Page:Oregon Historical Quarterly vol. 1.djvu/240

228 ther the government nor the country was ever allowed for long at a time to forget the existence of Oregon, of the Oregon colony, or of the Oregon Question.

In the late summer of 1835, President Jackson, through certain letters, as it appears, of William N. Slacum, a paymaster in the navy, who at that time was spending some months in Alexandria, Virginia, on sick leave, became strongly of the mind that the bay of San Francisco should be in the possession of the United States. He almost immediately, on receipt of these letters, directed Mr. Forsythe, Secretary of State, to write to Anthony Butler, then in Mexico for the purpose of negotiating the purchase of Texas, enlarging his instructions so as to include the purchase of so much of the possessions of Mexico on the coast as would embrace the bay of San Francisco. A little later the same year President Jackson commissioned Slacum to visit the North Pacific Coast, directing him at the earliest opportunity after arriving in the Pacific, "to proceed to and up the Oregon, to obtain specific and authentic information in regard to the inhabitants of the country, the relative number of whites and Indians; the jurisdiction which the whites acknowledged; the sentiments entertained by all in respect to the United States and the two European powers having possessions in that region; and finally all information, political, statistical, and geographical, that might prove useful and interesting to the government.' The commission thus specifically and somewhat peremptorily given was fulfilled with promptness and energy, and, though the chief by whom the commission had been given had retired from office before Mr. Slacum 's return, the country was not deprived of the results of the investigation. In December, 1837, through a memorial presented by Mr. Slacum to congress, and by congress ordered to be published, coincident with the recurrence of the discussion