Part 4 (1/2)

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 s.h.i.+P]

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 Was.h.i.+ngton 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:--