The Quarterly of the Oregon Historical Society (Vol. I, No. 2)

by Oregon Historical Society

From the mouth of the Columbia Gray sailed northward, and a few days later, having suffered some injury to his ship, put into Nootka Bay for repairs. Here he found Quadra, the Spanish commandant, to whom he communicated his discovery, and gave a chart of the mouth of the river. This title of Gray to be regarded as the discoverer of the Columbia River was then, by this immediate publication of the discovery, made secure, and it has never been successfully questioned. The existence of such a river had long before been conjectured; others, before Gray, sailing along the coast had remarked the same indentation, had noted its latitude, and observed signs of fresh water issuing from it; but it remained for Gray to surmount the obstacles to entrance and actually to sail in and cast anchor in the river.

It was this discovery of the Columbia River by Robert Gray, a citizen of the United States, sailing under the American flag, and with the sanction of congress, that first gave the United States a claim to the Oregon region. It was not, however, to be the only ground of that claim. Some years before the discovery of the Columbia by Gray, an exploration of the Oregon region had been projected by Americans. The project seems to have originated with Jefferson, and may be regarded as a fitting prelude to the later achievement by his administration of the Louisiana Purchase. In the year 1786, six years before Gray's discovery, while Minister to France, Jefferson became acquainted with John Ledyard, of Connecticut, who had been with Captain Cook in his last voyage in the Pacific, and who as corporal of marines had gained some reputation for enterprise and daring. Ledyard had come to Paris in search of an opportunity to engage in the fur trade of the Pacific, and, failing in this, was ready to enlist in almost any other enterprise of daring. Jefferson suggested to him the exploration of the northwest region of America. The plan was, as Jefferson himself gives it, that Ledyard "go by land to Kamchatka, cross in Russian vessels to Nootka Sound, fall down into the latitude of the Missouri, and penetrate to and through that to the United States." Jefferson's proposal was accepted by Ledyard, and steps were at once taken to secure from the Empress of Russia permission for him to cross her dominions. Failing to secure permission of the Empress, she being absent from her capital in a distant part of her dominions, Ledyard, impatient of longer delay, set out on his own responsibility, and got to within two hundred miles of Kamchatka, when he was arrested by an order of the Empress and taken back to Poland, where he was released. "Thus failed," writes Jefferson, "the first attempt to explore the western part of our Northern Continent."

The attempt failed, but Jefferson's interest in the exploration of this region did not die with it. Of a second attempt some years later he writes: "In 1792, I proposed to the American Philosophical Society that we should set on foot a subscription to engage some competent person to explore that region in an opposite direction—that is, by ascending the Missouri, crossing the Stony Mountains, and descending the nearest river to the Pacific." This plan too was attempted, but the seriousness of the projector's purpose was severely tried by the delay of years in raising the necessary funds. When at last, under the leadership of Captain Meriwether Lewis, later of the Lewis and Clark expedition, the explorers were well started on the way, the expedition failed through an order of the French minister recalling the botanist of the expedition, who was a citizen of France. "Thus failed," writes Jefferson again, "the second attempt to explore the Northern Pacific region."

