Thomas Hart Benton Part 7

The secretary of the treasury, in response to a call from the Senate, furnished a plan for a bank, having modeled it studiously so as to overcome the president's scruples; and a select committee of the Senate at once shaped a bill in accordance with the plans. Said Benton: "Even the t.i.tle was made ridiculous to please the president, though not so much so as he wished. He objected to the name of bank either in the t.i.tle or the body of the charter, and proposed to style it 'Fiscal Inst.i.tute;' and afterwards the 'Fiscal Agent,' and finally the 'Fiscal Corporation.'" Such preposterous folly on the president's part was more than the hot-blooded and overbearing Kentuckian could stand; and, in spite of his absorbing desire for the success of his measure, and of the vital necessity for conciliating Tyler, Clay could not bring himself to adopt such a ludicrous t.i.tle, even though he had seen that the charter provided that the inst.i.tution, whatever it might be styled in form, should in fact have all the properties of a bank. After a while, however, a compromise t.i.tle was agreed on, but only a shadow less imbecile than the original one proposed by the president; and it was agreed to call the measure the "Fiscal Bank" bill.

The president vetoed it, but stated that he was ready to approve any similar bill that should be free from the objections he named. Clay could not resist reading Tyler a lecture on his misconduct, during the course of a speech in the Senate; but the Whigs generally smothered their resentment, and set about preparing something which the president would sign, and this time concluded that they would humor him to the top of his bent, even by choosing a t.i.tle as ridiculous as he wished; so they styled their bill one to establish a "Fiscal Corporation." Benton held the t.i.tle up to well-deserved derision, and showed that, though there had been quite an elaborate effort to disguise the form of the measure, and to make it purport to establish a bank that should have the properties of a treasury, yet that in reality it was simply a revival of the old scheme under another name. The Whigs swallowed the sneers of their opponents as best they could, and pa.s.sed their bill.

The president again interposed his veto. An intrigue was going on among a few unimportant congressmen and obscure office-holders to form a new party with Tyler at its head; and the latter willingly entered into the plan, his mind, which was not robust at the best, being completely dazzled by his sudden elevation and his wild hopes that he could continue to keep the place which he had reached. He had given the Whigs reason to expect that he would sign the bill, and had taken none of his cabinet into his confidence. So, when his veto came in, it raised a perfect whirlwind of wrath and bitter disappointment. His cabinet all resigned, except Webster, who stayed to finish the treaty with Great Britain; and the Whigs formally read him out of the party. The Democrats looked on with huge enjoyment, and patted Tyler on the back, for they could see that he was bringing their foes to ruin; but nevertheless they despised him heartily, and abandoned him wholly when he had served their turn. Left without any support among the regulars of either side, and his own proposed third party turning out a still-born abortion, he simply played out his puny part until his term ended, and then dropped noiselessly out of sight. It is only the position he filled, and not in the least his ability, for either good or bad, in filling it, that prevents his name from sinking into merciful oblivion.

There was yet one more brief spasm over the bank, however; the president sending in a plan for a "Fiscal Agent," to be called a Board of Exchequer. Congress contemptuously refused to pay any attention to the proposition, Benton showing its utter unworthiness in an excellent speech, one of the best that he made on the whole financial question.

Largely owing to the cross purposes at which the president and his party were working, the condition of the treasury became very bad. It sought to provide for its immediate wants by the issue of treasury notes, differing from former notes of the kind in that they were made reissuable. Benton at once, and very properly, attacked this proceeding.

He had a check drawn for a few days' compensation as senator, demanded payment in hard money, and when he was given treasury notes instead, made a most emphatic protest in the Senate, which was entirely effectual, the practically compulsory tender of the paper money being forthwith stopped.

It was at this time, also, that bills to subsidize steamship lines were first pa.s.sed, and that the enlarging and abuse of the pension system began, which in our own day threatens to become a really crying evil.

Benton opposed both sets of measures; and in regard to the pension matter showed that he would not let himself, by any specious plea of exceptional suffering or need for charity, be led into vicious special legislation, sure in the end to bring about the breaking down of some of the most important principles of government.

CHAPTER XII.

BOUNDARY TROUBLES WITH ENGLAND.

Two important controversies with foreign powers became prominent during Tyler's presidency; but he had little to do with the settlement of either, beyond successively placing in his cabinet the two great statesmen who dealt with them. Webster, while secretary of state, brought certain of the negotiations with England to a close; and later on, Calhoun, while holding the same office, took up Webster's work and also grappled with--indeed partly caused--the troubles on the Mexican border, and turned them to the advantage of the South and slavery.

