EMIGRATION INTO OREGON

By Thomas H. Benton.

THE Oregon Question had occupied much of the attention of Congress since 1820, and when Russia agreed to make no settlements south of 54 40' the idea gained ground that this was the proper northern boundary. Emigration to the Oregon country had begun in 1832; the Methodists founded a mission under Jason Lee in 1834, and the Presbyterians under Marcus Whitman in 1836. By 1843-4 the American population numbered many thousands more than the British, who were limited to Hudson Bay Company trappers, and the boundary dispute becoming acute, the cry "Fifty-four forty, or fight," was raised. It was finally agreed that the boundary should be 49 to the channel between Vancouver and the mainland, thence down the middle of this channel, through the Straits of San Juan de Fuca to the sea. The rush of American settlers described by Benton, in his "Thirty Years' View," as saving Oregon to the United States took place at this period.

THE great event of carrying the Anglo-Saxon race to the shore of the Pacific Ocean, and planting that race firmly on that sea, took place at this time, beginning in 1842, and largely increasing in 1843. It was not an act of the Government, leading the people and protecting them; but, like all the other great emigrations and settlements of that race on our continent, it was the act of the people, going forward without government aid or countenance, establishing their possession, and compelling the government to follow with its shield, and spread it over them. So far as the action of the Government was concerned, it operated to endanger our title to the Columbia, to prevent emigration, and to incur the loss of the country.

The title to the country being endangered by the acts of the Government, the saving of it devolved upon the people and they saved it. In 1842, invited by numerous newspaper publications, upward of a thousand American emigrants went to the country, making their long pilgrimage overland from the frontiers of Missouri, with their wives and children, their flocks and herds, their implements of husbandry and weapons of defense traversing the vast inclined plane to the base of the Rocky Mountains, crossing that barrier (deemed impassable by Europeans) and descending the wide slope which declines from the mountains to the Pacific. Six months would be consumed in this journey, filled with hardships, beset by dangers from savage hostility, and only to be prosecuted in caravans of strength and determination. The Burnets and Applegates from Missouri were among the first leaders, and in 1843, some two thousand more joined the first emigration.

To check these bold adventurers was the object of the Government: to encourage them, was the object of some Western Members of Congress, on whom (in conjunction with the people) the task of saving the Columbia evidently devolved. These Congressmen were ready for their work, and promptly began. . . . An American settlement grew up at the mouth of the Columbia. Conventional agreements among themselves answered the purpose of laws. A colony was planted had planted itself and did not intend to retire from its position and did not. It remained and grew; and that colony of self-impulsion, without the aid of government, and in spite of all its blunders, saved the Territory of Oregon to the United States: one of the many events which show how little the wisdom of government has to do with great events which fix the fate of countries.

Connected with this emigration, and auxiliary to it, was the first expedition of Lieutenant Fremont to the Rocky Mountains, and undertaken and completed in the summer of 1842 upon its outside view the conception of the Government, but in fact conceived without its knowledge, and executed upon solicited orders, of which the design was unknown. Lieutenant Fremont was a young officer, appointed in the topographical corps from the class of citizens by President Jackson upon the recommendation of Mr. Poinsett, Secretary at War. He did not enter the army through the gate of West Point, and was considered an intrusive officer by the graduates of that institution. Having, before his appointment, assisted for two years the learned astronomer, Mr. Nicollet, in his great survey of the country between the Missouri and Mississippi, his mind was trained to such labor; and instead of hunting comfortable berths about the towns and villages, he solicited employment in the vast regions beyond the Mississippi.

Colonel Abert, the chief of the corps, gave him an order to go to the frontier beyond the Mississippi. That order did not come up to his views. After receiving it he carried it back, and got it altered, and the Rocky Mountains inserted as an object of his exploration, and the South Pass in those mountains named as a particular point to be examined, and its position fixed by him. It was through this pass that the Oregon emigration crossed the mountains, and the exploration of Lieutenant Fremont had the double effect of fixing an important point in the line of the emigrants' travel, and giving them encouragement from the apparent interest which the Government took in their enterprise. At the same time the Government, that is, the executive administration, knew nothing about it. The design was conceived by the young lieutenant: the order for its execution was obtained, upon solicitation, from his immediate chief importing, of course, to be done by his order, but an order which had its conception elsewhere.