Whitman's ride through savage lands, with sketches of Indian life/Chapter 7
CHAPTER VII
IT is no pleasure for an American to call in question and criticise the wisdom and statesmanship of the men of the first half of the nineteenth century. But history is made of stubborn facts.
From 1792, the time of discovery of the Columbia River, up to 1845, the United States government never, by an official act in any way aided Oregon, or attempted to control it. Time and time again some statesman in Congress offered a resolution, or framed an act looking to that end, and upon several occasions one branch of Congress permitted the act to pass, simply to avoid discussion, knowing that it would fall dead in the other house. Thus, year by year our statesmen went on such record, as for their credit and wisdom it would be well if it could be obliterated from the records. They were men, brave and true; they had guided the nation to an honorable place among the nations of the earth, but they were, after all, willing to stand still, and let well enough alone. They regarded their territory as already vaster and larger than would ever be peopled. The readers can best understand the canny sentiment of the period by a few quotations from speeches made in Congress from time to time when the Oregon question was brought before them. Senator Winthrop of Massachusetts, in one of his great speeches, said:
"What do we want with Oregon? We will not need elbow room for a thousand years."
Another senator, second to none in influence, Benton of Missouri, in a speech, while in Congress in 1825, said:
"The ridge of the Rocky Mountains may be named as a convenient, natural, and everlasting boundary. Along this ridge the western limits of the Republic should be drawn, and the statue of the fabled god Terminus should be erected upon its highest peak, never to be thrown down."
In justice to Benton, we may observe he later on was convinced of the unwisdom of the sentiment, and became, with his co-worker, Senator Linn of Missouri, an ardent friend of Oregon. But his colleague, Senator Winthrop of Massachusetts, as late as 1846, when the Oregon treaty was before the Senate, and when the question had reached almost a war stage, repeated the words of Benton's speech of 1825, and commended it for its wisdom and statesmanship.
General Jackson, who was a power in the nation's counsels in that day, in a letter to President Monroe, concisely stated his opinion in these words:
"It should be our policy to concentrate our population, and confine our frontier to proper limits, until our country in those limits is filled with a dense population. It is denseness of population that gives strength and security to our frontier."
That was a diplomatic and conservative opinion, which doubtless reflected the sentiment of the multitude. The Calhouns, the Websters, the Daytons, and a host of others were more pronounced, and less diplomatic. They pointedly hated the very name of Oregon, and did not propose to endanger the nation's safety or defile its garments by making it a part of the Union.
To all that class, and I shall mention but few of them in illustration, Oregon was an aversion. The great Webster said:
Senator McDuffie of South Carolina, was fiery with his oratory, and can easily be understood. He said in one of his several speeches: "Oregon is a vast worthless area, a region of savages, wild beasts, deserts of shifting sands, cactus, and prairie dogs. What can we ever hope to do with a coast of three thousand miles, rock bound, cheerless, and not a harbor on it. What use have we for such a country?"
"The whole of Oregon is not worth a pinch of snuff."
Again he said:
"As I understand it, there are seven hundred miles this side of the Rocky Mountains uninhabitable, where rain never falls, mountains wholly impassable except through gaps. What are you going to do in such a case? Can you apply steam? Have you estimated the cost of a railroad to the mouth of the Columbia? The wealth of the Indies would not build it. I wish the Rocky Mountains were an impassable barrier. If there was an embankment five feet high to be removed, I would not vote five dollars to remove it, and encourage our people to go there."
That speech was delivered in Congress only a few months before Whitman's memorable ride to save Oregon. Senator Dayton of New Jersey was marked as an able man, and yet his knowledge of Oregon was as limited as that of Webster, Winthrop, or McDuffie. In one of his speeches he called "Oregon a Sahara, except along the little streams and bottom lands!"
We have in modern times had some eloquent opponents to expansion, but they were "childlike and bland" when compared with the old statesmen of the first half of the nineteenth century, who easily saw ruin to the country by acknowledging practical ownership of that distant territory.
