The Quarterly of the Oregon Historical Society (Vol. I, No. 3)

by Oregon Historical Society

In the year 1837, after a silence of nearly ten years, the Oregon Question was again moved in congress. Many things had happened in the interval since its last appearance there to make it certain that with its reappearance the question had come to abide until settled. The settlements already mentioned, small as they were, were not inconsiderable in their influence at the east. They were the centers of ties that reached back into various influential communities in the states of the union; nor were the men who composed the settlements slow to avail themselves of every such tie to make and influence public sentiment at home. The same energy and indomitable spirit which they manifested in reaching the new land were shown again in their efforts to enlighten the country in regard to the land they had come to possess, and to persuade others to join them in their efforts to take and keep possession of it. Never was a new country so much talked of, nor its excellencies so enthusiastically set forth, when those who could do so from experience were so few. From the time the first real American colony was founded in Oregon, and there had been time for word from it to reach the states from which its members had come, neither the government nor the country was ever allowed for long at a time to forget the existence of Oregon, of the Oregon colony, or of the Oregon Question.

In the late summer of 1835, President Jackson, through certain letters, as it appears, of William N. Slacum, a paymaster in the navy, who at that time was spending some months in Alexandria, Virginia, on sick leave, became strongly of the mind that the bay of San Francisco should be in the possession of the United States. He almost immediately, on receipt of these letters, directed Mr. Forsythe, Secretary of State, to write to Anthony Butler, then in Mexico for the purpose of negotiating the purchase of Texas, enlarging his instructions so as to include the purchase of so much of the possessions of Mexico on the coast as would embrace the bay of San Francisco. A little later the same year President Jackson commissioned Slacum to visit the North Pacific Coast, directing him at the earliest opportunity after arriving in the Pacific, “to proceed to and up the Oregon, to obtain specific and authentic information in regard to the inhabitants of the country, the relative number of whites and Indians; the jurisdiction which the whites acknowledged; the sentiments entertained by all in respect to the United States and the two European powers having possessions in that region; and finally all information, political, statistical, and geographical, that might prove useful and interesting to the government.” The commission thus specifically and somewhat peremptorily given was fulfilled with promptness and energy, and, though the chief by whom the commission had been given had retired from office before Mr. Slacum’s return, the country was not deprived of the results of the investigation. In December, 1837, through a memorial presented by Mr. Slacum to congress, and by congress ordered to be published, coincident with the recurrence of the discussion in congress of the Oregon Question, congress and the country had the detailed results of this first official inquiry into the condition and prospects of the settlements in the region of the Columbia.

Throughout this period when the question was in abeyance, individual explorers, American and British, had from time to time visited this region and had returned to write for eager readers of what they saw and learned in the strange new land, until a piqued interest on two continents was alert for the next news from Oregon. The publication at the close of this period of Irving’s Astoria in 1836, and of his Adventures of Captain Bonneville in 1837, books which were themselves the offspring of the widespread and romantic interest already felt, served in turn to make that interest still more keen, and to awaken it in minds where else it had never been felt.

But greatest among all the forces that had been at work during this period toward the solution of this question was one that had worked silently and unobserved, but persistently and effectively, and withal wholly in the American interest. In the ten years that followed the extension of the convention of 1818, more than three hundred thousand people, immigrants from foreign lands and emigrants from older states, had crossed the Mississippi and settled in the two states of Arkansas and Missouri, and the territory of Iowa. At the close of this period, when congress again took up the question more than half a million of people were settled between the Mississippi River and the Rocky Mountains, and of these more than three hundred thousand were in Missouri alone, the state which stood upon the highway to the new country, and nearest to the gate of entrance. The fact of this great array of American families fast moving toward the intervening barrier, and all but pressing upon it, with myriads of other families in the older states following after, taken together with the door open no farther than it had been proved to be open by the few American families that had passed through, should have been enough to assure any calm observer of what the issue was to be. There were such observers whom it did so assure, and their calm faith and clear forecast stood the nation in good stead in the exciting debates that were to follow.

