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CHAPTER XIV.

OREGON BEFORE CONGRESS.

1820–1846.

Oregon's Early Champion—Irrepressible Destiny—Crude Ideas of the Country—Expediency of Occupying the Columbia—Tortuous Course of Floyd's Bill—The Russian Ukase—Baylies, Tucker, Colden, Mallary, Wood, Walker, Breckenridge, Buchanan, Dickerson, Benton, and Others Express their Views—End of the First Epoch of Legislation—Linn, Clay, Calhoun, Pierce, Cushing, and Pendleton, of the Second Epoch—Linn's Bill—Popular Feeling—Petitions for the Occupation of Oregon—The Question of Slavery.

I have shown how, step by step, without the aid, of congress, a hundred Americans established a government in Oregon, and while professing allegiance to the United States, were in fact independent. But congress was not indifferent to the movement; and whatever opinion in their isolation the colonists may have held, the archives of the national legislature contain the proofs of a watchful care over the United States claim to the Oregon Territory, and a determination not to relinquish it to any foreign power; the only doubt being as to the expediency of pressing that claim while other matters of immediate importance to the government and the commerce of the country were pending. Before proceeding further with the history of the Oregon colony, a brief review of the action of congress will tend to make clear the mutual action of the national representatives and the people in promoting the settlement of the disputed territory on the Pacific coast. It is not to be supposed that at the period of the convention of 1818, or