Page:Portland, Oregon, its History and Builders volume 1.djvu/80

52 "While in Paris in 1786, I became acquainted with John Ledyard, of Connecticut, a man of genius, some science, and of fearless courage and enterprise. He had accompanied Captain Cook in his voyage to the Pacific, had distinguished himself on several occasions by an unrivaled intrepidity, and published an account of that voyage with details unfavorable to Cook's deportment towards the savages and lessening our regrets at his fate. Ledyard had come to Paris in the hope of forming a company to engage in the fur trade of the western coast of America. He was disappointed in this, and being out of business, and of a roaming, restless character, I suggested to him the enterprise of exploring the western part of our continent by passing through St. Petersburgh to the Pacific coast of Siberia, and procuring a passage thence in some of the Russian vessels to Nootka sound, from whence he might work his way across the continent to the United States; and I undertook to have the permission of the Empress of Russia solicited. He eagerly embraced the proposition, and Baron Grimm, special correspondent of the Empress, solicited her permission for him to pass through her dominions to the western coast of America. But this favor the Empress refused, considering the enterprise entirely chimerical. But Ledyard would not relinquish it, persuading himself that by proceeding to St. Petersburgh, he could satisfy the Empress of its practicability and obtain her permission. He went accordingly, but she being absent on a visit to some distant part of her dominions, he pursued his course across Russia to within two hundred miles of the Pacific coast, when he was overtaken by an arrest from the Empress, brought back to Portland and there dismissed."

This shows how much farther ahead in the outlook towards Oregon Jefferson was, compared with all others. He had started Ledyard to cross the American continent six years before Gray had discovered the Columbia river, and five years before MacKenzie had crossed the Rocky mountains. It is not only a matter of intense interest to go back and see the men who were racking their brains and exploiting their ideas about this Oregon of ours before anybody knew there was such a place, but it is also due from us to render just honors to those men who not only took the long look ahead, but followed up their great thoughts by practical statesmanship to secure this country to this nation, and for our habitation and use.

When Jefferson became president on March 4, 1801, he supposed that the vast territory known as Louisiana belonged to Spain. The Pope had given it to Spain. De Soto had claimed it for Spain, La Salle had claimed it for France and France had ceded all its rights to the country to Spain. And upon this presumption, Jefferson had planned to open negotiations as early as practicable after becoming president to purchase, or in some other way obtain the title to Louisiana for the United States. And he did not go about this great business in a hap-hazard way. He knew perfectly well the excited state of feeling that existed throughout the whole country west of the Alleghany mountains. Irritated by the exactions of the Spanish traders at New Orleans, and feeling their whole future depended on the conditions on which they could ship their produce to market by the great rivers, the pioneers of the west were ready to volunteer and drive the Spaniards out of the country by force of arms, just as they had been ready to follow George Rogers Clark in 1793-4 to drive out the Spaniards and turn Louisiana over to the French. Therefore, to prepare himself as president of the United States, to meet and control any emergency which might arise in this delicate and great national business, as soon as he became president he sent a secret agent to old St. Louis to find out the state of feeling among the Spanish at that frontier town. Jefferson desired to know the political sentiments of those old world pioneers at St. Louis, and especially their feelings towards the people of the United States. Trouble must come sooner or later from that foreign flag flying in the heart of the great Mississippi valley. For just as certain as George Rogers Clark with one hundred and seventy men had captured the British General Hamilton and his fort and forces