however, the British Foreign Secretary, found reasons of policy for conceding the right of the United States to be placed in possession of Astoria, under the treaty of Ghent, although he refused to concede the American right to the territory. He therefore offered to restore the post, and suggested that the question of title to the territory, together with other differences between the two countries, be submitted to arbitration.
Astoria formally restored. John Quincy Adams was quick to accept the offer of the restoration of Astoria, which was turned over by the Northwest Company to Mr. J. B. Prevost on the 6th of October, 1818. But Mr. Adams refused the offer of arbitration, believing that direct negotiation was a surer way of gaining American rights.
The joint occupation treaty. Two weeks after the formal restoration of Astoria, on October 20, 1818, representatives of the two nations signed at London a treaty in which the Oregon Question was mentioned but not settled. The questions at issue, besides the Columbia territory question, were the rights of Great Britain to navigate the Mississippi, and the northern boundary of Louisiana from the Lake of the Woods to the crest of the Rockies. Great Britain at last abandoned her claim to the Mississippi, and was therefore willing to permit the boundary to be extended westward on the forty-ninth parallel from the Lake of the Woods to the Rockies. But she refused to extend that line of boundary from the Rockies to the sea, as the United States suggested, which would have settled the Oregon
