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CHAPTER XII

THE OREGON BOUNDARY SETTLED

We have seen how George Canning in 1824 fixed the British Oregon policy by demanding the Columbia as a boundary from its mouth to the forty-ninth parallel. He was willing, indeed, to concede to the United States free ports on DeFuca's Strait, and even a small, detached portion of territory with ports north of the Columbia. But he would not hear of extending the forty-ninth parallel as the boundary westward from the Rocky Mountains to the sea.

Ashburton's instructions; the Ashburton-Webster negotiations. On the rock of Canning's policy, or that of the United States based upon the fortyninth parallel, the negotiations of 1824 and of 1826-7 came to grief. No new effort was made to solve the boundary problem till 1842, when Lord Ashburton was sent to the United States as special commissioner to settle with Secretary of State Daniel Webster all causes of dispute between the two countries. Ashburton's main purpose was to settle the northeastern boundary, between Maine and Canada, the dispute over which had become especially dangerous because conflicts had broken out between British subjects and American citizens in the disputed territory. But Ash