The second period of the discussion of the Oregon Question in congress began late in the year 1837, near the close of the first session of the twenty-fifth congress. It was opened a few days before adjournment by each house calling upon the President “to furnish at an early period of the next session any correspondence that may have taken place between the government and foreign powers in relation to our territory west of the Rocky Mountains.” To both these resolutions the President, promptly on the opening of the next congress, replied that no correspondence whatever had passed between the government of the United States and any other government in relation to that subject since the renewal in 1827 of the convention of joint occupancy. It thus appeared that while the subject had been in abeyance in congress it had been equally so in the executive department of the government, and it was not destined to reappear in this department for a further period of more than four years. Meanwhile the subject in one form or another was seldom absent for long at a time from the discussions of congress. This was especially true of the senate, where, in the person of Dr. Lewis F. Linn, senator from Missouri, the title of the United States to Oregon and the cause of the citizens of the United States who had settled there found an earnest advocate and a zealous and indefatigable friend. Measures were introduced in both houses of congress, by Doctor Linn in the senate, and by Mr. Cushing in the house, looking to the occupation and settlement of Oregon. These first measures elicited but little debate, and failed of reaching action. They did, however, by bringing out reports from the executive and committees, get before congress and the country a large amount of information on the subject. In the house, after a year of unavailing effort to reach action on the measures introduced, the subject remained again in abeyance for two or three years. In the senate, however, chiefly through the active interest of Doctor Linn, new measures were introduced each session which, though failing in every case of reaching the point of action, gained more and more the ear of the senate and a wider attention in the country. In each of the measures as thus far proposed there was some vitiating clause or provision which to the calmer and clearer minds in the senate made it inconsistent with the terms of the existing convention. It was open to congress to abrogate that convention by giving due notice to Great Britain, and so to open the way for a larger action on the part of the government, and resolutions to this effect were introduced, but neither congress nor the country as yet was ready for this step. Not yet clear as to what action should next be adopted, congress was not prepared to remove this bar to hasty or ill-advised measures. Thus far the convention had certainly been in the interests of peace, and had not seriously interfered with the progress of settlement.

The year 1842 was an important one in the history of the Oregon Question. Early that year Doctor Linn had returned to the contest in the senate with new zeal and determination, and other friends in congress and out of it came to his support. His bill, as heretofore, was a bill for the adoption of means for the occupation and settlement of the Oregon Territory, and the extension of the jurisdiction of our courts over our citizens settled there, with a provision promising a large grant of land to actual settlers. This and previous bills had been prefaced by a declaration that the United States held its title to the Oregon country valid, and would not abandon it. The year opened with better promise of favorable action than heretofore; the preamble, while its adoption was strongly opposed by the majority in the senate, had brought from even those who opposed its adoption the declaration that it was a just expression of the sentiment of the country, while the provision for the land grant to settlers, though opposed for the present on the ground that it was not consistent with the convention, was acknowledged by all to contemplate but a just compensation, which should be made in due time, to pioneers who had taken the hardships and risks of early colonization. The bill at this session had been presented under most favorable auspices; the select committee to which it had been referred was of great influence in the senate, and had unanimously instructed their chairman to report the bill with the recommendation that it pass. And yet, though thus auspiciously introduced, for some reason as the months of the session went on it failed of being vigorously pressed. We have the explanation of this in Senator Linn’s own words, spoken in the senate on the last day of August, the closing day of the session. After speaking of the favorable circumstances attending the introduction of the bill, Senator Linn continued: “It was thus placed in its order upon the calendar, but upon its coming up for consideration as a special order Lord Ashburton arrived from England, to enter upon a negotiation touching all points of dispute between the two countries, boundaries as well as others, Oregon as well as Maine. In this posture of affairs it was considered indelicate, not to say unwise, to press the bill to a decision while these negotiations were pending. They are now over, and a treaty is published to the world between the United States and Great Britain, in which it seems that the question of the Oregon Territory has been deferred to some more remote or auspicious period, for an ultimate decision.” In conclusion Mr. Linn said that he was confident that there were majorities in both houses for this bill; and he felt equally certain that it would have passed at this session but for the arrival of Lord Ashburton, and the pendency of the negotiations. He gave notice that he would deem it “his imperative duty” to bring in at an early day of the coming session this same bill, and press it to a final decision. That the decision would be favorable he did not entertain the slightest doubt, and he took pleasure in making that opinion public “for the satisfaction of all those who might take an interest in this beautiful country, the germ of future states to be settled by the Anglo-American race, which will extend our limits from the Atlantic to the Pacific Ocean.”

