Congress, made a report on the subject of our rights west of the Rockies.[1]
The first congressional debate on Oregon; Floyd's speech. It was many months before Floyd was able to get a hearing; but in 1822 he brought in another bill which aroused much interest in Congress and drew the attention of the country to the Oregon question. In the debate which occurred Floyd took the leading part. He was one of those men who have the power of looking beyond the present, and seeing in imagination the changes likely to occur in future years. Though he lived in Virginia, Floyd knew what was going on beyond the mountains, and was thrilled by the spectacle of America's wonderful growth, which he believed, rightly or wrongly, to be due largely to her free system of government. In the space of forty-three years, he said, Virginia's population had spread westward more than a thousand miles. He evidently believed it would not be long before Americans would reach the Rockies, and stand ready to descend into the Oregon country. This was a new thought, just beginning to take hold of the American people, and as yet quite startling to most men who, in spite of what
- ↑ This report, which is reprinted in the Quarterly of the Oregon Historical Society, VIII, 51-75, contains the first general discussion of Oregon and the Oregon Question from the American point of view. The bill for the creation of an Oregon Territory, which followed, fixed the name Oregon upon the country. Many things contained in the report cannot be accepted as impartial history, but the writer was more concerned with the future than with the past, and it certainly held the prophecy of great things.
