Kitabı oku: «Thirty Years' View (Vol. II of 2)», sayfa 74

"The irregular manner in which the ratification of this treaty has been sought, by consultations with individual members, before it was submitted to the Senate. Here I tread upon delicate ground; and if I am wrong, this is the time and the place to correct me. I speak in the hearing of those who must know whether I am mistaken. I have reason to believe that the treaty has been privately submitted to senators – their opinions obtained – the judgment of the body forestalled; and then sent here for the forms of ratification. [One senator said he had not been consulted.] Mr. B. in continuation: Certainly not, as the senator says so; and so of any other gentleman who will say the same. I interrogate no one. I have no right to interrogate any one. I do not pretend to say that all were consulted; that would have been unnecessary; and besides, I know I was not consulted myself; and I know many others who were not. All that I intend to say is, that I have reason to think that this treaty has been ratified out of doors! and that this is a great irregularity, and bespeaks an undue solicitude for it on the part of its authors, arising from a consciousness of its indefensible character."

The war argument was also pressed into the service of the ratification, and vehemently relied upon as one of the most cogent arguments in its favor. The treaty, or war! was the constant alternative presented, and not without effect upon all persons of gentle and temporizing spirit. Mr. Benton also exposed the folly and mischief of yielding to such a threat – declaring it to be groundless, and not to be yielded to if it was not.

"The fear of war. This Walpole argument is heavily pressed upon us, and we are constantly told that the alternatives lie between this treaty – the whole of it, just as it is – or war! This is a degrading argument, if true; and infamous, if false! and false it is: and more than that, it is as shameless as it is unfounded! What! the peace mission come to make war! It is no such thing. It comes to take advantage of our deplorable condition – to take what it pleases, and to repulse the rest. Great Britain is in no condition to go to war with us, and every child knows it. But I do not limit myself to argument, and general considerations, to disprove this war argument. I refer to the fact which stamps it with untruth. Look to the notes of Sir Charles Vaughan and Mr. Bankhead, demanding the execution of the award, and declaring that its execution would remove every impediment to the harmony of the two countries. After that, and while holding these authentic declarations in our hands, are we to be told that the peace mission requires more than the award? requires one hundred and ten miles more of boundary? requires $500,000 for Rouse's Point, which the award gave us without money? requires a naval and diplomatic alliance, which she dared not mention in the time of Jackson or Van Buren? requires the surrender of 'rebels' under the name of criminals? and puts the South and West at defiance, while conciliating the non-slaveholding States? and gives us war, if we do not consent to all this degradation, insult, and outrage? Are we to be told this? No, sir, no! There is no danger of war; but this treaty may make a war, if it is ratified. It gives up all advantages; leaves us with great questions unsettled; increases the audacity of the British; weakens and degrades us; and leaves us no alternative but war to save the Columbia, to prevent impressment, to resist search, to repel Schlosser invasions, and to avoid a San Domingo insurrection in the South, excited from London, from Canada, and from Nassau."

The mission had been heralded as one of peace – as a beneficent overture for a universal settlement of all difficulties – and as a plan to establish the two countries on a footing of friendship and cordiality, which was to leave each without a grievance, and to launch both into a career of mutual felicity. On the contrary only a few were settled, and those few the only ones which concerned Great Britain and the northern States: the rest which peculiarly concerned the South and the West, were adjourned to London – that is to say, to the Greek calends. On this point Mr. Benton said:

