Page:Oregon Historical Quarterly volume 23.djvu/248



200 VERNE BLUE

sion was asked to report by bill or otherwise. The mo- tion carried, and Floyd, Baylies and Scott were made the committee.

On January 18, 1822, the committee through Floyd made its report, which it accompanied by a bill. 13 This was read twice and reported to the Committee of the Whole. This act had been prefaced by a resolution on December 17, 1821, 14 which requested the Secretary of the Navy to report on the expense of examining the harbors belonging to the United States on the Pacific Coast ; also on the expense of transporting artillery to the mouth of the Columbia. The resolution was not adopted until the following day, when he reminds the House that the artillery could be shipped to the west coast as ballast, thereby saving expense. The resolution was adopted and with this encouragement the committee must have felt justified in presenting the bill they did a month later.

Thus in a single year, as Bourne notes, Floyd's terri- torial ambitions had spread from a simple settlement in the valley of the Columbia to "territory adjacent." Whether this was a conscious and cautious meditated progression, or whether Floyd's designs actually grew during the year as he thought upon them, it is difficult to say. In other words, it is a question whether he had or had not laid with Benton definite plans toward which he moved as soon as he had brought public opinion up to his previous position, or whether it was his own natural enthusiasm which led him to an expansion of the original design. Nor is it a matter of great im- portance. Certain things do point to the second solu- tion, as affected by other events.

More disturbing than the ever-present English rivalry was the imperial Russian ukase issued earlier in 1821. It would seem that Alexander I, alarmed at Floyd's re- port and bill in January, had decided to forestall any

13 Ibid., p. 774.

14 Ibid., p. 553.