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 | History of the American States: The Oregon Question |  | | | History of American States #6
The Oregon Question
By Ralph Enos
The long border between British North America and the United States was a vexing issue from the very beginning of American history.(footnote #1) We fought one war over it and nearly fought another. With Great Britain and America settling on the 49th parallel of latitude as the border for most of the continent, this left the boundary of Maine and Oregon as the only ones in dispute.
Oregon was the most remote of America’s claimed territories. America’s claim to Oregon rested on (1) Robert Gray’s discovery of the Columbia River in 1792; (2) the Lewis and Clark overland expedition in 1804-06, and (3) John Jacob Astor’s establishing a fur trading post at the mouth of the Columbia in 1811. British claims were sounder: James Cook had explored the region in the 1770s, followed by Vancouver in 1792. Then the North West Company, which soon was absorbed by the Hudson Bay Company, established permanent fur trading settlements in the territory. At the time, the British were much more concerned about Spanish and Russian maritime interests in Oregon than they were in America’s overland threat to it. Nonetheless, the territory was so remote from British interests that in 1819 they signed a treaty with the U.S. in which they agreed to joint occupation of the territory with administration to be in the hands of the semi-independent Hudson Bay Company (HBC). This treaty was renewed in 1827.
As long as the territory remained remote from the U.S. and Great Britain, it was unlikely to be heavily populated. Beginning in about 1841, American homesteaders and other settlers began the cross-country trek to Oregon having convinced themselves that four months on the trail was easier than six months on a ship. These settlers were deftly invited by the HBC’s chief factor, John McLoughlan, to settle in the Willamette Valley south of the Columbia, which had the best farmland in the entire territory. Thus, when President Polk in 1845 proposed a settlement with Great Britain of the Oregon issue, there were many Americans south of the Columbia, and virtually none north of it.
In May of 1841, the United States Naval Exploring Expedition under command of Charles Wilkes reached the Oregon territory. Not content to explore just the Columbia River Valley, he thoroughly explored the Puget Sound region giving names to most of the geographic features unnamed by Vancouver half a century before. He had sent a ship up the Columbia but the brig Peacock was lost trying to cross the notoriously difficult Columbia bar. When Wilkes returned to Washington, DC the next year he adamantly insisted that the U.S. needed ports in Puget Sound if it were to be a Pacific power. (footnote #2)
The logic of splitting Oregon into a British northern part and an American southern part was obvious. The question was where to draw the line. Americans favored extending the boundary along the 49th parallel all the way to the Pacific. The trouble with that was that America would then control the southern part of Vancouver Island and the Straits of Juan de Fuca and Georgia, cutting off British settlements in the Fraser River delta from easy access to the sea (a situation similar to America’s plight at the turn of the 19th century when we could send goods down the Mississippi River system but its mouth was in foreign hands.) The British favored extending the 49th parallel westward to the Columbia River and then follow the course of that river to the sea. This would leave the western two-thirds of what would become Washington state and all of Puget Sound in British hands. The American claim to the region on the right bank of the Columbia was very tenuous: virtually all American settlers had opted to settle on the left bank, and other than Wilkes, American explorers had confined themselves to the Columbia River.
President Polk, who had run on a platform of “Fifty-Four Forty or Fight,” insisted on claiming all of Oregon. He was a good negotiator; when the British came back with an offer to extend the 49th parallel to the Straits of Georgia and then follow the mid channel to the Pacific through the Straits of Juan de Fuca, he readily accepted. He was preparing for a showdown with Mexico and didn’t want the distraction of a crisis with Great Britain at the same time.
In the settlement, the U.S. got Puget Sound, and Great Britain got all of Vancouver Island and an easy outlet to the sea. This settled the boundary between the U.S. and Canada once and for all. (footnote #3). This border between these sister countries—and who is more like Americans than Canadians, Eh?—has been called the longest unfortified border on earth.
As we noted, Oregon became a state in 1859. Settlement north of the Columbia was slowed by the Civil War and the general remoteness of the area. But in 1888, outgoing President Cleveland proposed the admission of six states, which were expected to split their new senators evenly between republicans and democrats. The package of six new states was the largest group admitted since the original thirteen in 1787-1790. The new states were North Dakota (#39), South Dakota (#40), Montana (#41), and Washington (#42) admitted in 1889; and Idaho (#43) and Wyoming (#44) in 1890. The Dakotas, and most of Montana and Wyoming had been acquired as part of the Louisiana Purchase; Washington and Idaho had been part of the Oregon territory.
Footnotes:
1 Although the region north of the U.S. was popularly called Canada from its earliest settlement, Canada as we know it today didn’t come into existence until 1867 when the British parliament cobbled together a number of widely disparate territories into the Dominion of Canada. This nation did not gain its tenth province until 1949 when Newfoundland was added to the nation. Citizens of British Columbia, which became part of Canada in 1871, wondered what they had in common with the territories to the east from which they were cut off by the Rocky Mountains. The railroad didn’t reach B.C.’s populous Pacific coastal region until 1885. It is a fact that the several Canadian provinces— with the exception of Quebec—are aligned politically east and west, but culturally, economically, and socially they have much more in common with the American states immediately to their south. Thus B.C. relates to Washington, Oregon and Alaska, Alberta with Idaho and Montana, Saskatchewan and Manitoba with the Dakotas and Minnesota, Ontario with Michigan, Ohio, and New York, and the Maritime provinces with the New England states.
2 Remember Mexico still controlled California to the 42nd parallel. In 1842 it was not clear that the U.S. would own anything on the Pacific but a part of Oregon. Oregon was the generic name for the territory between Russian Alaska and Mexican California, and comprised roughly today’s states of Washington, Oregon, Idaho, and slices of Wyoming and Montana, and the entire province of British Columbia.
3. Except for the notorious “pig war” between locals in the San Juan Islands, which was arbitrated by the German emperor in favor of the United States in 1871.
Next: America Becomes Fifty states—#7 and last in the series.
(1,202 words)
Submitted by Ralph Enos on September 17 2004 - 01:10:09
Posted by Tedd_C on February 23 2005 - 10:40:00 - 0 Comments |
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