"We were led to believe, on the arrival of the special minister, that he came as a messenger of peace, and clothed with full powers to settle every thing; and believing this, his arrival was hailed with universal joy. But here is a disappointment – a great disappointment. On receiving the treaty and the papers which accompany it, we find that all the subjects in dispute have not been settled; that, in fact, only three out of seven are settled; and that the minister has returned to his country, leaving four of the contested subjects unadjusted. This is a disappointment; and the greater, because the papers communicated confirm the report that the minister came with full powers to settle every thing. The very first note of the American negotiator – and that in its very first sentence, confirms this belief, and leaves us to wonder how a mission that promised so much, has performed so little. Mr. Webster's first note runs thus: 'Lord Ashburton having been charged by the Queen's government with full powers to negotiate and settle all matters in discussion between the United States and England, and having on his arrival at Washington announced,' &c., &c. Here is a declaration of full power to settle every thing; and yet, after this, only part is settled, and the minister has returned home. This is unexpected, and inconsistent. It contradicts the character of the mission, balks our hopes, and frustrates our policy. As a confederacy of States, our policy is to settle every thing or nothing; and having received the minister for that purpose, this complete and universal settlement, or nothing, should have been the sine qua non of the American negotiator.

"From the message of the President which accompanies the treaty, we learn that the questions in discussion between the two countries were: 1. The Northern boundary. 2. The right of search in the African seas, and the suppression of the African slave trade. 3. The surrender of fugitives from justice. 4. The title to the Columbia River. 5. Impressment. 6. The attack on the Caroline. 7. The case of the Creole, and of other American vessels which had shared the same fate. These are the subjects (seven in number) which the President enumerates, and which he informs us occupied the attention of the negotiators. He does not say whether these were all the subjects which occupied their attention. He does not tell us whether they discussed any others. He does not say whether the British negotiator opened the question of the State debts, and their assumption or guarantee by the Federal government! or whether the American negotiator mentioned the point of the Canadian asylum for fugitive slaves (of which twelve thousand have already gone there) seduced by the honors and rewards which they receive, and by the protection which is extended to them. The message is silent upon these further subjects of difference if not of discussion, between the two countries; and, following the lead of the President, and confining ourselves (for the present) to the seven subjects of dispute named by him, and we find three of them provided for in the treaty – four of them not: and this constitutes a great objection to the treaty – an objection which is aggravated by the nature of the subjects settled, or not settled. For it so happens that, of the subjects in discussion, some were general, and affected the whole Union; others were local, and affected sections. Of these general subjects, those which Great Britain had most at heart are provided for; those which most concerned the United States are omitted: and of the three sections of the Union which had each its peculiar grievance, one section is quieted, and two are left as they were. This gives Great Britain an advantage over us as a nation: it gives one section of the Union an advantage over the two others, sectionally. This is all wrong, unjust, unwise, and impolitic. It is wrong to give a foreign power an advantage over us: it is wrong to give one section of the Union an advantage over the others. In their differences with foreign powers, the States should be kept united: their peculiar grievances should not be separately settled, so as to disunite their several complaints. This is a view of the objection which commends itself most gravely to the Senate. We are a confederacy of States, and a confederacy in which States classify themselves sectionally, and in which each section has its local feelings and its peculiar interests. We are classed in three sections; and each of these sections had a peculiar grievance against Great Britain; and here is a treaty to adjust the grievances of one, and but one, of these three sections. To all intents and purposes, we have a separate treaty – a treaty between the Northern States and Great Britain; for it is a treaty in which the North is provided for, and the South and West left out. Virtually, it is a separate treaty with a part of the States; and this forms a grave objection to it in my eyes.

"Of the nine Northern States whose territories are coterminous with the dominions of her Britannic Majesty, six of them had questions of boundary or of territory, to adjust; and all of these are adjusted. The twelve Southern slaveholding States had a question in which they were all interested – that of the protection and liberation of fugitive or criminal slaves in Canada and the West Indies: this great question finds no place in the treaty, and is put off with phrases in an arranged correspondence. The whole great West takes a deep interest in the fate of the Columbia River, and demands the withdrawal of the British from it: this large subject finds no place in the treaty, nor even in the correspondence which took place between the negotiators. The South and West must go to London with their complaints: the North has been accommodated here. The mission of peace has found its benevolence circumscribed by the metes and boundaries of the sectional divisions in the Union. The peace-treaty is for one section: for the other two sections there is no peace. The non-slaveholding States, coterminous with the British dominions are pacified and satisfied: the slaveholding and the Western States, remote from the British dominions, are to suffer and complain as heretofore. As a friend to the Union – a friend to justice – and as an inhabitant of the section which is both slaveholding and Western, I object to the treaty which makes this injurious distinction amongst the States."

