Page:Manifest Destiny in the West.pdf/9

156 Oregon colony was not. Their six or eight thousand souls were cut off from the aid and succor of the parent country by thousands of miles and months of time. They were surrounded by savages, and only too suspicious of the feelings and intentions of their British allies. Year after year they had memorialized Congress, asking the Government to take pity on them, and give the necessary notice to Great Britain that the convention of mutual occupancy was at an end. After repeated disappointments from promises long deferred in fulfillment, in 1846 the desired notice was given, and a few months after the boundary question was settled: the United States retaining the whole of the territory south of the forty-ninth parallel, and giving up their claim to the coast lying north of that and south of the fifty-fourth parallel—thus, no doubt, averting bloodshed.

England, however, never forgave the loss of the Columbia; but seeing it inevitable, bided her time to make up that loss whenever there should occur a favorable opportunity to ignore that proudest Americanism, the "Monroe Doctrine." Nor was it long before such an opportunity seemed to present itself. We were involved in a war with Mexico, at the same time that Oregon was clamoring for a territorial government, and arms and soldiers to protect herself from Indians. The moment seemed propitious. An entering wedge had been prepared by an Irish subject of Great Britain, who was negotiating for immense grants of land in California, and bending the Mexican Government to his design by alarming their Catholic prejudices against Protestantism, and declaring to them that the Americans were on the point of forcing upon them the hated religion. Incited by such arguments, possibly the California Governor might have been induced to give away several of the most valuable districts under his authority, had not events hastened which put an end to the negotiation.

However it was that our Government had become informed of the intentions of its rival, it was informed, and just in time. Several authors have criticised very severely the course of the United States in seizing upon California as they did. It is said that early in 1845 secret instructions were sent to the commander of our naval force in the Pacific, and that the same year Captain Frémont was dispatched overland to California, ostensibly on a scientific expedition—really on a warlike one. It is recounted how Lieutenant Gillespie traveled incog. to carry other secret instructions to Frémont, who immediately turned back from his scientific pursuits, and joined his land forces with Commodore Sloat's naval forces to subjugate California.

Does any body believe that all this secrecy and "treachery" were necessary to take possession of that country, when its Governor, with his few hundred men, ran away at the first sound of war? The real explanation of the haste and the secrecy was the presence in the Pacific of a British man-of-war, the Collingwood, under the command of Sir George Seymour, with instructions, probably, to seize California the moment that war with Mexico was declared. The commander of the United States forces had exactly the same orders—to wait for the proclamation of war, that there might appear to be a sufficient excuse for the seizure. That he did not wait, but took possession of Monterey just one day in advance of the arrival in Monterey Bay of the Collingwood, shows conclusively that there was a proviso contained in his secret instructions verbally delivered by Lieutenant Gillespie, which meant that he was to wait for a declaration of war, unless he had reason to fear the British Admiral might forestall him. Landing himself a day too late, Admiral Seymour took on board his Irish confederate and