Page:History vs. the Whitman saved Oregon story.djvu/69

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Let us turn now to official documents showing the position of our Government as to Oregon. In 1826, eight years before any missionary went to Oregon, and ten years before Whitman established his Mission there, President J. Q. Adams instructed Henry Clay, Secretary of State, to direct Gallatin, our Minister at London, to notify the British Government that "49 degrees was our ultimatum for the northern boundary of Oregon," and with slight variations in phraseology these instructions were sent in three letters, dated June 19, June 23, and August 9, 1826, and that of June 23 is sufficient of itself to wipe away all the ridiculous assertions made about our Government having been misled by English misrepresentation about the worthlessness of Oregon. It read as follows: "Mr. Crook's information adds but little to what was previously possessed. If the land on the Northwest Coast, between the mouth of the Columbia River and the parallel of 49 degrees be bad, and therefore we should lose but little in relinquishing it, the same consideration will apply to the British. The President cannot consent to vary the line proposed in your instructions." (Cf. for these three letters, Clay to Gallatin Am. State Papers For. Relations, Vol. VI., Doc. 458.) No Administration ever proposed to recede from this "ultimatum" of 49 degrees, and in 1838, the Senate by unanimous resolution requested the War Department to prepare a map of Oregon, which was accordingly done by the Topographical Bureau of the War Department.

This map represented 49 degrees to the Pacific as the northern boundary of Oregon, and out in the Pacific Ocean, where no rivers or mountain ranges would obscure the printing or divert attention from it, appeared, in plain type, the following: "The prolongation of the 49th parallel from the Rocky Mountains to the Pacific has been assumed as the northern boundary of the United States possessions on the Northwest Coast, in consequence of the following extract from the Hon. H. Clay's letter to Mr. Gallatin, dated June 19, 1826 (See Doc, 199, 29th Cong., 1st Sess., H. of R.): 'You are authorized to propose the annulment of the third article of the Convention of 1818, and the extension of the line on the parallel of 49 degrees, from the Eastern slope of the Rocky Mountains, where it now terminates to the Pacific Ocean, as the permanent boundary between the two powers in that quarter. This is our ultimatum and you may so announce it.'" This "Ultimatum Map" was used in the report of the Com. on Oregon, of which Senator