Page:Oregon Historical Quarterly vol. 19.djvu/302

 284 LESTER BURRELL SHIPPEE The time was more nearly ripe for agitation when Linn renewed the battle than it had been when Floyd left the cause, for the period between 1829 and 1840 was one in which a knowledge of the Pacific Coast was growing. To a great degree the work of Linn served to crystallize this knowledge and pseudo-knowledge into the popular demand which became one side of the most spectacular issue of the presidential cam- paign of 1844. Dr. Linn entered the Senate in December, 1833, as junior to Thomas H. Benton. The Oregon Question had been dormant since 1829 and it was not until the special session in the summer of 1837 that he made his first move in the matter, when he secured a resolution calling upon the President to furnish at an early period of the next session "any correspondence that may have taken place between this Government and for- eign powers, in relation to our territory west of the Rocky Mountains, and what, if any, portion thereof was in possession of a foreign power." 2 This call afforded one of the grounds for considerable activity in the Senate in the session of 1837-8. Missouri's interest was also manifest in the House for Harri- son, one of the Members from that State, had introduced a resolution which was even more pointed than Linn's : he wished the President to inform the House at the next session "whether any foreign power, or the subjects of any foreign power, have possession of any portion of the territory of the United States upon the Columbia River, or are in any occu- pancy of the same, and if so, in what way, by what authority, and how long such occupancy has been kept by such persons." 3 Another line leading the Twenty-fifth Congress to Oregon reached back to 1834. This was the petition of Mr. Reynolds rering efforts." The second part of the work traces his connection with the various measures in which he was interested as a Senator, and gives long quota- tions from his speeches. Nothing more than Linn himself stated before the Senate, then, can be gleaned, for Mr. Sargent explains his interest in this way (p. 195): "One of the subjects which Dr. Linn took an early, deep and lively interest in, was the exclusion of the British from Oregon, and its exclusive occu- pation by the United States. He had a high appreciation of that country, in an agricultural and commercial point of view, and being well satisfied of the sound- ness of the title of the United States, was unwilling she should be even partially dispossessed of it, or share her possession with a country having no title there whatever." a 1 6 October, Globe, V, 144- 3 Globe, V. H2.