Page:Centennial History of Oregon 1811-1912, Volume 1.djvu/361



to the count i-y '.' That nutioii got absolutely nothing hy the bullying of its pirat- ical fur trailing ship at Nootka Sound. The record shows that the Spaniard was the first discoverer of the North Pacific Coast, that he never surrendered his claim in the least, and whatever it was by right of discovery and actual occupation of Vancouver Island he held it intact until it was turned over to the United States l>y the treaty of February 22, 1819. Then what other right had England? .Mackenzie, a British subject, with an exploring party came over the Rocky Moun- tains in 1793, floated down part of the Eraser river, and reached the Pacific Ocean in July, 1793, more than one year after Gray had sailed into the mouth of the Columbia. If there was anything in that sort of discovery Capt. Gray with the American flag was more than a year ahead of the British claim. What else, then? "When Astor's party under Wilson Pi-ice Hunt started for the Pacific Coast in 1811, the British Northwest Company started a rival expedition across the continent to seize and hold Oregon as ,against the Astor (Pacific) Fur Company. But before Thompson, the British agent got over the Rocky mountains and put up his notice claiming the country for England, the Astor party had built a fort at Astoria, mounted cannon, run up the American flag, and Hunt with the overland party had got into the Snake river valley, and Levris and Clark had been over here up and down the Columbia six years before the Thompson part.v had posted their notices. So that England could claim nothing on that acount. How then did England get British Columbia, a part of Old Oregon, and as much the territory of the United States as was Utah and Kan- sas? How? Simply by bluffing a weak-kneed president, and pulling the slave- holding interests of the South into a surrender of the just rights of the United States to a territory as large as the three states of Oregon, Washington and Idaho, and giving the traditional enemy of this country a foothold on the Pacific Ocean where they can annoy this country and cripple and demoralize its com- merce for all time. That this position is correct, and that the English govern- ment well knew that it had no just claims to Oregon, is manifest from what came to the surface in 1818 when the treaty of joint occupancy was agreed to. In that negotiation Richard Rush and Albert Gallatin represented the United States and John Quincy Adams was Secretary of State to President James Monroe. Neither of these men had any love for old England. Mr. Adams was very careful in his instructions to Rush and Gallatin ; in the course of which he says : "From the earnestness with which the British government now returns to the object of fixing this boundary (The Oregon boundary) there is reason to believe that they have some other purpose connected with it, which they do not avow, hut which in their estimation gives it an importance not belonging to it, considered in itself. ' '

What was that "other purpose" which the British government would not avow? What was it that our traditional enemy was concealing from President Monroe? We don't have far to look to find it. President Monroe was the author of what is called "The ilonroe Doctrine." and which was authoritatively an- nounced to the world in 1823; Monroe had negotiated the purchase of Louisiana from Napoleon for Jefferson. His secretary of state. Adams, had been the United States andiassador to Russia and had negotiated the treaties with that country which had secured its friendship to the United States for a hundred j'ears. These two men, then working together, had learned the secret aims and