There is a tone of confidence in the words with which Senator Linn dismissed the bill of 1842 that was not wholly unwarranted. As he spoke he was aware that the largest colony of American settlers that had ever set out for Oregon, a colony of staunch men and women, who had been encouraged to set out by the assurances which his bill had given, were then steadily nearing their destination. He was aware, too, that in the brief time since the publication of the Ashburton treaty, in which no mention was made of the Oregon boundary, congress and the country had shown a temper that promised well for his measure when next it should be introduced.

The interval between the publication of the treaty, August 9, and the reassembling of congress in December, was one of earnest and often heated discussion, not only of the provisions of the treaty, but of its one noted omission. No satisfactory reason had yet been given why the Oregon boundary had not been included with that of Maine. This omission, taken together with intimations that soon reached the public that the two governments were again engaged in negotiations on this subject, began to awaken, in some quarters, at least, fears for the result. The nature and ground of these fears, as far as they were capable of being defined, may be seen in the declaration of the legislature of Illinois, prefixed to resolutions on the Oregon Question presented to congress early the next session. That declaration was, that “the safety of the title of the United States [to Oregon] was greatly endangered by the concessions made in the late treaty in relation to the boundary of Maine, by her rights not being persisted in and made part of said treaty, and will be more endangered by longer delay.”

In his annual message to congress, December 6, 1842, President Tyler, after giving as the reason for the omission of the Oregon boundary from the late treaty the fear that its discussion might imperil the treaty as a whole, went on to express the purpose of the administration to urge upon the government of Great Britain the importance of an early settlement of this question. A few days later, the senate passed a resolution calling upon the President to communicate to the senate the nature of any “informal communications” that might have passed between the Secretary of State and the Special Minister of the British Government on the question of the Oregon boundary. To this resolution the President, in his message of December 23, answered that measures had been already taken in pursuance of the purpose expressed in his annual message, and, under these circumstances, he did not deem it consistent with the public interest to make any communication on the subject. But neither the President’s expressed purpose, nor his subsequent declaration that measures in pursuance of that purpose had already been taken, stayed the progress of measures in congress.

On the nineteenth of December, in accordance with his promise made at the close of the last session of congress, Mr. Linn introduced a bill of like import with that of the former session. This bill was referred to a select committee, of which Mr. Linn was chairman, and was soon reported back to the house, when it was made a regular order for immediate discussion. The discussion was continuous and earnest for more than a month, when by a vote of twenty-four to twenty-two it passed the senate. A vote of reconsideration failing to pass, the bill went to the house, and was referred to the Committee on Foreign Relations, of which John Quincy Adams was chairman, by whom, a few days later, it was reported to the house with the recommendation that it should not pass. Thus the bill failed of finally becoming a law, and doubtless many who advocated it in the senate, on cooler reflection, felt that it was well that it did fail. In a wider view, however, the measure was not a failure, for it served its object well, though not in the way its supporters intended. Few bills ever have called out from the senate a more earnest or an abler discussion. The best talent of the body was enlisted in the discussion, the spirit in which the debate was carried on was broad and patriotic, and for the progressive illumination of the subject under discussion the debate has never been surpassed. When it closed there remained little to be said. The future course of congress in the matter was practically settled in this debate and the action which followed; while in the course of the discussion, the pathway by which the question was ultimately to reach its solution was again and again pointed out. This was done by no one more clearly than by Calhoun, who spoke twice at length in opposition to the measure. He opposed the bill with the whole force of his power of keen analysis and convincing logic, but he opposed it because he saw in its adoption certain defeat of the very object which he in common with the promoters of the bill desired to reach. He counseled patience, and a strict abiding by the terms of the convention, at the same time assuring his countrymen that time and the sure movement of population toward and into the region in question were certain to bring the solution desired. So accurately did he foresee and describe the course by which the question would advance to its final settlement, that his words at this day read rather like an epitome of history than what they were, a forecast of events.