Читать книгу Thirty Years' View (Vol. I of 2) - Benton Thomas Hart - Страница 23

This subject had begun to make a lodgment in the public mind, and I brought a bill into the Senate to enable the President to possess and retain the country. The joint occupation treaty of 1818 was drawing to a close, and it was my policy to terminate such occupation, and hold the Columbia (or Oregon) exclusively, as we had the admitted right to do while the question of title was depending. The British had no title, and were simply working for a division – for the right bank of the river, and the harbor at its mouth – and waiting on time to ripen their joint occupation into a claim for half. I knew this, and wished to terminate a joint tenancy which could only be injurious to ourselves while it lasted, and jeopard our rights when it terminated. The bill which I brought in proposed an appropriation to enable the President to act efficiently, with a detatchment of the army and navy; and in the discussion of this bill the whole question of title and of policy came up; and, in a reply to Mr. Dickerson, of New Jersey, I found it to be my duty to defend both. I now give some extracts from that reply, as a careful examination of the British pretension, founded upon her own exhibition of title, and showing that she had none south of forty-nine degrees, and that we were only giving her a claim, by putting her possession on an equality with our own. These extracts will show the history of the case as it then stood – as it remained invalidated in all subsequent discussion – and according to which, and after twenty years, and when the question had assumed a war aspect, it was finally settled. The bill did not pass, but received an encouraging vote – fourteen senators voting favorably to it. They were:

Messrs. Barbour, Benton, Bouligny, Cobb, Hayne, Jackson (the General), Johnson of Kentucky, Johnston of Louisiana, Lloyd of Massachusetts, Mills, Noble, Ruggles, Talbot, Thomas.

"Mr. Benton, in reply to Mr. Dickerson, said that he had not intended to speak to this bill. Always unwilling to trespass upon the time and patience of the Senate, he was particularly so at this moment, when the session was drawing to a close, and a hundred bills upon the table were each demanding attention. The occupation of the Columbia River was a subject which had engaged the deliberations of Congress for four years past, and the minds of gentlemen might be supposed to be made up upon it. Resting upon this belief, Mr. B., as reporter of the bill, had limited himself to the duty of watching its progress, and of holding himself in readiness to answer any inquiries which might be put. Inquiries he certainly expected; but a general assault, at this late stage of the session, upon the principle, the policy, and the details of the bill, had not been anticipated. Such an assault had, however, been made by the senator from New Jersey (Mr. D.), and Mr. B. would be unfaithful to his duty if he did not repel it. In discharging this duty, he would lose no time in going over the gentleman's calculations about the expense of getting a member of Congress from the Oregon to the Potomac; nor would he solve his difficulties about the shortest and best route – whether Cape Horn should be doubled, a new route explored under the north pole, or mountains climbed, whose aspiring summits present twelve feet of defying snow to the burning rays of a July sun. Mr. B. looked upon these calculations and problems as so many dashes of the gentleman's wit, and admitted that wit was an excellent article in debate, equally convenient for embellishing an argument, and concealing the want of one. For which of these purposes the senator from New Jersey had amused the Senate with the wit in question, it was not for Mr. B. to say, nor should he undertake to disturb him in the quiet enjoyment of the honor which he had won thereby, and would proceed directly to speak to the merits of the bill.

"It is now, Mr. President, continued Mr. B., precisely two and twenty years since a contest for the Columbia has been going on between the United States and Great Britain. The contest originated with the discovery of the river itself. The moment that we discovered it she claimed it; and without a color of title in her hand, she has labored ever since to overreach us in the arts of negotiation, or to bully us out of our discovery by menaces of war.

"In the year 1790, a citizen of the United States, Capt. Gray, of Boston, discovered the Columbia at its entrance into the sea; and in 1803, Lewis and Clarke were sent by the government of the United States to complete the discovery of the whole river, from its source downwards, and to take formal possession in the name of their government. In 1793 Sir Alexander McKenzie had been sent from Canada by the British Government to effect the same object; but he missed the sources of the river, fell upon the Tacoutche Tesse, and struck the Pacific about five hundred miles to the north of the mouth of the Columbia.

"In 1803, the United States acquired Louisiana, and with it an open question of boundaries for that vast province. On the side of Mexico and Florida this question was to be settled with the King of Spain; on the north and northwest, with the King of Great Britain. It happened in the very time that we were signing a treaty in Paris for the acquisition of Louisiana, that we were signing another in London for the adjustment of the boundary line between the northwest possessions of the United States and the King of Great Britain. The negotiators of each were ignorant of what the others had done; and on remitting the two treaties to the Senate of the United States for ratification, that for the purchase of Louisiana was ratified without restriction; the other, with the exception of the fifth article. It was this article which adjusted the boundary line between the United States and Great Britain, from the Lake of the Woods to the head of the Mississippi; and the Senate refused to ratify it, because, by possibility, it might jeopard the northern boundary of Louisiana. The treaty was sent back to London, the fifth article expunged; and the British Government, acting then as upon a late occasion, rejected the whole treaty, when it failed in securing the precise advantage of which it was in search.

