country up to fifty-four degrees forty minutes, for occupancy by a military force, for the erection of a fort, for a port of entry, and donations of land to settlers. But the discussion had not gone far when a motion was made to strike out all after the enacting clause and insert, instead, sections giving the President power to build forts and garrison them, to send out an expedition to explore the country, and to extend the jurisdiction of the United States over Oregon as to citizens of the Union. The debate which followed richly deserves to be read, as a fine illustration of how little the men of that day understood the marvellous growth of their country, which in less than twenty years was to found two States in the region they did not think worth having. "Now, what will be the consequences," said a member from Missouri,* "supposing we pass this bill and give a social existence to the country? Consider where the region is. From the Atlantic to the Missouri is thirteen hundred miles. From the mouth of the Missouri to the head of navigation is twenty-five hundred more. Then there is the rugged and almost impassable belt of the Rocky Mountains, while between the Missouri and the Pacific, save a strip of culturable prairie not above two or three hundred miles wide, the region is waste and sterile, no better than the Desert of Sahara, and quite as dangerous to cross. Near the mountains the country is composed of rocky and stony ridges, dotted with spots giving life to nothing but the spruce, the hemlock, and trees of that description. Lower down, nearer the coast, the soil, where there is any, is formed of rotted pine leaves, and even that is swept away by the floods which from time to time cover the land along the river banks. To-day the extremity of drought prevails; tomorrow all except the hills are under water. It is my firm belief that if a settlement were made and agriculture attempted on any scale, large or small, the settlers would not remain two years. They could not endure the incessant rain of four months' duration. *Speech of Mr. Bates, Register of Debates in Congress, vol. v, 1828–1829 pp. 127-129. 1829. OREGON OF NO VALUE. 481 "But suppose the object of this bill accomplished. Suppose the infant settlement, fostered by the paternal care of Government, has grown into a vigorous maturity. Does any man imagine that a brotherhood of affection, a community of interest, could bind that distant and solitary member of the family in the far West to those held together by the firmest of political ties in the East? The very name of the place is expressive of its poverty and sterility, for it comes from oregano, a word applied by the Spaniards to an herb resembling pennyroyal and growing near the coast." "When," said a member from Tennessee, "we contemplate the vast extent of the fertile territory which spreads to the east and south of the Rocky Mountains, we may well be led to wonder what can lead any adventurer to seek the inhospitable regions of Oregon, unless, indeed, he wishes to be a savage. At what period do gentlemen suppose the population of this happy republic will have filled up the fair and fertile territory within our present limits? At what distant day will the pursuits of agriculture and the train of the mechanic arts have taken full possession of this immense region? That day is so distant that no gentleman of the most prolific mind can ever look forward to it. Not even within the reach of fancy itself can the advocates of this bill point out the time when Oregon Territory will have to be organized. But it is said that if we do not take possession, some other power will. Well, suppose they do; what will we lose? It is a territory we ought not to inhabit, and one I hope we never shall inhabit. Why? Because it is situated at such an immeasurable distance from the seat of Government that there never will, there never can be, any intervening links to unite it with the rest of the country. It is utterly impossible to conceive, if we do plant a colony in Oregon, that it ever will form part and parcel of our Government. It seems to me to be the decree of Nature herself that the Rocky Mountains shall be the western boundary of this Republic. She has interposed a country of four hundred miles in extent, of the most barren, sterile character, a country without timber and without water, a country wholly unfit for the occupation of civilized man, while above and beyond it the mountains rear their snowy and impassable tops, many hundreds of feet higher than the summits of the Council Bluffs. They stand like a Chinese wall, and must forever and effectually guard us from all attacks from that quarter. Should any foreign power ever be so senseless as to take possession of Oregon, she can never injure the United States on that side. "But suppose it possible to settle such a country. The next step will be to organize it into a Territory, and then you will be called on to turn this Territory into a State. And what then? It can be but a few years before such a State must of its own weight fall off from this Confederacy. You have no practical means to connect such a State with the rest of the Republic. No delegate or representative can come thence to this House and return within a twelvemonth. Let his journey average twenty-five miles a day, and it will take him three hundred and sixty-eight days to come here and go back. His