President Polk, in his message, declared that, "beyond all question, the protection of our laws and our jurisdiction, civil and criminal, ought to be immediately extended over our citizens in Oregon."
He quoted from the convention which had nominated him that "our t.i.tle to the country of Oregon as far as Fifty-four, Forty, is clear and unquestionable;" and he boldly declared "for all of Oregon or none."
John Quincy Adams eloquently supported our t.i.tle to the country to the line of Fifty-four, Forty in a powerful speech in the House of Representatives.
Yet it soon became apparent that both the Texas policy and the Oregon question could not be successfully carried out during the administration. "Fifty-four, Forty, or Fight" as a watchword in a presidential campaign was one thing, but as a challenge to fight flung in the face of Great Britain, it was quite another.
In February, 1846, the House declared in favor of giving notice to Great Britain that the joint occupancy of the Oregon country must cease. The Senate, realizing that this resolution was practically a declaration of war, declined to adopt it, after a very bitter and fiery controversy.
Those who retreated from their first position on the question were hotly denounced by Senator Hannegan, the Democratic senator from Indiana. He boldly attacked the motives which led to their retreat, and angrily exclaimed:--
"If Oregon were good for the production of sugar and cotton, it would not have encountered this opposition."
The resolution was almost unanimously opposed by the Whig senators. Mr.
Webster, while avoiding the point of our actual rights in the matter, urged that a settlement on the line of the forty-ninth parallel be recommended, as permitting both countries to compromise with dignity and honor. The resolution that was finally pa.s.sed by the Senate and afterward by the House, authorized the president to give notice at his discretion to Great Britain that the treaty should be terminated, "in order that the attention of the governments of both countries may be the more earnestly directed to the adoption of all proper measures for a speedy and amicable adjustment of the differences and disputes in regard to said territory."
Forever to their honor be it remembered that a few of the Southern Democrats refused to retreat from their first position--among them, Stephen A. Douglas. Senator Hannegan reproached his party for breaking the pledges on which it had marched to victory.
The pa.s.sage of the milk-and-water resolution restored to the timid of the country a feeling of relief and security; but to the others, and to the generations to come after them, helpless anger and undying shame.
The country yielded was ours. We gave it up solely because to retain it we must fight, and we were not in a position at that time to fight Great Britain.
When the Oregon Treaty, as it was called, was concluded by Secretary Buchanan and Minister Pakenham, we lost the splendid country now known as British Columbia, which, after our purchase of Alaska from Russia, would have given us an unbroken frontage on the Pacific Ocean from Southern California to Behring Strait, and almost to the mouth of the Mackenzie River on the Frozen Ocean.
Many reasons have been a.s.signed by historians for the retreat of the Southern Democrats from their former bold and flaunting position; but in the end the simple truth will be admitted--that they might brag, but were not in a position to fight. They were like Lieutenant Whidbey, whom Vancouver sent out to explore Lynn Ca.n.a.l in a small boat. Mr. Whidbey was ever ready and eager, when he deemed it necessary, to fire upon a small party of Indians; but when they met him, full front, in formidable numbers and with couched spears, he instantly fell into a panic and deemed it more "humane" to avoid a conflict with those poor, ignorant people.
[Ill.u.s.tration: Copyright by E. A. Hegg, Juneau
Courtesy of Webster & Stevens, Seattle
A PHANTOM SHIP]
The Southern Democrats who betrayed their country in 1846 were the Whidbeys of the United States. For no better reason than that of "humanity," they gave nearly four hundred thousand square miles of magnificent country to Great Britain.
Another problem in this famous boundary settlement question has interested American historians for sixty years: Why England yielded so much valuable territory to the United States, after protecting what she claimed as her rights so boldly and so unflinchingly for so many years.
Professor Schafer, the head of the Department of American History at the University of Oregon, claims to have recently found indisputable proof in the records of the British Foreign Office and those of the old Hudson"s Bay Company, in London, that the abandonment of the British claim was influenced by the presence of American pioneers who had pushed across the continent and settled in the disputed territory, bringing their families and founding homes in the wilderness.
England knew, in her heart, that the whole disputed territory was ours; and as our claims were strengthened by settlement, she was sufficiently far-sighted to be glad to compromise at that time. If the Oregon Treaty had been delayed for a few years, British Columbia would now be ours.