"In the year 1807, another treaty was negotiated between the United States and Great Britain. The negotiators on both sides were then possessed of the fact that Louisiana belonged to the United States, and that her boundaries to the north and west were undefined. The settlement of this boundary was a point in the negotiation, and continued efforts were made by the British plenipotentiaries to overreach the Americans, with respect to the country west of the Rocky Mountains. Without presenting any claim, they endeavored to 'leave a nest egg for future pretensions in that quarter.' (State Papers, 1822-3.) Finally, an article was agreed to. The forty-ninth degree of north latitude was to be followed west, as far as the territories of the two countries extended in that direction, with a proviso against its application to the country west of the Rocky Mountains. This treaty shared the fate of that of 1803. It was never ratified. For causes unconnected with the questions of boundary, it was rejected by Mr. Jefferson without a reference to the Senate.

"At Ghent, in 1814, the attempts of 1803 and 1807 were renewed. The British plenipotentiaries offered articles upon the subject of the boundary, and of the northwest coast, of the same character with those previously offered; but nothing could be agreed upon, and nothing upon the subject was inserted in the treaty signed at that place.

"At London, in 1818, the negotiations upon this point were renewed; and the British Government, for the first time, uncovered the ground upon which its pretensions rested. Its plenipotentiaries, Mr. Robinson and Mr. Goulbourn, asserted (to give them the benefit of their own words, as reported by Messrs. Gallatin and Rush) 'That former voyages, and principally that of Captain Cook, gave to Great Britain the rights derived from discovery; and they alluded to purchases from the natives south of the river Columbia, which they alleged to have been made prior to the American Revolution. They did not make any formal proposition for a boundary, but intimated that the river itself was the most convenient that could be adopted, and that they would not agree to any which did not give them the harbor at the mouth of the river in common with the United States.'" —Letter from Messrs. Gallatin and Rush, October 20th, 1820.

To this the American plenipotentiaries answered, in a way better calculated to encourage than to repulse the groundless pretensions of Great Britain. 'We did not assert (continue these gentlemen in the same letter), we did not assert that the United States had a perfect right to that country, but insisted that their claim was at least good against Great Britain. We did not know with precision what value our government set on the country to the westward of these mountains; but we were not authorized to enter into any agreement which should be tantamount to an abandonment of the claim to it. It was at last agreed, but, as we thought, with some reluctance on the part of the British plenipotentiaries, that the country on the northwest coast, claimed by either party, should, without prejudice to the claims of either, and for a limited time, be opened for the purposes of trade to the inhabitants of both countries.'

"The substance of this agreement was inserted in the convention of October, 1818. It constitutes the third article of that treaty, and is the same upon which the senator from New Jersey (Mr. Dickerson) relies for excluding the United States from the occupation of the Columbia.

"In subsequent negotiations, the British agents further rested their claim upon the discoveries of McKenzie, in 1793, the seizure of Astoria during the late war, and the Nootka Sound Treaty, of 1790.

"Such an exhibition of title, said Mr. B., is ridiculous, and would be contemptible in the hands of any other power than that of Great Britain. Of the five grounds of claim which she has set up, not one of them is tenable against the slightest examination. Cook never saw, much less took possession of any part of the northwest coast of America, in the latitude of the Columbia River. All his discoveries were far north of that point, and not one of them was followed up by possession, without which the fact of discovery would confer no title. The Indians were not even named from whom the purchases are stated to have been made anterior to the Revolutionary War. Not a single particular is given which could identify a transaction of the kind. The only circumstance mentioned applies to the locality of the Indians supposed to have made the sale; and that circumstance invalidates the whole claim. They are said to have resided to the 'south' of the Columbia; by consequence they did not reside upon it, and could have no right to sell a country of which they were not the possessors.

