Page:Centennial History of Oregon 1811-1912, Volume 1.djvu/365



the slavery qucstio.n wuuld divide the couiUrij and break up the Umcni of the States. Warre and Vavasour had been out here to Oregon surveying the country, piekhig out suitable sites for British forts and making recommendations as to the number of soldiers and cannon needed to seize and hold the country. And follow- ing up this recommendation, Her ]\lajesty's government ordered a regiment of the Royal Sappers and Jlinei-s to report from different parts of England to the "Woolwich Arsenal in readiness to proceed to America and go to Oregon territory for active service. And all this time Calhoun, on the part of the Soutli, and the Northern "doughfaces" under the lead of Dayton, of New Jersey, was de- nouncing Oregon as the "riddlings of creation," and not worth fighting about. The slave states had now got Texas, and forced Mexico into a war that in the end would add New Mexico and Arizona and a large slice of California south of the Mason-Dixon line of division between free and slave territory. Sloat had seized upper California ; and there was no reason to longer hold back the settlement of the Oregon boundary line with England. If there ever was a fair referendum of a political question to the people of the United States, it was the Oregon question. The people had passed on the question, and elected James K. Polk to carry out their sovereign will. It was to be the whole of Ore- gon — or fight. But no sooner is Polk safely seated in the presidential chair than he presents a compromise boundary line — a line that had been repudiated hy every president and every treaty that had preceded him. His secretary of state, James Buchanan, could ill conceal the disgust and humiliation he felt in making such an ofifer, and when England declined it he made haste to with- draw it. If Buchanan had now stood firmly by Oregon, he might have forced Polk to keep his pledges to the people, for the secretary of the treasury, Robt. J. "Walker, a Southern man, hotly opposed giving up an inch of Oregon to Eng- land. But Buchanan was wheedled into yielding with Polk on a promise of the presidency by the slave power, which he got in 18.56, and thus betrayed Oregon, just as he betrayed the Nation of 1860. The offer to give up half of Old Oregon, had been thus dishonorably made. Polk's administration was committed to it, and England took time to see what was best to do. An English representative was sent to Oregon in the person of a titled lady in disguise; and then it was discovered that the preachers, mountaineers and missionaries had organized a formidable government of their own, and were holding the fort under the Stars and Stripes; and that they were not good material to make British "subjects". And then it was that England accepted the line offered by President Polk, know- ing that Polk was giving away one-half the territoi-y the United States was justly entitled to. That the United States lost one-half of the Oregon territory, and gave our traditional and historical enemy a foothold to annoy us for all time on the Pacific is to be charged up to John C. Calhoun, President Polk and the slaveholders of the South. And that this History is fully justified in making this statement the reader is asked to consider the following letter written by Robert J. "Walker, who was socrelary of tlie treasury in President Polk's cab- inet. "When the purchase of Alaska was before Congress after the Civil war was over and twenty -three years after the settlement of the Oregon boundary, and after Polk was dead and buried and the institution of slavery abolished, Mr. "Walker, in his old age, wrote a letter to the "Washington City Daily Chronicle, published January 28, 1868, in which he says :