Jefferson's interest in the exploration of the Northwest did not die with the failure of this second attempt. Delay in raising the necessary funds for the expedition had brought the setting out of the explorers down to the eve of an event that placed Jefferson in a position to further such an enterprise to a successful issue, and of another event which was to furnish a new motive to its undertaking. Early in the year 1801, when Jefferson had but just taken his seat as President, Rufus King, Minister of the United States to England, wrote to Madison, Secretary of State, that the opinion at that time prevailed both at Paris and at London that Spain had ceded Louisiana and the Floridas to France. Immediately on receipt of this information Madison wrote to Pinckney, American Minister to Spain, advising him of the rumor, and of the President's urgent wish that he make the whole subject the object of early and vigilant inquiries. Instructions to the same effect were given later to Robert R. Livingston on his departure as Minister to France. After more than a year of persistent inquiry on the part of both ministers it was ascertained that Louisiana had been transferred to France, and that the transfer probably included the Floridas. Uncertainty on the latter point, as we now know, arose from the uncertainty of the governments of France and Spain as to the limits of Louisiana. Meanwhile the government at Washington pressed its ministers at both courts to use every effort to secure to the United States the Floridas and New Orleans, with the Mississippi as our western boundary, and the free navigation of the river to its mouth. Events of the latter part of the year 1802, and especially the Spanish intendant's order excluding the United States from New Orleans as a place of deposit, together with France's open preparations for the occupation and colonization of New Orleans and Lower Louisiana, made the President yet more urgent in pressing for this end. So far, Jefferson's thought seems not to have gone beyond the limits of Madison's dispatch to Pinckney of May 11 of that year, "that every effort and address be employed to obtain the arrangement by which the territory on the east side of the Mississippi, including New Orleans, may be ceded to the United States, and the Mississippi be made a common boundary." The sentiment of the Atlantic States was at this time strongly averse to the extension of our territory west of the Mississippi River, and there is nothing in the government's dispatches up to the close of the year 1802 to indicate that Jefferson did not share in this sentiment. But there is that in Jefferson's action shortly after this that shows him to have been singularly open-minded to the suggestion of events, and to have been prompt to prepare to avail himself of whatever the rapid movement of events might offer of advantage to his government.

In October of this year, 1802, in a conversation with Livingston concerning Louisiana and the Floridas, Joseph Bonaparte put the question to Livingston pointedly whether the United States preferred the Floridas to Louisiana. Coming from this source, the question was felt by Livingston to have significance. Though he shrank from the thought of such an extension of our territory as the purchase of Louisiana would involve, he promptly communicated the substance of the conversation to the government at home, in a letter addressed to the President in person. This letter dated Paris, October 28, was due in Washington about the first of January. On the eleventh of January Jefferson sent a message to the Senate nominating "Robert R. Livingston to be Minister Plenipotentiary, and James Monroe to be Minister Extraordinary and Plenipotentiary, with full powers to both jointly, or to either on the death of the other, to enter into a treaty or convention with the First Consul of France for the purpose of enlarging and more effectually securing our rights and interests in the River Mississippi and the territories eastward thereof." Since the possession of these territories was understood to be still in Spain, Pinckney and Monroe were nominated with like powers to enter into a treaty with Spain to the same end. The words with which Jefferson prefaced this nomination of Monroe as Minister Extraordinary are worthy of note in this connection, and in view of what presently emerged in the negotiations in Paris. "While my confidence," writes Jefferson, "in our Minister Plenipotentiary at Paris is entire and undiminished, I still think that these objects might be promoted by joining with him a person sent from hence directly carrying with him the feelings and sentiments of the nation excited on the late occurrence, impressed by full communications of all the views we entertain on this interesting subject, and thus prepared to meet and to improve to an useful result the counter propositions of the other contracting party, whatsoever form their interests may give to them, and to secure to us the ultimate accomplishment of our object."

Whether Jefferson had in mind when he wrote these words any such "counter proposition" as was afterward actually made, we do not certainly know, but if he had had such in mind he could hardly have better provided for its prompt improvement to a useful result. Meanwhile events in Europe were shaping the suggestion of Joseph Bonaparte into a formal proposition from the First Consul. The renewal of hostilities between France and England was now imminent. In the event of war it was manifest to Napoleon that he would be unable to hold Louisiana against the sea power of England. Rather than that this valuable possession should fall into the hands of his enemy he resolved to sell it, if possible, to the United States, and thus win back the nation which his policy of colonization had well-nigh alienated, and at the same time recruit his depleted treasury. Negotiations to this end were already begun when Monroe arrived in Paris, and were continued after his arrival with scarcely a halt to their successful and memorable issue.

