Page:Oregon Historical Quarterly vol. 6.djvu/265

Rh the development of the New World. Concurrently with the announcement that the United States would regard any attempt to control the destinies of the newly founded Spanish-American States as unfriendly, Russia was informed that we could not permit any Russian establishments on the Pacific west of the United States. This was soon followed by the renunciation by the Czar in 1824 of any territory south of the present southern boundary of Alaska, 54° 40′. Monroe's administration, whose foreign policy had largely been shaped on the broadest national lines by John Quincy Adams of Massachusetts, closed with the way cleared for the United States to extend to the Pacific north of the forty-second parallel except so far as a limit should be imposed by England's claims to a share in the territory south of 54° 40′.

The northeastern boundary at that time had remained undefined for more than a generation. It is, therefore, not strange that it did not seem practicable or necessary to settle at once the northwestern boundary, so far remote from any settled habitations. An amicable arrangement providing that the territory in dispute should be open to the citizens of both countries pending a final settlement and without prejudice to the rights of either party derived from discovery or by treaty was concluded in 1818. This "joint occupation," as it was called, was agreed upon for a period of ten years and then continued for eighteen more. It implied that the territory would ultimately be divided unless one of the two parties should relinquish everything, a most improbable outcome; or the other should endeavor to take possession of the whole by force, as the United States did later in the case of the disputed area between Texas and Mexico.

This amicable arrangement for a joint occupation of the rivers and harbors, a piece of opportunism, as to the wisdom of which opinions may differ, was the signal for