We have it on the authority of Mr. Polk’s diary that the concluding paragraph is of the President’s own wording; that Mr. Buchanan urged the President so to couch his answer as to encourage the British government to make an offer on their part; that this the President positively declined to do, saying that if the British government wished to make an offer they must do so on their own responsibility. It was a matter of regret on the part of Lord Aberdeen, on hearing of the matter, that this proposition of our government had not been referred by Mr. Packenham to his government. Later, Mr. Packenham, on receipt of a communication from Lord Aberdeen, approached Mr. Buchanan with a view of getting from the President encouragement to present another proposition on behalf of Great Britain. This, though repeatedly urged to do so by Mr. Buchanan, the President firmly refused to give. And thus the question stood at the convening of congress in December.
The President’s message had, on the question of the Oregon Territory, been prepared with special care. The several paragraphs bearing on this subject were read and discussed in cabinet, and amended, until they embodied the President’s policy in its maturest form. Again Mr. Polk was besought by the Secretary of State to soften the tone of his message on this point, but he refused, preferring, as he said, “his own bold stand.” After reviewing briefly the history of negotiations on the question under his predecessors, and noting that these had uniformly been maintained on the part of the United States on the compromise line of the forty-ninth parallel; and after stating somewhat particularly the reasons that had induced him to take up the negotiations as he found them pending on his entrance to office, and to continue them on the same line in spite of his own personal convictions that the United States had a just claim to the whole of the Oregon Territory, the President proceeded to recommend to the favorable consideration of congress five measures, all of which he thought clearly within the right of the United States under the terms of the convention of joint occupancy. The first and capital one of these recommendations was, that congress authorize the President to terminate the convention of joint occupancy by giving the British government the required notice. In accordance with this recommendation a resolution to that effect was promptly introduced in congress, and thereupon the Oregon Question was thought by all to have assumed a grave aspect. Many men within congress, and without, some of them Mr. Polk’s best friends and advisors, felt that while the measure was clearly within the terms of the convention it was neither wise nor safe at that time to adopt it. To every representation, however, of this view of the case made to the President, he returned the uniform answer that in his judgment the notice should be given.
The Secretary of State was not alone in his alarm at the President’s bold stand on this question. He, with others, finding themselves unable to induce the President to change his attitude on this point, and finding that in the present mood of congress the resolution of notice was likely to pass, used every endeavor to induce him to consent to a renewal of the proposition for compromise on the line of the forty-ninth parallel, or to invite such a proposal from the British government.
On the twenty-fifth of February, Mr. Calhoun, now returned to the senate, called upon the President and met there Senator Colquitt, of Georgia. Mr. Calhoun urged upon Mr. Polk that it was important that some action of pacific character should go to England upon the next steamer, and asked the President’s opinion of the policy of the senate’s passing a resolution in executive session, advising the President to reopen negotiations on the basis of the forty-ninth parallel. Mr. Polk was unwilling to advise such a course; he did, however, finally tell Mr. Calhoun and Mr. Colquitt, in confidence, as members of the senate, that if Great Britain should see fit to submit a proposition for compromise on that line, he should feel it his duty, following the example of Washington on important occasions, to submit the proposition to the senate confidentially for their previous advice. This course had already been considered in cabinet two days before, on the reading of a dispatch from Mr. McLane, our Minister in London, and had met with the almost unanimous approval of the members.
The house had already, on the ninth of February, passed the resolution of notice; the senate yet delayed and debated. But from the time when the President consented to encourage a further proposition of compromise from the British government by promising to submit the same to the senate for advice, events moved rapidly to a favorable conclusion. April 17 the resolution of notice passed the senate. Formal notice was addressed by our President to the Minister in London on the twenty-eighth of April, was received by him in London on the fifteenth of May, and on the twentieth of May was by him presented to Lord Aberdeen. Two days before receiving the notice, however, on the eighteenth of May, Lord Aberdeen had addressed a note to Mr. Packenham, at Washington, instructing him to offer a compromise on the basis of such a modification of the line of the forty-ninth degree of north latitude as would give to Great Britain Vancouver’s Island, and allow her the free navigation of the Columbia for a limited term of years. On the tenth of June, in a message to the senate, the President submitted this proposal, and asked the senate’s previous advice. This was formally given in a resolution adopted June 12, by a vote of thirty-eight to ten, in which the senate advised the President to accept the proposal of the British government. A treaty based upon this proposal was concluded and signed on the fifteenth day of June by the representatives of the two powers. This treaty, on the following day, was laid before the senate by the President, for its approval, and three days later was confirmed without amendment. This convention provided for the extension of a line on the forty-ninth degree of north latitude, westward from the Rocky Mountains, to the middle of the channel which separates the continent from Vancouver’s Island, and thence southerly, through the middle of said channel, and of Fuca Straits, to the Pacific Ocean.
It was found by the commissioners appointed to determine a line in accordance with this convention that in one part of the strait there were two recognized channels, an easterly one, by the Straits of Rosario, and a westerly one, by the Canal De Haro. The commissioners failing to agree as to which of the channels was the channel contemplated by the treaty, the determination of this portion of the line was left in abeyance. It remained so until the year 1871, when the joint high commission appointed to adjust sundry differences between the two governments, met in Washington. By certain articles of a convention, concluded at this time it was agreed by the representatives of the two powers, to submit to the Emperor of Germany the question as to which of the two channels was the more in accordance with the treaty of June 15, 1846, the commissioners pledging their respective governments to accept his award as final. The Emperor of Germany submitted the question to three experts, Doctor Grimm, Doctor Goldschmidt, and Doctor Kiepert. In accordance with the report of these distinguished scholars, the Emperor of Germany, on the twenty-first of October, 1872, rendered his decision, that the line by way of the Canal De Haro was the one most in accordance with the treaty. This decision was accepted by the two governments, and the unsettled portion of the boundary line determined in accordance with it.
Thus, after the vicissitudes of more than three-quarters of a century of debate and negotiations, with the determination of this last detail, the Oregon Question reached its full and final decision.
JOSEPH R. WILSON.