Our boundaries were still very ill-defined, except where they were formed by the Gulf and the Ocean, the Great Lakes, and the river St.

John. Even in the Northeast, where huge stretches of unbroken forest-land separated the inhabited portions of Canada from those of New England, it was not yet decided how much of this wilderness belonged to us and how much to the Canadians; and in the vast, unsettled regions of the far West our claims came into direct conflict with those of Mexico and of Great Britain. The ownership of these little known and badly mapped regions could with great difficulty be decided on grounds of absolute and abstract right; the t.i.tle of each contestant to the land was more or less plausible, and at the same time more or less defective.

The matter was sure to be decided in favor of the strongest; and, say what we will about the justice and right of the various claims, the honest truth is, that the comparative might of the different nations, and not the comparative righteousness of their several causes, was the determining factor in the settlement. Mexico lost her northern provinces by no law of right, but simply by the law of the longest sword--the same law that gave India to England. In both instances the result was greatly to the benefit of the conquered peoples and of every one else; though there is this wide difference between the two cases: that whereas the English rule in India, while it may last for decades or even for centuries, must eventually come to an end and leave little trace of its existence; on the other hand our conquests from Mexico determined for all time the blood, speech, and law of the men who should fill the lands we won.

The questions between Great Britain and ourselves were compromised by each side accepting about half what it claimed, only because neither was willing to push the other to extremities. Englishmen like Palmerston might hector and ruffle, and Americans like Benton might swagger and bully; but when it came to be a question of actual fighting each people recognized the power of the other, and preferred to follow the more cautious and peaceful, not to say timid, lead of such statesmen as Webster and Lord Melbourne. Had we been no stronger than the Sikhs, Oregon and Washington would at present be British possessions; and if Great Britain had been as weak as Mexico, she would not now hold a foot of territory on the Pacific coast. Either nation might perhaps have refused to commit a gross and entirely unprovoked and uncalled-for act of aggression; but each, under altered conditions, would have readily found excuses for showing much less regard for the claims of the other than actually was shown. It would be untrue to say that nations have not at times proved themselves capable of acting with great disinterestedness and generosity towards other peoples; but such conduct is not very common at the best, and although it often may be desirable, it certainly is not always so. If the matter in dispute is of great importance, and if there is a doubt as to which side is right, then the strongest party to the controversy is pretty sure to give itself the benefit of that doubt; and international morality will have to take tremendous strides in advance before this ceases to be the case.

It is difficult to exaggerate the importance of the treaties and wars by means of which we finally gave definite bounds to our territory beyond the Mississippi. Contemporary political writers and students, of the lesser sort, are always painfully deficient in the sense of historic perspective; and to such the struggles for the possession of the unknown and dimly outlined western wastes seemed of small consequence compared to similar European contests for territorial aggrandizement. Yet, in reality, when we look at the far-reaching nature of the results, the questions as to what kingdom should receive the fealty of Holstein or Lorraine, of Savoy or the Dobrudscha, seem of absolutely trivial importance compared to the infinitely more momentous ones as to the future race settlement and national ownership of the then lonely and unpeopled lands of Texas, California, and Oregon.

Benton, greatly to the credit of his foresight, and largely in consequence of his strong nationalist feeling, thoroughly appreciated the importance of our geographical extensions. He was the great champion of the West and of western development, and a furious partisan of every movement in the direction of the enlargement of our western boundaries. Many of his expressions, when talking of the greatness of our country and of the magnitude of the interests which were being decided, not only were grandiloquent in manner, but also seem exaggerated and overwrought even as regards matter. But when we think of the interests for which he contended, as they were to become, and not as they at the moment were, the appearance of exaggeration is lost, and the intense feeling of his speeches no longer seems out of place or disproportionate to the importance of the subject with which he dealt.

Without clearly formulating his opinions, even to himself, and while sometimes p.r.o.ne to attribute to his country at the moment a greatness she was not to possess for two or three generations to come, he, nevertheless, had engrained in his very marrow and fibre the knowledge that inevitably, and beyond all doubt, the coming years were to be hers.

He knew that, while other nations held the past, and shared with his own the present, yet that to her belonged the still formless and unshaped future. More clearly than almost any other statesman he beheld the grandeur of the nation loom up, vast and shadowy, through the advancing years.

