Page:Oregon Historical Quarterly vol. 6.djvu/351

Rh to hold exclusive right to this section of the new world, the busy and active brain of England was not idle. Her navigators, Cook, Meares, and Vancouver were flying her flag in the Pacific waters, and coasting upon these shores. Spain and England in 1789, the year that the Federal Constitution went into effect, and during the first year of the first term of George Washington, attempted to plant rival settlements at Nootka Sound, on the north Pacific coast, beyond Vancouver Island. The Spanish resorted to force, and captured the English ships, which hostile act invited two English fleets to witness the trial of arms. The younger Pitt was then premier of England, and diplomacy finally led to the Nootka treaty of 1790, concluded through the mediation of Mirabeau, the master spirit of France under Louis XVI. The historian records that five years later Spain withdrew from this section, abandoned her claim to everything north of forty-two degrees, then and now the south boundary of Oregon.

Russia also made claim to this coast, and at one time, by formal decree, announced her rights to the country as far south as forty-five degrees and fifty minutes. John Quincy Adams, then our Secretary of State, disputed this claim; Great .Britain protested, and in 1823 President Monroe emphasized the American protests by proclaiming the famous Monroe doctrine, the substance of which was "That the American continents, by the free and independent conditions which they have assumed and maintained, are henceforth not to be considered as subjects for colonization by any European power." In 1824 it was agreed between Russia and the United States, that this country should make no new claims north of fifty-four degrees and forty minutes, and that Russia should make none south of this famous line.

From this date the great contest for the Oregon Country of history was between England and the United States