An officer of General Wool’s staff, Captain T.J. Cram, in 1857 made a report to him upon the upper Columbia country, much of which was taken from Governor Stevens’s exploration reports without acknowledgment. Moreover, the navigability of the great river was pronounced utterly impracticable, and the country itself stigmatized as essentially barren and worthless; and the report was made the vehicle for reiterating all Wool’s exploded charges against the territorial authorities, people, and volunteers, and collecting and retailing all the stories of outrage upon Indians by whites that could be trumped up. This precious “topographical memoir” was widely published in the newspapers, and was submitted by General Wool to the War Department, with the evident design of defeating the confirmation of the treaties and the payment of the war debt. When the report arrived, the governor filed a statement in the department exposing its character; and at his instance Captain A.A. Humphreys, who had charge of all the Pacific Railroad reports, also filed a similar statement, pointing out Cram’s unreliability and plagiarisms, so thoroughly discrediting the report that the department would never give it out, and it failed of its intended effect.

It was a hard fight over the treaties before the Senate committee. Wool’s charges, widely spread in the newspapers, had excited much prejudice against them, and they were strenuously opposed by most of the regular officers on the Pacific. But by the middle of March the governor was equally successful in convincing that committee that they ought to be confirmed, and was able to write Nesmith that the committee would report favorably, and that there was every prospect of confirmation.

The Northwestern boundary, with the disputed question of the San Juan archipelago, also claimed his attention. His resolute letter of May, 1855, to Sir James Douglass, declaring that he would sustain the American right to the islands to the full force of his authority, having been submitted to both governments with Sir James’s protests, had brought home to them the risk of armed collision unless the boundary question were speedily settled. Accordingly commissioners were appointed on both sides to determine and delimit the boundary as drawn by the treaty of 1846. But as the controversy turned on the construction of the treaty itself, it could not be settled by any survey, and in this, the most important part of their task, the commissioners soon became clever disputants, each advocating his own side of the question. Jefferson Davis, now a senator of great influence, writes Governor Stevens, March 18, requesting him “to call on the President and Secretary of State, and give them your views as to the importance and necessity of marking the boundary,” etc. The American commissioner was Mr. Archibald Campbell, and Captain J. G. Parke, of the engineers, was the chief surveyor, both old friends of Governor Stevens. With his thorough knowledge of the islands in dispute, and of the astute, grasping, and persistent character of the Hudson Bay Company and British officials, the governor strove to stiffen the backbone of the administration, and to expedite the boundary survey.