He was keenly alive to the need of our having free chance to spread towards the northwest; he very early grasped the idea that in that direction we ought to have room for continental development. In his earliest years, to be sure, when the Mississippi seemed a river of the remote western border, when n.o.body, not even the hardiest trapper, had penetrated the boundless and treeless plains that stretch to the foot-hills of the Rockies, and when the boldest thinkers had not dared to suppose that we could ever hold together as a people, when once scattered over so wide a territory, he had stated in a public speech that he considered the mountains to be our natural frontier line to the west, and the barrier beyond which we ought not to pa.s.s, and had expressed his trust that on the Pacific coast there would grow up a kindred and friendly Republic. But very soon, as the seemingly impossible became the actual, he himself changed, and ever afterwards held that we should have, wherever possible, no boundaries but the two Oceans.

Benton's violent and aggressive patriotism undoubtedly led him to a.s.sume positions towards foreign powers that were very repugnant to the quiet, peaceable, and order-loving portion of the community, especially when he gave vent to the spirit of jealous antagonism which he felt towards Great Britain, the power that held sway over the wilderness bordering us on the north. Yet the arrogant att.i.tude he a.s.sumed was more than justified by the destiny of the great Republic; and it would have been well for all America if we had insisted even more than we did upon the extension northward of our boundaries. Not only the Columbia but also the Red River of the North--and the Saskatchewan and Frazer as well--should lie wholly within our limits, less for our own sake than for the sake of the men who dwell along their banks. Columbia, Saskatchewan, and Manitoba would, as states of the American Union, hold positions incomparably more important, grander, and more dignified than they can ever hope to reach either as independent communities or as provincial dependencies of a foreign power that regards them with a kindly tolerance somewhat akin to contemptuous indifference. Of course no one would wish to see these, or any other settled communities, now added to our domain by force; we want no unwilling citizens to enter our Union; the time to have taken the lands was before settlers came into them. European nations war for the possession of thickly settled districts which, if conquered, will for centuries remain alien and hostile to the conquerors; we, wiser in our generation, have seized the waste solitudes that lay near us, the limitless forests and never ending plains, and the valleys of the great, lonely rivers; and have thrust our own sons into them to take possession; and a score of years after each conquest we see the conquered land teeming with a people that is one with ourselves.

Benton felt that all the unoccupied land to the northwest was by right our heritage, and he was willing to do battle for it if necessary. He was a perfect type of western American statesmanship in his way of looking at our foreign relations; he was always unwilling to compromise, being of that happy temperament which is absolutely certain that its claims are just and righteous in their entirety, and that it would be wrong to accept anything less than all that is demanded; he was willing to bully if our rights, as he deemed them, were not granted us; and he was perfectly ready to fight if the bullying was unsuccessful. True, he did not consistently carry through all his theories to their logical consequences; but it may well be questioned whether, after all, his original att.i.tude towards Great Britain was not wiser, looking to its probable remote results, than that which was finally taken by the national government, whose policy was on this point largely shaped by the feeling among the richer and more educated cla.s.ses of the Northeast.

These cla.s.ses have always been more cautious and timid than any others in the Union, especially in their way of looking at possible foreign wars, and have never felt much of the spirit which made the West stretch out impatiently for new lands. Fortunately they have rarely been able to control our territorial growth.

No foot of soil to which we had any t.i.tle in the Northwest should have been given up; we were the people who could use it best, and we ought to have taken it all. The prize was well worth winning, and would warrant a good deal of risk being run. We had even then grown to be so strong that we were almost sure eventually to win in any American contest for continental supremacy. We were near by, our foes far away--for the contest over the Columbia would have been settled in Canada. We should have had hard fighting to be sure, but sooner or later the result would have been in our favor. There were no better soldiers in the world than the men of Balaclava and Inkerman, but the victors of Buena Vista and Chapultepec were as good. Scott and Taylor were not great generals, but they were, at least, the equals of Lord Raglan; and we did not have in our service any such examples of abnormal military inapt.i.tude as Lords Lucan and Cardigan and their kind.

