Dr. Whitman had come also for another purpose. He saw clearly that the way to get Oregon was to colonize it. President Tyler's Administration supported him in this view and purpose. The Administration caused Dr. Whitman's descriptions of Oregon to be printed and distributed throughout the United States, and also his offer to lead a colony to take possession of the country. The place of rendezvous appointed by him was Westport, near the site of the present Kansas City, and the time was June of 1843. Nearly a thousand people, with two hundred wagons, met him there, and were successfully led by him back to the Walla Walla. He arrived there with this large colony in October of 1843; and news of his safe arrival reached Washington in January of 1844.
The decisive movement for the possession of Oregon was thus made. Claims based upon discovery, or treaty, or privileges for hunting, trapping, or trading, must all give way before actual colonization. British diplomacy was confused by the success of the movement, while the people of the United States were filled with pride and enthusiasm at the achievement.
The moment had come, at last, when the United States could deal with Great Britain from the basis of actual conditions, instead of from the point of view of international theory. The connection of the Oregon question with the question of the annexation of Texas in the Democratic platform of 1844, was, therefore, by no means far fetched or artificial. It was, indeed, a clever stroke of practical politics, but it was suggested by existing conditions.
| The Democratic party on the Oregon question. |
The Democrats had struck a high note in the international questions, one which was bound to catch the ear of the younger men throughout the country. Moreover, the policy in both cases rested upon sound national principles. Texas, at least to the Nueces, and Oregon, at least to the northern water shed of the Columbia, belonged geographically to the United States, and they were settled, so far as they were settled at all, by Anglo-Americans. On the other hand, the slaveholders of the South were not particularly pleased with the connection of the two questions. Some of them had already come to doubt whether the annexation of Texas alone would subserve their interests, since the slave population might be thereby drawn away from the border slaveholding Commonwealths, and these Commonwealths might then abolish slavery by their own several acts; and now that it must be paid for by the addition of a region to the Northern side, large enough to hold a dozen such Commonwealths as New York, the price appeared to them too great. Mr. Waddy Thompson, of South Carolina, the Minister to the Mexican Government, was decidedly of this opinion; and from an original friend of annexation he became a determined opponent. To the far-seeing mind, it was certainly very questionable whether the annexation of Texas would prove any advantage to the slavery interest, and it was certain that the possession of Oregon would not.
But they would subserve, they have subserved, the interests of a true national development. The Democrats of 1844 builded better than they knew, when they made the "re-annexation of Texas and the re-occupation of Oregon" the issues of the campaign of that year. In the platform the Oregon question was given the precedence. The country, however, understood the stratagem, and the question of annexation assumed the foremost place in the great contest.