"McKenzie was sent out from Canada, in the year 1793, to discover, at its head, the river which Captain Gray had discovered at its mouth, three years before. But McKenzie missed the object of his search, and struck the Pacific five hundred miles to the north, as I have already stated. The seizure of Astoria, during the war, was an operation of arms, conferring no more title upon Great Britain to the Columbia, than the capture of Castine and Detroit gave her to Maine and Michigan. This new ground of claim was set up by Mr. Bagot, his Britannic Majesty's minister to this republic, in 1817, and set up in a way to contradict and relinquish all their other pretended titles. Mr. Bagot was remonstrating against the occupation, by the United States, of the Columbia River, and reciting that it had been taken possession of, in his Majesty's name, during the late war, 'and had SINCE been CONSIDERED as forming a part of his Majesty's dominions.' The word 'since,' is exclusive of all previous pretension, and the Ghent Treaty, which stipulates for the restoration of all the captured posts, is a complete extinguisher to this idle pretension. Finally, the British negotiators have been driven to take shelter under the Nootka Sound Treaty of 1790. The character of that treaty was well understood at the time that it was made, and its terms will speak for themselves at the present day. It was a treaty of concession, and not of acquisition of rights, on the part of Great Britain. It was so characterized by the opposition, and so admitted to be by the ministry, at the time of its communication to the British Parliament.

[Here Mr. B. read passages from the speeches of Mr. Fox and Mr. Pitt, to prove the character of this Treaty.]

"Mr. Fox said, 'What, then, was the extent of our rights before the convention – (whether admitted or denied by Spain was of no consequence) – and to what extent were they now secured to us? We possessed and exercised the free navigation of the Pacific Ocean, without restraint or limitation. We possessed and exercised the right of carrying on fisheries in the South Seas equally unlimited. This was no barren right, but a right of which we had availed ourselves, as appeared by the papers on the table, which showed that the produce of it had increased, in five years, from twelve to ninety-seven thousand pounds sterling. This estate we had, and were daily improving; it was not to be disgraced by the name of an acquisition. The admission of part of these rights by Spain, was all we had obtained. Our right, before, was to settle in any part of the South or Northwest Coast of America, not fortified against us by previous occupancy; and we were now restricted to settle in certain places only, and under certain restrictions. This was an important concession on our part. Our rights of fishing extended to the whole ocean, and now it, too, was limited, and to be carried on within certain distances of the Spanish settlements. Our right of making settlements was not, as now, a right to build huts, but to plant colonies, if we thought proper. Surely these were not acquisitions, or rather conquests, as they must be considered, if we were to judge by the triumphant language respecting them, but great and important concessions. By the third article, we are authorized to navigate the Pacific Ocean and South Seas, unmolested, for the purpose of carrying on our fisheries, and to land on the unsettled coasts, for the purpose of trading with the natives; but, after this pompous recognition of right to navigation, fishery, and commerce, comes another article, the sixth, which takes away the right of landing, and erecting even temporary huts, for any purpose but that of carrying on the fishery, and amounts to a complete dereliction of all right to settle in any way for the purpose of commerce with the natives.' —British Parliamentary History, Vol. 28, p. 990.

"Mr. Pitt, in reply. 'Having finished that part of Mr. Fox's speech which referred to the reparation, Mr. Pitt proceeded to the next point, namely, that gentleman's argument to prove, that the other articles of the convention were mere concessions, and not acquisitions. In answer to this, Mr. Pitt maintained, that, though what this country had gained consisted not of new rights, it certainly did of new advantages. We had, before, a right to the Southern whale fishery, and a right to navigate and carry on fisheries in the Pacific Ocean, and to trade on the coasts of any part of Northwest America; but that right not only had not been acknowledged, but disputed and resisted: whereas, by the convention, it was secured to us – a circumstance which, though no new right, was a new advantage.' —Same– p. 1002.

"But, continued Mr. Benton, we need not take the character of the treaty even from the high authority of these rival leaders in the British Parliament. The treaty will speak for itself. I have it in my hand, and will read the article relied upon to sustain the British claim to the Columbia River.

"'ARTICLE THIRD OF THE NOOTKA SOUND TREATY

"'In order to strengthen the bonds of friendship, and to preserve, in future, a perfect harmony and good understanding between the two contracting parties, it is agreed that their respective subjects shall not be disturbed or molested, either in navigating or carrying on their fisheries in the Pacific Ocean, or in the South Seas, or in landing on the coasts of those seas in places not already occupied, for the purpose of carrying on their commerce with the natives of the country, or of making settlements there; the whole subject, nevertheless, to the restrictions and provisions specified in the three following articles.'

"The particular clause of this article, relied upon by the advocates for the British claim, is that which gives the right of landing on parts of the Northwest Coast, not already occupied, for the purpose of carrying on commerce and making settlements. The first inquiry arising upon this clause is, whether the coast, in the latitude of the Columbia River, was unoccupied at the date of the Nootka Sound Treaty? The answer is in the affirmative. The second is, whether the English landed upon this coast while it was so unoccupied? The answer is in the negative; and this answer puts an end to all pretension of British claim founded upon this treaty, without leaving us under the necessity of recurring to the fact that the permission to land, and to make settlements, so far from contemplating an acquisition of territory, was limited by subsequent restrictions, to the erection of temporary huts for the personal accommodation of fishermen and traders only.