The merits of the different stipulations in the treaty were fully spoken to by several senators – among others, by Mr. Benton – some extracts from whose speech will constitute some ensuing chapters.

CHAPTER CII.
BRITISH TREATY: THE PRETERMITTED SUBJECTS: MR. BENTON'S SPEECH: EXTRACTS

I. The Columbia River and its valley.

The omitted or pretermitted subjects are four: the Columbia River – impressment – the outrage on the Caroline – and the liberation of American slaves, carried by violence or misfortune into the British West India islands, or enticed into Canada. Of these, I begin with the Columbia, because equal in importance to any, and, from position, more particularly demanding my attention. The country on this great river is ours: diplomacy has endangered its title: the British have the possession and have repulsed us from the whole extent of its northern shore, and from all the fur region on both sides of the river, and up into all the valleys and gorges of the Rocky Mountains. Our citizens are beginning to go there; and the seeds of national contestation between the British and Americans are deeply and thickly sown in that quarter. From the moment that we discovered it, Great Britain has claimed this country; and for thirty years past this claim has been a point of contested and deferred diplomacy, in which every step taken has been a step for the benefit of her claim, and for the injury of ours. The germ of a war lies there; and this mission of peace should have eradicated that germ. On the contrary, it does not notice it! Neither the treaty nor the correspondence names or notices it! and if it were not for a meagre and stinted paragraph in the President's message, communicating and recommending the treaty, we should not know that the name of the Oregon had occurred to the negotiators. That paragraph is in these words:

"After sundry informal communications with the British minister upon the subject of the claims of the two countries to territory west of the Rocky Mountains, so little probability was found to exist of coming to any agreement on that subject at present, that it was not thought expedient to make it one of the subjects of formal negotiation, to be entered upon between this government and the British minister, as part of his duties under his special mission."

This is all that appears in relation to a disputed country, equal in extent to the Atlantic portion of the old thirteen United States; superior to them in climate, soil, and configuration; adjacent to the valley of the Mississippi; fronting Asia; holding the key to the North Pacific Ocean; the only country fit for colonization on the extended coast of Northwest America; a country which belongs to the United States by a title as clear as their title to the District of Columbia; which a resolve of Congress, during Mr. Monroe's administration, declared to be occluded against European colonization; which Great Britain is now colonizing; and the title to which has been a subject of diplomatic discussion for thirty years. This is all that is heard of such a country, and such a dispute, in this mission of peace, which was to settle every thing. To supply this omission, and to erect some barrier against the dangers of improvident, indifferent, ignorant, or treacherous diplomacy in future negotiations in relation to this great country, it is my purpose at present to state our title to it; and, in doing so, to expose the fallacy of the British pretensions; and thus to leave in the bosom of the Senate, and on the page of our legislative history, the faithful evidences of our right, and which shall attest our title to all succeeding generations.

(Here Mr. Benton went into a full derivation of the American title to the Columbia River and its valley, between the parallels of 42 and 49 degrees of north latitude – taking the latter boundary from the tenth article of the treaty of Utrecht, and the former from the second article of the Florida treaty of 1819, with Spain.)

