Page:History of Oregon volume 1.djvu/419

368 the president to cause the territory to be explored by engineers, selected by himself, accompanied by a military escort; and also authorizing the delay of the troops mentioned in the first article until the exploration should have been completed; third, enacting that any citizen of the United States who should commit any crime or misdemeanor in the territory should, on conviction, suffer the penalty attached to the same offence in any district of country under the sole jurisdiction of the United States; the trial to take place in the first district where he might be apprehended or brought, that was under the laws of the United States; the courts being by this act invested with the power to try such offenders in the same manner as if the crimes had been committed in the district; fourth, the sum of $25,000 was appropriated to carry into effect the provisions of the act.

But although this bill seemed free from the objectionable features of the previous ones, it was rejected when it came to a third reading, by a vote of ninety-nine to seventy-five.

When Floyd's congressional term ended, no successor was found to take up the subject where he had left it. But he had succeeded in infusing into the minds of the American people a romantic interest in the Oregon Territory, and above all a patriotic feeling of resistance to the reputed aggressions of the British in that quarter, which eventually served the purpose for which he labored, the settlement of the country by citizens of the United States. American traders pushed their enterprises beyond the Rocky Mountains, and to the Columbia River, attempting to compete with the English company, but failing for the reasons he had pointed out. Through these traders the missionary societies heard of the superior tribes of red men in the Oregon Territory who sought a knowledge of the white man's God, and prepared to respond to the call, with the results which have