Page:Oregon Historical Quarterly volume 23.djvu/247



THE OREGON QUESTION 1818-1828 199

between the white settlers and the aborigines, a proposal full of possibilities when one comes to think about it. Suppose it had been done ! Could not Oregon be imagined today as a country with a white aristocracy and baronial class, a yellow peasantry, and an aboriginal vassalage? Nowhere is there any indication that Floyd ever con- sidered slavery in connection with the Oregon country. This is an unique feature of the question that in a period when slavery seemed to be tingeing all national affairs it is never alluded to in any of the debates, nor the mo- tions on bills. The extension of slavery is decidedly one motive that can be eliminated in trying to solve Floyd's purpose. No northern opponent charges him with it, and the southern men showed an equal reticence.

Lastly, the influences of Benton on Floyd are plainly seen in his suggestions in regard to the Chinese, and in particular his emphasis on the value and importance of Oriental trade. This was an old hobby of Benton's and one of his chief motives in pushing the entire Oregon affair. His was the plan to establish a route up the Missouri and down the Columbia so as to reach the Ori- ental markets. "I believed that Asiatic commerce might be brought into the Mississippi valley along that line, and wrote essays to support that idea. . . . Asiatic commerce had been the pursuit of all western nations from the time of the Phoenicians down to the present day . . . during all this time this commerce has been shifting its channel . . . wealth and power followed it and disappeared upon its loss." 11

When Congress reconvened the following December, Floyd lost no time in recurring to the Oregon enterprise. On the tenth he moved that a committee be appointed "to inquire into the expediency of occupying the Columbia River and the territories of the United States adjacent thereto," and of regulating the Indian trade. 12 Permis-

11 Report American Historical Association, '14, 1, 284.

12 Annals of Congress, XXXVIII, 529.