Proofs which strengthen our claim were found in the winter of 1907-1908 in the archives of Sitka.
There would be more justice in our laying claim to British Columbia now, than there was in the claims of Great Britain in the famous _lisiere_ matter which was settled in 1903.
By the treaties of 1824, between Russia and the United States, and of 1825, between Russia and Great Britain, the limits of Russian possessions are thus defined, and upon our purchase of Alaska from Russia, were repeated in the Treaty of Washington in 1867:--
"Commencing from the southernmost point of the island called Prince of Wales Island, which point lies in the parallel of fifty-four degrees and forty minutes north lat.i.tude, and between the one hundred and thirty-first and the one hundred and thirty-third degree of west longitude (meridian of Greenwich), the said line shall ascend to the North along the channel called Portland Channel, as far as the point of the continent where it strikes the fifty-sixth degree of north lat.i.tude; from this last mentioned point, the line of demarcation shall follow the summit of the mountains situated parallel to the coast as far as the point of intersection of the one hundred and forty-first degree of west longitude (of the same meridian); and finally, from the said point of intersection, the said meridian line of the one hundred and forty-first degree, in its prolongation as far as the Frozen Ocean, shall form the limit between the Russian and British possessions on the Continent of America to the northwest.
"With reference to the line of demarcation laid down in the preceding article, it is understood:--
"First, That the island called Prince of Wales Island shall belong wholly to Russia.
"Second, That whenever the summit of the mountains which extend parallel to the coast from the fifty-sixth degree of north lat.i.tude to the point of intersection of the one hundred and forty-first degree of west longitude shall prove to be at the distance of more than ten marine leagues from the ocean, the limit between the British possessions and the line of coast which is to belong to Russia as above mentioned shall be formed by a line parallel to the windings of the coast, and which shall never exceed the distance of ten marine leagues therefrom.
"The western limit within which the territories and dominion conveyed are contained, pa.s.ses through a point in Behring Strait on the parallel of sixty-five degrees, thirty minutes, north lat.i.tude, at its intersection by the meridian which pa.s.ses midway between the islands of Krusenstern, or Ignalook, and the island of Ratmanoff, or Noonarbook, and proceeds due north, without limitation, into the same Frozen Ocean.
The same western limit, beginning at the same initial point, proceeds thence in a course nearly southwest, through Behring Strait and Behring Sea, so as to pa.s.s midway between the northwest point of the island of St. Lawrence and the southeast point of Cape Choukotski, to the meridian of one hundred and seventy-two west longitude; thence, from the intersection of that meridian in a southwesterly direction, so as to pa.s.s midway between the island of Attou and the Copper Island of the Kormandorski couplet or group in the North Pacific Ocean, to the meridian of one hundred and ninety-three degrees west longitude, so as to include in the territory conveyed the whole of the Aleutian Islands east of that meridian."
In the cession was included the right of property in all public lots and squares, vacant lands, and all public buildings, fortifications, barracks, and other edifices, which were not private individual property. It was, however, understood and agreed that the churches which had been built in the ceded territory by the Russian government should remain the property of such members of the Greek Oriental Church resident in the territory as might choose to worship therein. All government archives, papers, and doc.u.ments relative to the territory and dominion aforesaid which were existing there at the time of transfer were left in possession of the agent of the United States; with the understanding that the Russian government or any Russian subject may at any time secure an authenticated copy thereof.
The inhabitants of the territory were given their choice of returning to Russia within three years, or remaining in the territory and being admitted to the enjoyment of all rights, advantages, and immunities of citizens of the United States, protected in the free enjoyment of their liberty, property, and religion.
It must be confessed with chagrin that very few Russians availed themselves of this opportunity to free themselves from the supposed oppression of their government, to unite with the vaunted glories of ours.
Before 1825, Great Britain, Spain, Portugal, and the United States had no rights of occupation and a.s.sertion on the Northwest Coast. Different nations had "planted bottles" and "taken possession" wherever their explorers had chanced to land, frequently ignoring the same ceremony on the part of previous explorers; but these formalities did not weigh against the rights of discovery and actual occupation by Russia--else Spain"s rights would have been prior to Great Britain"s.
Between the years of 1542 and 1774 Spanish explorers had examined and traced the western coast of America as far north as fifty-four degrees and forty minutes, Perez having reached that lat.i.tude in 1774, discovering Queen Charlotte Islands on the 16th of June, and Nootka Sound on the 9th of August.