It was of course to be expected that men like Benton would bitterly oppose the famous Ashburton treaty, which was Webster's crowning work while secretary of state, and the only conspicuous success of Tyler's administration. The Ashburton treaty was essentially a compromise between the extreme claims of the two contestants, as was natural where the claims were based on very unsubstantial grounds and the contestants were of somewhat the same strength. It was most beneficial in its immediate effects; and that it was a perfectly dignified and proper treaty for America to make is best proved by the virulent hostility with which Palmerston and his followers a.s.sailed it as a "surrender" on the part of England, while Englishmen of the same stamp are to this day never tired of lamenting the fact that they have allowed our western boundaries to be pushed so far to the north. But there appears to be much excuse for Benton's att.i.tude, when we look at the treaty as one in a chain of incidents, and with regard to its future results. Our territorial quarrels with Great Britain were not like those between most other powers. It was for the interest of the whole western hemisphere that no European nation should have extensive possessions between the Atlantic and the Pacific; and by right we should have given ourselves the benefit of every doubt in all territorial questions, and have shown ourselves ready to make prompt appeal to the sword whenever it became necessary as a last resort.

Still, as regards the Ashburton treaty itself, it must be admitted that much of Benton's opposition was merely factious and partisan, on account of its being a Whig measure; and his speeches on the subject contain a number of arguments that are not very creditable to him.

Some of his remarks referred to a matter which had been already a cause of great excitement during Van Buren's administration, and on which he had spoken more than once. This was the destruction of the steamer Caroline by the British during the abortive Canadian insurrection of 1837. Much sympathy had been felt for the rebels by the Americans along the border, and some of them had employed the Caroline in conveying stores to the insurgents; and in revenge a party of British troops surprised and destroyed her one night while she was lying in an American port. This was a gross and flagrant violation of our rights, and was promptly resented by Van Buren, who had done what he could to maintain order along the border, and had been successful in his efforts. Benton had supported the president in preventing a breach of neutrality on our part, and was fiercely indignant when the breach was committed by the other side. Reparation was demanded forthwith. The British government at first made evasive replies. After a while a very foolish personage named McLeod, a British subject, who boasted that he had taken part in the affair, ventured into New York and was promptly imprisoned by the state authorities. His boastings, fortunately for him, proved to be totally unfounded, and he was acquitted by the jury before whom he was taken, after a detention of several months in prison. But meanwhile the British government demanded his release--adopting a very different tone with Tyler and the Whigs from that which they had been using towards Van Buren, who still could conjure with Jackson's terrible name. The United States agreed to release McLeod, but New York refused to deliver him up; and before the question was decided he was acquitted, as said above. It was clearly wrong for a state to interfere in a disagreement between the nation and a foreign power; and on the other hand the federal authorities did not show as much firmness in their dealings with England as they should have shown. Benton, true to certain of his states-rights theories and in pursuance of his policy of antagonism to Great Britain, warmly supported the att.i.tude of New York, alleging that the United States had no right to interfere with her disposal of McLeod; and a.s.serting that while if the citizens of one country committed an outrage upon another it was necessary to apply to the sovereign for redress, yet that if the wrong-doers came into the country which had been aggrieved they might be seized and punished; and he exultingly referred to Jackson's conduct at the time of the first Seminole War, when he hung off-hand two British subjects whom he accused of inciting the Indians against us, Great Britain not making any protest. The Caroline matter was finally settled in the Ashburton treaty, the British making a formal but very guarded apology for her destruction,--an apology which did not satisfy Benton in the least.

It is little to Benton's credit, however, that, while thus courting foreign wars, he yet opposed the efforts of the Whigs to give us a better navy. Our navy was then good of its kind, but altogether too small. Benton's opposition to its increase seems to have proceeded partly from mere bitter partisanship, partly from sheer ignorance, and partly from the doctrinaire dread of any kind of standing military or naval force, which he had inherited, with a good many similar ideas, from the Jeffersonians.

He attacked the whole treaty, article by article, when it came up for ratification in the Senate, making an extremely lengthy and elaborate speech, or rather set of speeches, against it. Much of his objection, especially to the part compromising the territorial claims of the two governments, was well founded; but much was also factious and groundless. The most important point of all that was in controversy, the ownership of Oregon, was left unsettled; but, as will be shown farther on, this was wise. He made this omission a base or pretext for the charge that the treaty was gotten up in the interests of the East,--although with frank lack of logic he also opposed it because it sacrificed the interests of Maine,--and that it was detrimental to the South and West; and he did his best to excite sectional feeling against it. He also protested against the omission of all reference to the impressment of American sailors by British vessels; and this was a valid ground of opposition,--although Webster had really settled the matter by writing a formal note to the British government, in which he practically gave official notice that any attempt to revive the practice would be repelled by force of arms.