"Mr. B. adverted to the inconsistency, on the part of Great Britain, of following the 49th parallel to the Rocky Mountains, and refusing to follow it any further. He affirmed that the principle which would make that parallel a boundary to the top of the mountain, would carry it out to the Pacific Ocean. He proved this assertion by recurring to the origin of that line. It grew out of the treaty of Utrecht, that treaty which, in 1704, put an end to the wars of Queen Anne and Louis the XIVth and fixed the boundaries of their respective dominions in North America. The tenth article of that treaty was applicable to Louisiana and to Canada. It provided that commissioners should be appointed by the two powers to adjust the boundary between them. The commissioners were appointed, and did fix it. The parallel of 49 degrees was fixed upon as the common boundary from the Lake of the Woods, "indefinitely to the West." This boundary was acquiesced in for a hundred years. By proposing to follow it to the Rocky Mountains, the British Government admits its validity; by refusing to follow it out, they become obnoxious to the charge of inconsistency, and betray a determination to encroach upon the territory of the United States, for the undisguised purpose of selfish aggrandizement.

"The truth is, Mr. President, continued Mr. B., Great Britain has no color of title to the country in question. She sets up none. There is not a paper upon the face of the earth in which a British minister has stated a claim. I speak of the king's ministers, and not of the agents employed by them. The claims we have been examining are thrown out in the conversations and notes of diplomatic agents. No English minister has ever put his name to them, and no one will ever risk his character as a statesman by venturing to do so. The claim of Great Britain is nothing but a naked pretension, founded on the double prospect of benefiting herself and injuring the United States. The fur trader, Sir Alexander McKenzie, is at the bottom of this policy. Failing in his attempt to explore the Columbia River, in 1793, he, nevertheless, urged upon the British Government the advantages of taking it to herself, and of expelling the Americans from the whole region west of the Rocky Mountains. The advice accorded too well with the passions and policy of that government, to be disregarded. It is a government which has lost no opportunity, since the peace of '83, of aggrandizing itself at the expense of the United States. It is a government which listens to the suggestions of its experienced subjects, and thus an individual, in the humble station of a fur trader, has pointed out the policy which has been pursued by every Minister of Great Britain, from Pitt to Canning, and for the maintenance of which a war is now menaced.

"For a boundary line between the United States and Great Britain, west of the Mississippi, McKenzie proposes the latitude of 45 degrees, because that latitude is necessary to give the Columbia River to Great Britain. His words are: 'Let the line begin where it may on the Mississippi, it must be continued west, till it terminates in the Pacific Ocean, to the south of the Columbia.'

"Mr. B. said it was curious to observe with what closeness every suggestion of McKenzie had been followed up by the British Government. He recommended that the Hudson Bay and Northwest Company should be united; and they have been united. He proposed to extend the fur trade of Canada to the shore of the Pacific Ocean; and it has been so extended. He proposed that a chain of trading posts should be formed through the continent, from sea to sea; and it has been formed. He recommended that no boundary line should be agreed upon with the United States, which did not give the Columbia River to the British; and the British ministry declare that none other shall be formed. He proposed to obtain the command of the fur trade from latitude 45 degrees north; and they have it even to the Mandan villages, and the neighborhood of the Council Bluffs. He recommended the expulsion of American traders from the whole region west of the Rocky Mountains, and they are expelled from it. He proposed to command the commerce of the Pacific Ocean; and it will be commanded the moment a British fleet takes position in the mouth of the Columbia. Besides these specified advantages, McKenzie alludes to other 'political considerations,' which it was not necessary for him to particularize. Doubtless it was not. They were sufficiently understood. They are the same which induced the retention of the northwestern posts, in violation of the treaty of 1783; the same which induced the acquisition of Gibraltar, Malta, the Cape of Good Hope, the Islands of Ceylon and Madagascar; the same which makes Great Britain covet the possession of every commanding position in the four quarters of the globe."

I do not argue the question of title on the part of the United States, but only state it as founded upon – 1. Discovery of the Columbia River by Capt. Gray, in 1790; 2. Purchase of Louisiana in 1803; 3. Discovery of the Columbia from its head to its mouth, by Lewis and Clarke, in 1803; 4. Settlement of Astoria, in 1811; 5. Treaty with Spain, 1819; 6. Contiguity and continuity of settlement and possession. Nor do I argue the question of the advantages of retaining the Columbia, and refusing to divide or alienate our territory upon it. I merely state them, and leave their value to result from the enumeration. 1. To keep out a foreign power; 2. To gain a seaport with a military and naval station, on the coast of the Pacific; 3. To save the fur trade in that region, and prevent our Indians from being tampered with by British traders; 4. To open a communication for commercial purposes between the Mississippi and the Pacific; 5. To send the lights of science and of religion into eastern Asia.