mileage will amount to nearly four thousand dollars, and be paid him for no other service than travelling. No, sir, let those restless spirits who cannot be content to cultivate their native soil, let such beings go to Oregon, but let them go at their own risk." * Twenty years from the day on which this speech was made, a delegate from the Territory of Oregon was sitting in the House of Representatives. There were, however, others more hopeful. “It is a mistake," said one, "to suppose that Oregon could never become a part of the Confederacy. I believe the Stony Mountains in time will be passed with as much ease as the Alleghanies now are. The improvements of the age remove the obstacles imposed by distance and Nature. Twenty years since, a man who predicted that a voyage from New Orleans to Louisville would be made in eight days, as it now is, would have been thought insane. Then a journey from the Atlantic to the Ohio river was a great and hazardous undertaking. Now it may be made over a comfortable * Speech of Mr. Mitchell, of Tennessee, Register of Debates in Congress, vol. v, 1828-1829, pp. 134-137. 1829. OUR WEST INDIAN TRADE. 483 road in three days." Others declared Oregon was not the desert waste the opponents of the bill had represented, but a fertile and healthful region, well watered and wooded, and to make good their assertions, quoted at length from the writings of Vancouver, Lewis and Clark, Humboldt, Mr. Prevost, who received the surrender of Astoria, Major Brooks, who had often visited the coast, and Franchere, a French Canadian and a member of the first party sent out by Mr. Astor in 1810. But the belief that Oregon was of little importance, that it could not become a State in the Union, and that to organize it as a Territory or spread over it the laws of the United States would be a violation of the Convention of 1827, prevailed, and in the end the House refused to order the bill to a third reading, a vote which amounted to rejection.* But there was yet another subject of dispute with Great Britain, and one that threatened to be serious-the West Indian Islands were again shut to vessels from the United States. Never since the colonies renounced allegiance to the Crown and founded the Republic had trade with Britain and her dependencies rested on fair and liberal principles. No sooner was the war for independence over than the colonial system just thrown off was applied in all its rigor to the West Indies, and during twelve years not a vessel carrying the flag of the United States could lawfully enter a British port in one of them. Now and then a governor of one or another of the colonies, when the needs of its inhabitants required, would open its ports to the products of the United States if they came in British vessels. But these relaxations were few in number and short in duration, and the exclusion of American ships and products was still a grievance when Jay went to London to negotiate a treaty in 1794. There was little in that instrument to commend it to any one; but the most objectionable article of all was the twelfth, which opened the ports of the British West Indies to American ships of seventy tons and under; which restricted their cargoes to such goods and merchandise grown, * January 9, 1829. manufactured, or produced in the United States, as could also be carried from our shores in British vessels of any tonnage; and which forbade an American ship to enter any port on the face of the earth (save our own) with molasses, sugar, coffee, cocoa, or cotton either from his Majesty's islands or from the United States. That a provision at once manifestly beneficial to British navigation and so hurtful to American trade, commerce, and shipping should have been inserted in any treaty to which we were a party so astonished the Senate that ratification was secured only on condition that the article regulating colonial trade should be suspended. To this Great Britain willingly agreed, and for twenty years went on imposing such arbitrary restrictions as she pleased. At the next great settling of accounts, in 1815, another effort was made to put colonial trade on the same footing as direct trade with the mother country. But again Great Britain refused, and in the Convention of 1815 is an express stipulation that "intercourse between the United States and his Britannic Majesty's possessions in the West Indies and on the continent of North America shall not be affected by any provisions of" the article regulating trade and commerce with British possessions in Europe. Once more left to do as she would, Great Britain shut our ships from the islands, and laid duties that came near to being prohibitory on American provisions, even when brought in British bottoms.* Having led the way, Nova Scotia and New Brunswick followed, and in 1816 laid a duty of twenty shillings a ton on plaster of Paris if taken by an American coaster from any port in the provinces to any port in the United States east of Boston. And now Congress struck back, and a commercial war began in earnest. By one act ‡ foreign vessels were forbidden to bring plaster of Paris, wherever produced, to the United States unless they came from ports from which American ships were equally free to bring it. The blow was effective; * History of the People of the United States, vol. iv, pp. 346-348. Act of March 3, 1817, "to regulate the trade in plaster of Paris." |