Although he did not land, he had friendly relations with the natives, who surrounded his ship, singing and scattering white feathers as a beautiful token of peace. They traded dried fish, furs, and ornaments of their own making for knives and old iron; and two, at least, boarded the ship.
Perez named the northernmost point of Queen Charlotte Islands Point Santa Margarita.
Proceeding south, he made a landfall and anch.o.r.ed in a roadstead in forty-nine degrees and thirty minutes, which he called San Lorenzo--afterward the famous Nootka of Vancouver Island. He also discovered the beautiful white mountain which dignifies the entrance to Puget Sound, and named it Santa Rosalia. It was renamed Mount Olympus fourteen years later by John Meares.
This was the first discovery of the Northwest Coast, and when Cook and Vancouver came, it was to find that the Spanish had preceded them.
Not content with occupying the splendid possessions of the United States through the not famous, but infamous, Oregon Treaty, Canada, upon the discovery of gold in the Ca.s.siar district of British Columbia, brought up the question of the _lisiere_, or thirty-mile strip. This was the strip of land, "not exceeding ten marine leagues in width," which bordered the coast from the southern limit of Russian territory at Portland Ca.n.a.l (now the southern boundary of Alaska) to the vicinity of Mount St. Elias. The purpose of this strip was stated by the Russian negotiations to be "the establishment of a barrier at which would be stopped, once for all, to the North as to the West of the coast allotted to our American Company, the encroachments of the English agents of the Amalgamated Hudson Bay and Northwest English Company."
In 1824, upon the proposal of Sir Charles Bagot to a.s.sign to Russia a strip with the uniform width of ten marine leagues from the sh.o.r.e, limited on the south by a line between thirty and forty miles north from the northern end of the Portland Ca.n.a.l, the Russian Plenipotentiaries replied:--
"The motive which caused the adoption of the principle of mutual expediency to be proposed, and the most important advantage of this principle, is to prevent the respective establishments on the Northwest Coast from injuring each other and entering into collision.
"The English establishments of the Hudson Bay and Northwest companies have a tendency to advance westward along the fifty-third and fifty-fourth degrees of north lat.i.tude.
"The Russian establishments of the American Company have a tendency to descend southward toward the fifty-fifth parallel and beyond; for it should be noted that, if the American Company has not yet made permanent establishments on the mathematical line of the fifty-fifth degree, it is nevertheless true that by virtue of its privilege of 1799, against which privilege no power has ever protested, it is exploiting the hunting and the fishing in these regions, and that it regularly occupies the islands and the neighboring coasts during the season, which allows it to send its hunters and fishermen there.
"It was, then, to the mutual advantage of the two Empires to a.s.sign just limits to this advance on both sides, which, in time, could not fail to cause most unfortunate complications.
"It was also to their mutual advantage to fix their limits according to natural part.i.tions, which always const.i.tute the most distinct and certain frontiers.
"For these reasons the Plenipotentiaries of Russia have proposed as limits upon the coast of the continent, to the South, Portland Channel, the head of which lies about (par) the fifty-sixth degree of north lat.i.tude, and to the East, the chain of mountains which follows at a very short distance the sinuosities of the coast."
Sir Charles Bagot urged the line proposed by himself and offered, on the part of Great Britain, to include the Prince of Wales Island within the Russian line.
Russia, however, insisted upon having her _lisiere_ run to the Portland Ca.n.a.l, declaring that the possession of Wales Island, without a slice (portion) of territory upon the coast situated in front of that island, could be of no utility whatever to Russia; that any establishment formed upon said island, or upon the surrounding islands, would find itself, as it were, flanked by the English establishments on the mainland, and completely at the mercy of these latter.
England finally yielded to the Russian demand that the _lisiere_ should extend to the Portland Ca.n.a.l.
The claim that the Canadian government put forth, after the discovery of gold had made it important that Canada should secure a short line of traffic between the northern interior and the ocean, was that the wording of certain parts of the treaty of 1825 had been wrongly interpreted. The Canadians insisted that it was not the meaning nor the intention of the Convention of 1825 that there should remain in the exclusive possession of Russia a continuous fringe, or strip--the _lisiere_--of coast, separating the British possessions from the bays, ports, inlets, havens, and waters of the ocean.