A third scheme of Jefferson's for the exploration of the northwestern region of the continent was coincident with these latter steps that led to the purchase of Louisiana. The message nominating Monroe as Minister Extraordinary was sent to the senate, January 11, 1803. January 18, Jefferson, taking occasion of the expiration of the term of an act establishing trading houses with the Indian tribes, writes to the senate on the subject of its renewal. In the course of the message, having touched upon the fact that the maintenance of such trading houses by the government deprived certain of our citizens of a lucrative trade, he suggests for the senate's consideration whether the government might not rightly do something to encourage such persons to extend their trade in the regions beyond the Mississippi, then proceeds to outline a plan for the exploration of a trade-route up the waters of the Missouri and through to the Western Ocean. "The interests of commerce," he urges, "place the principal object within the constitutional powers and care of congress, and that it should incidentally advance the geographical knowledge of our own continent cannot but be an additional gratification. The nation claiming the territory, regarding this as a literary pursuit, which it is in the habit of permitting within its dominions, would not be disposed to view it with jealousy, even if the expiring state of its interests there did not render it a matter of indifference. The appropriation of $2,500 'for the purpose of extending the external commerce of the United States,' while understood and considered by the executive as giving the legislative sanction, would cover the undertaking from notice and prevent the obstructions which interested individuals might otherwise previously prepare in its way."

Thus skillfully did Jefferson in a confidential message, as a matter incidental to the main purpose of the message, put before the senate a well reasoned scheme for the exploration of the territory for the purchase of which ministers already appointed were soon to negotiate. One can hardly read this message and weigh its carefully worded terms in the light of what was already in the knowledge of the President, without its awakening more than a suspicion that the possibility of the purchase of Louisiana by the United States was distinctly present to Jefferson's mind as he wrote, if it did not indeed lend urgency to his argument. It is worthy of note, at any rate, that the measures for the carrying out of this proposed scheme of exploration of the territory kept pace with the progress of the negotiations for its purchase, and quite outran the business of its transfer; for while the transfer of Louisiana was not consummated until December of that year, the commander of the expedition had been selected and commissioned, and the expedition organized as early as midsummer. Thus closely joined in time, if not otherwise intimately connected, were these two measures of Jefferson's earlier administration, the Louisiana purchase and the Lewis and Clark exploration. The promptness, energy, and efficiency with which the exploration was carried out under the able and courageous leadership of the man placed in charge, were altogether worthy of its distinguished projector. The two stand together, the purchase and the exploration, as worthy counterparts in what must forever be regarded as one of the most daring yet at the same time farsighted projects of statesmanship in American history.

These two measures have been dwelt upon thus at length because of their material importance to the ultimate settlement of the Oregon Question. The purchase of Louisiana brought the territory of the United States at the crest of the Rocky Mountains in contiguity with the Oregon region through seven degrees of latitude, while the Lewis and Clark expedition explored a continuous route from the Mississippi River to the Pacific Ocean, through the very center and by the central artery of the region in question. These two events together made the second ground of our claim to the region of the Oregon. Furthermore, they made possible for the first time that movement of population across our border into this adjacent and unoccupied territory which by the law of nations was essential to the validity of our title,—that immigration of American families upon which, in spite of every earlier attempt at settlement, the final settlement of the question of sovereignty was destined to wait.

Louisiana had been purchased by the United States from France, or, rather, from the First Consul, who at the time embodied in himself the government of France. Spain, however, though by a convention three years before the sale having agreed to retrocede the territory to France, had remained in possession almost to the day of its transfer to our government, so that possession of the territory virtually passed to the United States immediately from Spain. The transfer left Spain still with possessions within the present boundaries of the United States of vast extent and of immense value. East of the Mississippi were the Floridas, and west of that river was a great region extending from the ill-defined western boundary of Louisiana westward to the Pacific. These were conceded possessions of Spain. Besides, Spain was a claimant, on the grounds of discovery and exploration, of the Oregon country.