the 30th of August Mr. Buchanan, after reviewing the controversy at length and citing the language just quoted from Mr. Pakenham's note, withdrew the proposition which the latter had repulsed. Mr. Polk in his annual message to Congress on the 2d of the following December recommended that the notice required by the treaty of 1827 for the termination of the joint occupation be given, after which it would be necessary to determine whether "the national rights in Oregon must either be abandoned or firmly maintained. That they cannot be abandoned," he said, "without a sacrifice of both national honor and interest, is too clear to admit of doubt."1 Attitude of Great The course of Mr. Pakenham in rejecting, without reference, the proposal of Mr. Buchanan was not approved by the British Government. Mr. Pakenham endeavored to have the proposal restored, but without success. The President refused to renew the offer, determining after two Cabinet councils that it was for the British Government to decide what further steps, if any, they would take in the negotiation. In an interview on the 27th of December 1845 Mr. Pakenham, after urging again a renewal of the offer of the forty-ninth parallel, handed Mr. Buchanan a note in which it was stated that his government had instructed him "again to represent in pressing terms, to the Government of the United States, the expediency of referring the whole question of an equitable division of the territory to the arbitration of some friendly sovereign or state." In conversation Mr. Pakenham suggested as arbitrator the Republic of Switzerland or the Government of Hamburg or Bremen. "I told him," said Mr. Buchanan, "that whilst my own inclinations were strongly against arbitration, if I were compelled to select an arbitrator it would be the Pope. That both nations were heretics, and the Pope would be impartial. He (Mr. Pakenham) perceived, however, that I was not in earnest, and suggested that the reference might be made to commissioners from both countries. I told him I thought it was vain to think of arbitration; because, even if the President were agreed to it, which I felt pretty certain he was not, no such treaty could pass the Senate." 3 On the 3d of January 1846 Mr. Buchanan formally declined the British proposal on the ground that it 'S. Ex. Doc. 1, 29 Cong. 1 sess. 13. assumed that the title of Great Britain to a portion of the territory was valid, and thus took for granted "the very question in dispute." Mr. Pakenham then proposed to refer the question of title in either of the two powers to the whole of the territory; but this proposition also Mr. Buchanan declined.' On the 26th of February 1846 Mr. Buch Mr. McLane's Nego- anan wrote to Mr. McLane, who was specially tiations. charged with the discussion of the question in London, that the fact was not "to be disguised that, from the speeches and proceedings in the Senate, it is probable that a proposition to adjust the Oregon question on the parallel of 49° would receive their favorable consideration.”2 On the 18th of May Mr. McLane reported that he had had with the Earl of Aberdeen "a full and free conversation," and that instructions would be sent out to Mr. Pakenham by the steamer of the following day to submit "a new and further proposition for a partition of the territory in dispute." "The proposition," said Mr. McLane, "most probably will offer substantially-First. To divide the territory by the extension of the line on the parallel of forty-nine to the sea-that is to say, to the arm of the sea called Birch's Bay; thence by the Canal de Haro and Straits of Fuca to the ocean, and confirming to the United States-what indeed they would possess without any special confirmation-the right freely to use and navigate the strait throughout its extent. Second. To secure to the British subjects in the region north of the Columbia and south of the forty-ninth parallel, a perpetual title to all their lands and stations of which they may be in actual occupation; * Lastly. The proposition will demand for the Hudson's Bay Company the right of freely navigating the Columbia River.”3 Termination of Joint On the 27th of April the President approved a joint resolution by which he was authorized "at his discretion" to give the requisite notice of an intention to terminate the joint occupation under the treaty of 1827. The resolution was first adopted in the House by a vote of 154 to 54. In the Senate it was amended, on motion of Mr. Reverdy Johnson, by the insertion of a preamble, in which it was recited that the authority to give notice was conferred 1 Webster's Works, II. 324. 2 Papers relating to the Treaty of Washington, V. 47. on the President with a view that the attention of the governments of the two countries might be "the more earnestly directed to the adoption of all proper measures for a speedy and amicable adjustment" of their "differences and disputes." 1 Notice of abrogration of the treaty of 1827 was communicated by Mr. McLane to Lord Aberdeen on May 22, 1846.2 On the 6th of June 1846 Mr. Pakenham preThe Oregon Treaty. sented to Mr. Buchanan a draft of a treaty. This draft the President, before authorizing the Secretary of State to sign it, took the unusual course of submitting to the Senate. The Senate, after three days' deliberation, by a vote of 37 to 12 advised that the proposal of the British Government be accepted, and on the 15th of June the treaty was signed without the addition or alteration of a word.3 After its signature it was again submitted to the Senate, which gave its advice and consent to the exchange of the ratifications by a vote of 41 to 14.4 Views as to Water In a private and confidential letter to Mr. McLane on the 6th of June 1846, the day the draft of the treaty was presented by Mr. Pakenham, Mr. Buchanan said: "The proviso of the first article. would seem to render it questionable whether both parties would have the right to navigate the Strait of Fuca, as an arm of the sea, north of the parallel of 49°; neither does it provide that the line shall pass through the Canal de Arro, as stated in your despatch. This would probably be the fair construction." In a letter to Mr. John Randolph Clay on Saturday, 19 Stats. at L. 109. 