The treaty of Utrecht between France and England, as all the world knows, was the treaty which put an end to the wars of Queen Anne and Louis XIV., and settled their differences in America as well as in Europe. Both England and France were at that time large territorial possessors in North America – the English holding Hudson's Bay and New Britain, beyond Canada, and her Atlantic colonies on this side of it; and France holding Canada and Louisiana. These were vast possessions, with unfixed boundaries. The tenth article of the treaty of Utrecht provided for fixing these boundaries. Under this article, British and French commissioners were appointed to define the possessions of the two nations; and by these commissioners two great points were fixed (not to speak of others), which have become landmarks in the definition of boundaries in North America, namely: the Lake of the Woods, and the 49th parallel of north latitude west of that lake. These two points were established above a century and a quarter ago, as dividing the French and British dominions in that quarter. As successful rebels, we acquired one of these points at the end of the Revolution. The treaty of Independence of 1783 gave us the Lake of the Woods as a landmark in the (then) north-west corner of the Union. As successors to the French in the ownership of Louisiana, we acquired the other; the treaty of 1803 having given us that province as France and Spain had held it; and that was, on the north, by the parallel of 49 degrees. Beginning in the Lake of the Woods, our northern Louisiana boundary followed the 49th parallel to the west. How far? is now the important question; and I repeat the words of the report of the commissioners, accepted by their respective nations, when I answer – "INDEFINITELY!" I quote the words of the report when I answer (omitting all the previous parts of the line), "to the latitude of 49 degrees north of the equator, and along that parallel indefinitely to the west." [A senator asked where all this was found.] Mr. Benton. I find it in the state papers of France and England above an hundred years ago, and in those of the United States since the acquisition of Louisiana. I quote now from Mr. Madison's instructions, when Secretary of State under Mr. Jefferson in 1804, to Mr. Monroe, then our minister in London; and given to him to fortify him in his defence of our new acquisition. The cardinal word in this report of the commissioners is the word "indefinitely;" and that word it was the object of the British to expunge, from the moment that we discovered the Columbia, and acquired Louisiana – events which were of the same era in our history, and almost contemporaneous. In the negotiations with Mr. Monroe (which ended in a treaty, rejected by Mr. Jefferson without communication to the Senate), the effort was to limit the line, and to terminate it at the Rocky Mountains; well knowing that if this line was suffered to continue indefinitely to the west, it would deprive them of all they wanted; for it would strike the ocean three degrees north of the mouth of the Columbia. Without giving us what we were entitled to by right of discoveries, and as successors to Spain, it would still take from Great Britain all that she wanted – which was the mouth of the river, its harbor, the position which commanded it, and its right bank, in the rich and timbered region of tide-water. The line on the 49th parallel would cut her off from all these advantages; and, therefore, to mutilate that line, and stop it at the Rocky Mountains, immediately became her inexorable policy. At Ghent, in 1814, the effort was renewed. The commissioners of the United States and those of Great Britain could not agree; and nothing was done. At London, in 1818, the effort was successful; and in the convention then signed in that city, the line of the treaty of Utrecht was stopped at the Rocky Mountains. The country on the Columbia was laid open for ten years to the joint occupation of the citizens and subjects of both powers; and, afterwards, by a renewed convention at London, this joint occupation was renewed indefinitely, and until one of the parties should give notice for its termination. It is under this privilege of joint occupation that Great Britain has taken exclusive possession of the right bank of the river, from its head to its mouth, and also exclusive possession of the fur trade on both sides of the river, into the heart of the Rocky Mountains. My friend and colleague [Mr. Linn] has submitted a motion to require the President to give the stipulated notice for the termination of this convention – a convention so unequal in its operation, from the inequality of title between the two parties, and from the organized power of the British in that quarter under the powerful direction of the Hudson's Bay Fur Company. Thus our title as far as latitude 49, so valid under the single guarantee of the treaty of Utrecht, without looking to other sources, has been jeoparded by this improvident convention; and the longer it stands, the worse it is for us.

