Page:History vs. the Whitman saved Oregon story.djvu/39

Rh had preceded him, he took occasion to remove an erroneous impression, which, he conceived, was calculated to do great injustice to a distinguished man, Mr. Webster, who could not there defend himself. He alluded to the fears expressed by the Senator from Missouri, that ... the rumor must be correct which had got abroad, that a proposition had been made or entertained by the Secretary of State, to settle down upon the Columbia River as the boundary line. Now he was glad to have it in his power to undeceive the Senator, and to assure him, which he did from authority, for he had been requested by the Secretary himself to do it for him, that he never either made or entertained a proposition to admit of any line south of the 49th parallel of latitude, as a negotiable boundary line for the territory of the United States."

On February 3, 1843, Mr. Choate made another speech (which was printed verbatim in Cong. Globe, App. pages 222–229), and returning to the subject of Benton's accusations, he said: "I desired chiefly to assure the Senator and the Senate that the apprehension intimated by him that a disclosure of these informal communications would disgrace the American Secretary, by showing that he had offered a boundary line south of the parallel of 49 degrees is totally unfounded. He would be glad to hear me say that I am authorized and desired to declare, that in no communication, formal or informal, was such an offer made, and that none such was ever meditated."

Precisely why Oregon was not included in the Ashburton treaty could not be stated with due regard to the diplomatic proprieties, either by Choate in 1843, or Webster in his great speech in defense of the Ashburton treaty in 1846, nor by Everett, his life-long friend, in his brief biography of Webster, in which all he says is "Had he (i. e., Webster) supposed an arrangement could have been effected on this basis" (i. e., 49 degrees to the coast) "with Lord Ashburton, he would gladly have included it in the treaty of Washington" (Cf. Webster's Works, Vol. I, Introduction page CXLVIII), because Ashburton's instructions on Oregon were not printed by the British government and reprinted by our government in "Berlin Arbitration" till 1871-2. These instructions authorized Ashburton to offer: (1) The line of the Columbia River from its mouth to the Snake, and thence due east to the summit of the Rockies. This would have given us about nine-fourteenths of the territory south of 49 degrees.

If he could not secure that line he was (2) authorized to renew the offer made us in 1824 and 1827 by England, of the line of 49 degrees from the summit of the Rockies to the most northeasterly branch of the Columbia, and from thence the river to the ocean, which would have given us a trifle more than four-fifths of the territory south of 49 degrees, and