Thirty Years' View (Vol. I of 2). Benton Thomas Hart

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      "Mr. Benton, in reply to Mr. Dickerson, said that he had not intended to speak to this bill. Always unwilling to trespass upon the time and patience of the Senate, he was particularly so at this moment, when the session was drawing to a close, and a hundred bills upon the table were each demanding attention. The occupation of the Columbia River was a subject which had engaged the deliberations of Congress for four years past, and the minds of gentlemen might be supposed to be made up upon it. Resting upon this belief, Mr. B., as reporter of the bill, had limited himself to the duty of watching its progress, and of holding himself in readiness to answer any inquiries which might be put. Inquiries he certainly expected; but a general assault, at this late stage of the session, upon the principle, the policy, and the details of the bill, had not been anticipated. Such an assault had, however, been made by the senator from New Jersey (Mr. D.), and Mr. B. would be unfaithful to his duty if he did not repel it. In discharging this duty, he would lose no time in going over the gentleman's calculations about the expense of getting a member of Congress from the Oregon to the Potomac; nor would he solve his difficulties about the shortest and best route – whether Cape Horn should be doubled, a new route explored under the north pole, or mountains climbed, whose aspiring summits present twelve feet of defying snow to the burning rays of a July sun. Mr. B. looked upon these calculations and problems as so many dashes of the gentleman's wit, and admitted that wit was an excellent article in debate, equally convenient for embellishing an argument, and concealing the want of one. For which of these purposes the senator from New Jersey had amused the Senate with the wit in question, it was not for Mr. B. to say, nor should he undertake to disturb him in the quiet enjoyment of the honor which he had won thereby, and would proceed directly to speak to the merits of the bill.

      "It is now, Mr. President, continued Mr. B., precisely two and twenty years since a contest for the Columbia has been going on between the United States and Great Britain. The contest originated with the discovery of the river itself. The moment that we discovered it she claimed it; and without a color of title in her hand, she has labored ever since to overreach us in the arts of negotiation, or to bully us out of our discovery by menaces of war.

      "In the year 1790, a citizen of the United States, Capt. Gray, of Boston, discovered the Columbia at its entrance into the sea; and in 1803, Lewis and Clarke were sent by the government of the United States to complete the discovery of the whole river, from its source downwards, and to take formal possession in the name of their government. In 1793 Sir Alexander McKenzie had been sent from Canada by the British Government to effect the same object; but he missed the sources of the river, fell upon the Tacoutche Tesse, and struck the Pacific about five hundred miles to the north of the mouth of the Columbia.

      "In 1803, the United States acquired Louisiana, and with it an open question of boundaries for that vast province. On the side of Mexico and Florida this question was to be settled with the King of Spain; on the north and northwest, with the King of Great Britain. It happened in the very time that we were signing a treaty in Paris for the acquisition of Louisiana, that we were signing another in London for the adjustment of the boundary line between the northwest possessions of the United States and the King of Great Britain. The negotiators of each were ignorant of what the others had done; and on remitting the two treaties to the Senate of the United States for ratification, that for the purchase of Louisiana was ratified without restriction; the other, with the exception of the fifth article. It was this article which adjusted the boundary line between the United States and Great Britain, from the Lake of the Woods to the head of the Mississippi; and the Senate refused to ratify it, because, by possibility, it might jeopard the northern boundary of Louisiana. The treaty was sent back to London, the fifth article expunged; and the British Government, acting then as upon a late occasion, rejected the whole treaty, when it failed in securing the precise advantage of which it was in search.

      "In the year 1807, another treaty was negotiated between the United States and Great Britain. The negotiators on both sides were then possessed of the fact that Louisiana belonged to the United States, and that her boundaries to the north and west were undefined. The settlement of this boundary was a point in the negotiation, and continued efforts were made by the British plenipotentiaries to overreach the Americans, with respect to the country west of the Rocky Mountains. Without presenting any claim, they endeavored to 'leave a nest egg for future pretensions in that quarter.' (State Papers, 1822-3.) Finally, an article was agreed to. The forty-ninth degree of north latitude was to be followed west, as far as the territories of the two countries extended in that direction, with a proviso against its application to the country west of the Rocky Mountains. This treaty shared the fate of that of 1803. It was never ratified. For causes unconnected with the questions of boundary, it was rejected by Mr. Jefferson without a reference to the Senate.

      "At Ghent, in 1814, the attempts of 1803 and 1807 were renewed. The British plenipotentiaries offered articles upon the subject of the boundary, and of the northwest coast, of the same character with those previously offered; but nothing could be agreed upon, and nothing upon the subject was inserted in the treaty signed at that place.

      "At London, in 1818, the negotiations upon this point were renewed; and the British Government, for the first time, uncovered the ground upon which its pretensions rested. Its plenipotentiaries, Mr. Robinson and Mr. Goulbourn, asserted (to give them the benefit of their own words, as reported by Messrs. Gallatin and Rush) 'That former voyages, and principally that of Captain Cook, gave to Great Britain the rights derived from discovery; and they alluded to purchases from the natives south of the river Columbia, which they alleged to have been made prior to the American Revolution. They did not make any formal proposition for a boundary, but intimated that the river itself was the most convenient that could be adopted, and that they would not agree to any which did not give them the harbor at the mouth of the river in common with the United States.'" —Letter from Messrs. Gallatin and Rush, October 20th, 1820.

      To this the American plenipotentiaries answered, in a way better calculated to encourage than to repulse the groundless pretensions of Great Britain. 'We did not assert (continue these gentlemen in the same letter), we did not assert that the United States had a perfect right to that country, but insisted that their claim was at least good against Great Britain. We did not know with precision what value our government set on the country to the westward of these mountains; but we were not authorized to enter into any agreement which should be tantamount to an abandonment of the claim to it. It was at last agreed, but, as we thought, with some reluctance on the part of the British plenipotentiaries, that the country on the northwest coast, claimed by either party, should, without prejudice to the claims of either, and for a limited time, be opened for the purposes of trade to the inhabitants of both countries.'

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