A great fault of the treaty of 1818 was in admitting an organized and powerful portion of the British people to come into possession of our territories jointly with individual and disconnected possessors on our part. The Hudson's Bay Company held dominion there on the north of our territories. They were powerful in themselves, perfectly organized, protected by their government, united with it in policy, and controlling all the Indians from Canada and the Rocky Mountains out to the Pacific Ocean, and north to Baffin's Bay. This company was admitted, by the convention of 1818, to a joint possession with us of all our territories on the Columbia River. The effect was soon seen. Their joint possession immediately became exclusive on the north bank of the river. Our fur-traders were all driven from beyond the Rocky Mountains; then driven out of the mountains; more than a thousand of them killed: forts were built; a chain of posts established to communicate with Canada and Hudson's Bay; settlers introduced; a colony planted; firm possession acquired; and, at the end of the ten years when the joint possession was to cease, the intrusive possessors, protected by their government, refused to go – began to set up title – and obtained a renewal of the convention, without limit of time, and until they shall receive notice to quit. This renewed convention was made in 1828; and, instead of joint possession with us for ten years, while we should have joint possession with them of their rivers, bays, creeks and harbors, for the same time – instead of this, they have had exclusive possession of our territory, our river, our harbor, and our creeks and inlets, for above a quarter of a century. They are establishing themselves as in a permanent possession – making the fort Vancouver, at the confluence of the Multnomah and Columbia, in tide-water, the seat of their power and operations. The notice required never will be given while the present administration is in power; nor obeyed when given, unless men are in power who will protect the rights and the honor of their country. The fate of Maine has doubled the dangers of the Columbia, and nearly placed us in a position to choose between war and INFAMY, in relation to that river.

Another great fault in the convention was, in admitting a claim on the part of Great Britain to any portion of these territories. Before that convention, she stated no claim; but asked a favor – the favor of joint possession for ten years: now she sets up title. That title is backed by possession. Possession among nations, as well as among individuals, is eleven points out of twelve; and the bold policy of Great Britain well knows how to avail itself of these eleven points. The Madawaska settlement has read us a lesson on that head; and the success there must lead to still greater boldness elsewhere. The London convention of 1818 is to the Columbia, what the Ghent treaty of 1814 was to Maine; that is to say, the first false step in a game in which we furnish the whole stake, and then play for it. In Maine the game is up. The bold hand of Great Britain has clutched the stake; and nothing but the courage of our people will save the Columbia from the same catastrophe.

I proceed with more satisfaction to our title under the Nootka Sound treaty, and can state it in a few words. All the world knows the commotion which was excited in 1790 by the Nootka Sound controversy between Great Britain and Spain. It was a case in which the bullying of England and the courage of Spain were both tried to the ne plus ultra point, and in which Spanish courage gained the victory. Of course, the British writers relate the story in their own way; but the debates of the Parliament, and the terms of the treaty in which all ended, show things as they were. The British, presuming on the voyages of Captain Cook, took possession of Nootka; the Spanish Viceroy of Mexico sent a force to fetch the English away, and placed them in the fortress of Acapulco. Pitt demanded the release of his English, their restoration to Nootka, and an apology for the insult to the British Crown, in the violation of its territory and the persons of its subjects; the Spaniard refused to release, refused the restoration, and the apology, on the ground that Nootka was Spanish territory, and declared that they would fight for its possession. Then both parties prepared for war. The preparations fixed the attention of all Europe. Great Britain bullied to the point of holding the match over the touch-hole of the cannon; but the Spaniards remaining firm, she relaxed, and entered into a convention which abnegated her claim. She accepted from the Spaniards the privilege of landing and building huts on the unoccupied parts of the coast, for the purpose of fishing and trading; and while this acceptance nullified her claim, yet she took nothing under it – not even temporary use – never having built a hut, erected a tent, or commenced any sort of settlement on any part of the coast. Mr. Fox keenly reproached Mr. Pitt with the terms of this convention, being, as he showed, a limitation instead of an acquisition of rights.

Our title is clear: that of the British is null. She sets up none – that is, she states no derivation of title. There is not a paper upon the face of the earth, in which a British minister has stated a title, or even a claim. They have endeavored to obtain the country by the arts of diplomacy; but never have stated a title, and never can state one. The fur-trader, Sir Alexander McKenzie, prompted the acquisition, gave the reason for it, and never pretended a title. His own discoveries gave no title. They were subsequent to the discovery of Captain Gray, and far to the north of the Columbia. He never saw that river. He missed the head sources of it, fell upon the Tacouche Tesse, and struck the Pacific in a latitude 500 miles (by the coast) to the north of the Columbia. His subsequent discoveries were all north of that point. He was looking for a communication with the sea – for a river, a harbor, and a place for a colony – within the dominions of Great Britain; and, not finding any, he boldly recommended his government to seize the Columbia River, to hold it, and to expel the Americans from the whole country west of the Rocky Mountains. And upon these pretensions the British claim has rested, until possession has made them bold enough to exclude it from the subjects of formal negotiation between the two countries. The peace-mission refused us peace on that point. The President tells us that there is "no probability of coming to any agreement at present!" Then when can the agreement be made? If refused now, when is it to come? Never, until we show that we prefer war to ignominious peace.