The public press was not behindhand with statesmen in ridiculing Oregon. The Louisville Journal and the National Intelligencer, then the two most influential newspapers in the land, were bitter. The Journal wrote, and the Intelligencer copied and approved:
"Of all the countries upon the face of the earth, Oregon is the one least favored by heaven. It is the riddlings of creation. It is almost as barren as Sahara, and quite as unhealthy as the Campana of Italy. Russia has her Siberia, and England her Botany Bay, and if the United States should ever need a country to which to banish her rogues and scoundrels, the utility of such a region as Oregon would be demonstrated. Until then, we are perfectly willing to leave this magnificent country to the Indians and trappers and buffalo-hunters that roam over its sand banks."
One passing over that beautiful and fertile land, after only half a century and ten years have passed, can easily conceive how dense was the ignorance of the common people upon the subject, when a man, eminent in letters, and the wisest journalist of his day, George D. Prentice, would give expression to such sentiments.
The English press if possible was even more pronounced, and used every argument to discourage emigration. The Hudson Bay Fur Company was owned and controlled by the titled nobility of England. It had made every owner rich by its wealth of furs. It was in full control of all the territory by the consent of the United States, and only desired "to be let alone" and in peace to enjoy the monopoly.
The London Examiner, in 1842, just when the United States was waking from its lethargy, wrote: 
"Ignorant Americans are disposed to quarrel over a country, the whole of which in dispute not being worth, to either party, twenty thousand pounds."
About the same time the Edinburgh Review wrote:
"Only a small portion of the land is capable of cultivation. It is a case where the American people have been misled, as to soil and climate. In a few years all that gave life to the country, both the hunter and his prey, will be extinct, and their places supplied by a thin half-breed population, scattered along the fertile valleys, who will gradually degenerate into a barbarism far more offensive than backwoodsmen."
In view of the utterances of the American press and statesmen, we remain silent in any criticism of England. It was acting no dishonorable part in Oregon. They were simply using to their great profit a vast territory the United States owned, but did not want to be troubled with. They, it is true, knew more of its worth than did Americans, but as far as the Hudson Bay people were concerned, they did not covet immigration, even of their own kind, only enough to hold the balance of power, and keep themselves in readiness to organize the territory, and retain it under terms of the treaty of 1818. They had great interests at stake.
Modern writers have asserted over and over again that "the United States was never in any danger of losing Oregon, and needed no Whitman and his missionaries to save it!" But they cannot do away with the record which I have only tersely recited.
A volume could be written, along the same line, to prove the utter lack of interest in that country. But if statesmen, in Congress and out, and the press had been silent, the single official act of the government, in signing the treaty of 1818, giving entire control of the land to England (for the Hudson Bay Company represented England), would tell the whole story of the neglect of Oregon. When ever before or since has the United States made such a deal, giving by solemn treaty, a country thirty times as large as Massachusetts, for a full twenty years and more, without a dollar of compensation, to a great foreign nation, and unresistingly seen American traders driven out or starved out of the entire country? Those making the charge of "no danger of losing Oregon by the United States" would do well to explain this one act, which was official, even if they make light of the utterances of the men who refused, for more than fifty years, to legislate by a single act for Oregon. It is true the treaty said:
"It should not be to the prejudice of either of the high contracting parties, the only object being to prevent disputes and differences among themselves!"
Who does not see and acknowledge that the treaty was a virtual acknowledgment of England's ownership by "discovery" as claimed at that time? These modern critics find no flaw in the title of the United States, they simply shout "no danger" for no other conceivable purpose than to attempt to dishonor and disparage the heroic work of the missionaries and pioneers of early Oregon, in which they have succeeded only too well. They were poor men, who made no claim for honors. The leading, heroic actor made no demands for his services, neither money nor official recognition. Our historians, until modern justice cried out in shame, have sought to bolster up the statesmen, lawmakers and molders of public opinion of that day, only giving sneers to a man who sacrificed ease, comfort, home and life to patriotic Christian duty.