2 Br. and For. State Papers, LVI. 1406-1410. 3 For. Rel. 1873, Part 3, p. 310. 4 Curtis's Life of Buchanan, I. 560; Benton's Thirty Years' View, II. Chap. CLIX. 673. Mr. Webster, in a speech at a public dinner in Philadelphia, December 2, 1846, said: "Now, gentlemen, the remarkable characteristic of the settlement of this Oregon question by treaty is this. In the general operation of government, treaties are negotiated by the President and ratified by the Senate; but here is the reverse,-here is a treaty negotiated by the Senate, and only agreed to by the President." (Webster's Works, II. 322.) The debates in Congress on the questions connected with the treaty may be found in the Congressional Globe and Appendix for the first session of the Twenty-ninth Congress. On the 11th of May 1846 President Polk sent his special message to Congress, asking for the recognition of a state of war with Mexico, and on the following day an act was passed declaring that war existed. Curtis's Life of Buchanan, I. 559-560. the 13th of June, Mr. Buchanan, referring to the fact that the treaty would be signed on the following Monday, said: "The terms are, an extension of the 49th parallel of latitude to the middle of the channel which separates the continent from Vancouver's Island, thence along the middle of this channel and the Strait of Fuca, so as to surrender the whole of that Island to Great Britain."1 Mr. Benton, in a speech in the Senate in advocacy of the ratification of the treaty, said: "The line follows the parallel of forty-nine degrees to the sea, with a slight deflection through the Straits of Fuca to avoid cutting the south end of Vancouver's Island. When the line reaches the channel which separates Vancouver's Island from the continent it proceeds to the middle of the channel, and thence turning south through the channel de Haro (wrongfully written Arro on the maps) to the Straits of Fuca; and then west through the middle of that strait to the sea. This is a fair partition of these waters, and gives us everything that we want, namely, all the waters of Puget Sound, Hood's Canal, Admiralty Inlet, Bellingham Bay, Birch Bay, and with them the cluster of islands, probably of no value, between De Haro's Channel and the continent." We have already quoted the language used by Mr. McLane in describing, in his dis patch of the 18th of May, the proposition Lord Aberdeen "most probably" would make. In his instructions of the same day to Mr. Pakenham with which the draft of the treaty was sent out, Lord Aberdeen described the line as running from the seacoast in a southerly direction through the centre of King George's Sound and the Straits of Fuca to the Oceanthus giving to Great Britain the whole of Vancouver's Island and its harbors." 193 On June 29, 1846, in the House of Commons, Sir Robert Peel, in tendering the resignation of his ministry, described the British offer as follows: "That which we proposed is the continuation of the forty-ninth parallel of latitude till it strikes the Straits of Fuca; that that parallel should not be continued as a boundary across Vancouver's Island, thus depriving us of a part of Vancouver's Island; but that the middle of the channel shall be the future boundary, thus leaving us in possession of the whole of Vancouver's Island, 1 Curtis's Life of Buchanan, I. 561. with equal right to navigation of the Stra.is." pears that while the language of the treaty was, as Mr. Engl anan admitted, capable of more than one eastra five, the object of the contracting parties in deflecting the bandat southward from its course along the forty-intu partiel was to give the whole of Vancouver's Island to Great Britai On October 19, 1846. Mr. By charg Doubt Raised as to d'affaires ad interim of the United States at Boundary. London, informed Mr. Buchanan that it Lal recently come to his knowledge, through channels not directly official, yet entitled to implicit reliance, that certain Beltsh subjects were contemplating the founding of a settlement on Whidby's Island, one of the archipelago sonth of the fortyninth parallel, and that the government, which had been led to expect a formal application for its sanction of such settle ment, had been thrown into doubt whether, according to the boundary described in the recent treaty, that island would fall within British or American jurisdiction. He thought the British Government would deeply regret the occurrence of any difficulty in tracing the channel. On the 3d of November George Bancroft. Bancroft-Palmerston who had become minister of the United States Correspondence. at London, addressed to his government a request for a traced copy, which he had caused to be made while in the Navy Department, of Wilkes's chart of the Straits of Haro. It had, he said, been intimated to him that questions might arise with regard to the islands east of that strait: and he asked authority to meet any such claim at the threshold by the assertion of the central channel of the Straits of Haro as the main channel intended by the treaty. He said he was well informed that some of the islands were of value. On the 28th of December Mr. Buchanan sent him the chart in question, and, calling attention to Mr. McLane's conversation with Lord Aberdeen, said it was not probable that a claim • to any island lying to the eastward of the Canal de Arro“ would be seriously preferred by the British Government. On the 29th of March 1847 Mr. Bancroft reported that his attention had again been called to the probable wishes of the Hudson's Bay Company to get some of the islands properly belonging to the United States. The ministry, he believed. had no such design. For. Rel. 1873, part 3, p. 309. |