This is the British title to the Columbia, and the only one that she wants for any thing. It suits her to have that river: it is her interest to have it: it strengthens her, and weakens others, for her to have it; and, therefore, have it she will. This is her title, and this her argument. Upon this title and argument, she gets a slice from Maine, and gains the mountain barrier which covers Quebec; and, upon this title and argument, she means to have the Columbia River. The events of the late war, and the application of steam power to ocean navigation, begat her title to the country between Halifax and Quebec: the suggestions of McKenzie begat her title to the Columbia. Improvident diplomacy on our part, a war countenance on her part, and this strange treaty, have given success to her pretensions in Maine: the same diplomacy, and the same countenance, have given her a foothold on the Columbia. It is for the Great West to see that no traitorous treaty shall abandon it to her. The President, in his message, says that there was no chance for any "agreement" about it at present; that it would not be made the subject of a "formal negotiation" at present; that it could not be included in the duties of the "special mission." Why so? The mission was one of peace, and to settle every thing; and why omit this pregnant question? Was this a war question, and therefore not to be settled by the peace mission? Why not come to an agreement now, if agreement is ever intended? The answer is evident. No agreement is ever intended. Contented with her possession, Great Britain wants delay, that time may ripen possession into title, and fortunate events facilitate her designs. My colleague and myself were sounded on this point: our answers forbade the belief that we would compromise or sacrifice the rights and interests of our country; and this may have been the reason why there were no "formal" negotiations in relation to it. Had we been "soft enough," there might have been an agreement to divide our country by the river, or, to refer the whole title to the decision of a friendly sovereign! We were not soft enough for that; and if such a paper, marked B, and identified with the initials of our Secretary, had been sent to the Missouri delegation, as was sent to the Maine commissioners, instead of subduing us to the purposes of Great Britain, it would have received from the whole delegation the answer due to treason, to cowardice, and to insolence.

But, it is demanded, what do we want with this country, so far off from us? I answer by asking, in my turn, what do the British want with it, who are so much further off? They want it for the fur trade; for a colony; for an outlet to the sea; for the communication across the continent; for a road to Asia; for the command of one hundred and forty thousand Indians against us; for the port and naval station which is to command the commerce and navigation of the North Pacific Ocean, and open new channels of trade with China, Japan, Polynesia, and the great East. They want it for these reasons; and we want it for the same; and because it adjoins us, and belongs to us, and should be possessed by our descendants, who will be our friends; and not by aliens, who will be our enemies.

Forty years ago, it was written by Humboldt that the valley of the Columbia invited Europeans to found a fine colony there; and, twenty years ago, the American Congress adopted a resolve, that no part of this continent was open to European colonization. The remark of Humboldt was that of a sagacious European; the resolve of Congress was the work of patriotic Americans. It remains to be seen which will prevail. The convention of 1818 has done us the mischief; it put the European power in possession: and possession with nations, still more than with individuals, is the main point in the contest. It will require the western pioneers to recover the lost ground; and they must be encouraged in the enterprise by liberal grants of lands, by military protection, and by governmental authority. It is time for the bill of my colleague to pass. The first session of the first Congress under the new census should pass it. The majority will be democratic, and the democracy will demand that great work at their hands. I put no faith in negotiation. I expect nothing but loss and shame from any negotiation in London. Our safety is in the energy of our people; in their prompt occupation of the country; and in their invincible determination to maintain their rights.