Page:Oregon Historical Quarterly vol. 2.djvu/433

Rh it as ours to exploit in the fur trade and to hold in trust as a home for the adventurous and for the fugitives from oppression, who might here rear institutions of freedom and independence. On November 19, 1813, Jefferson wrote to John Jacob Astor as follows:

"I learn with great pleasure the progress you have made towards an establishment on the Columbia River. I view it as the germ of a great, free, and independent empire on that side of our continent, and that liberty and self-government, spreading from that as well as this side, will insure their complete establishment over the whole. It must be still more gratifying to yourself to foresee that your name will be handed down with that of Columbus and Raleigh, as the father of the establishment and founder of such an empire."

Hall J. Kelley, who so persistently for twenty years, from 1815 on, advocated the occupation of Oregon "by an enlightened people," thus spoke of the settlement he proposed to make in 1832:

"From the plenitude of its own resources it will soon be enabled to sustain its own operations, and will hasten on to its own majesty, to a proud rank on the earth."

The provisions pertaining to this region in our treaty with Spain in 1819, and with Russia in 1824, and in the declaration of the Monroe doctrine, were inspired by the desire to debar despotism rather than by a conscious purpose to incorporate Oregon within our national jurisdiction. In the discussions of the Oregon question in congress some declaimed against holding it for any purpose. Congress was slow in extending our laws over the region, even after a considerable body of our people had gone thither and were pleading for an organization under the national aegis.

These first settlers demonstrated what should be the