Benton occupied a much less tenable position when he came to the question of slavery, and inveighed against the treaty because it did not provide for the return of fugitive slaves, or of slaves taken from American coasting vessels when the latter happened to be obliged to put into West Indian ports, and because it did contain a provision that we ourselves should keep in commission a squadron on the coast of Africa to cooperate with the British in the suppression of the slave-trade.

Benton's object in attacking the treaty on this point was to excite the South to a degree that would make the senators from that section refuse to join in ratifying it; but the attempt was a flat failure. It is hardly to be supposed that he himself was as indignant over this question as he pretended to be. He must have realized that, so long as we had among ourselves an inst.i.tution so wholly barbarous and out of date as slavery, just so long we should have to expect foreign powers to treat us rather cavalierly on that one point. Whatever we might say among ourselves as to the rights of property or the necessity of preserving the Union by refraining from the disturbance of slavery, it was certain that foreign nations would place the manhood and liberty of the slave above the vested interest of the master--all the more readily because they were jealous of the Union and anxious to see it break up, and were naturally delighted to take the side of abstract justice and humanity, when to do so was at the expense of outsiders and redounded to their own credit, without causing them the least pecuniary loss or personal inconvenience. The att.i.tude of slave-holders towards freedom in the abstract was grotesque in its lack of logic; but the att.i.tude of many other cla.s.ses of men, both abroad and at home, towards it was equally full of a grimly unconscious humor. The southern planters, who loudly sympathized with Kossuth and the Hungarians, were entirely unconscious that their tyranny over their own black bondsmen made their attacks upon Austria's despotism absurd; and Germans, who were shocked at our holding the blacks in slavery, could not think of freedom in their own country without a shudder. On one night the Democrats of the Northern States would hold a ma.s.s meeting to further the cause of Irish freedom, on the next night the same men would break up another meeting held to help along the freeing of the negroes; while the English aristocracy held up its hands in horror at American slavery and set its face like a flint against all efforts to do Ireland tardy and incomplete justice.

Again, in his opposition to the extradition clause of the treaty, Benton was certainly wrong. Nothing is clearer than that nations ought to combine to prevent criminals from escaping punishment merely by fleeing over an imaginary line; the crime is against all society, and society should unite to punish it. Especially is there need of the most stringent extradition laws between countries whose people have the same speech and legal system, as with the United States and Great Britain.

Indeed, it is a pity that our extradition laws are not more stringent.

But Benton saw, or affected to see, in the extradition clause, a menace to political refugees, and based his opposition to it mainly on this ground. He also quoted on his side the inevitable Jefferson; for Jefferson, or rather the highly idealized conception of what Jefferson had been, shared with the "demos krateo principle" the honor of being one of the twin fetiches to which Benton, in common with most of his fellow-Democrats, especially delighted to bow down.

But when he came to the parts of the treaty that defined our northeastern boundary and so much of our northwestern boundary as lay near the Great Lakes, Benton occupied far more defensible ground; and the parts of his speech referring to these questions were very strong indeed. He attempted to show that in the matter of the Maine frontier we had surrendered very much more than there was any need of our doing, and that the British claim was unfounded; and there seems now to be good reason for thinking him right, although it must be admitted that in agreeing to the original line in earlier treaties the British had acted entirely under a misapprehension as to where it would go. Benton was also able to make a good point against Webster for finally agreeing to surrender so much of Maine's claim by showing the opposition the latter had made, while in the Senate, to a similar but less objectionable clause in a treaty which Jackson's administration had then been trying to get through. Again Webster had, in defending the surrender of certain of our claims along the boundary west of Lake Superior, stated that the country was not very valuable, as it was useless for agricultural purposes; and Benton had taken him up sharply on this point, saying that we wanted the land anyhow, whether it produced corn and potatoes or only furs and lumber. The amounts of territory as to which our claims were compromised were not very large compared to the extent of the Pacific coast lands which were still left in dispute; and it was perhaps well that the treaty was ratified; but certainly there is much to be said on Benton's side so far as his opposition to the proposed frontier was concerned.

However, he was only able to rally eight other senators to his support, and the treaty went through the Senate triumphantly. It encountered an even more bitter opposition in Parliament, where Palmerston headed a series of furious attacks upon it, for reasons the precise opposite of those which Benton alleged, arguing that England received much less, instead of much more, than her due, and thereby showing Webster's position in a very much better light than that in which it would otherwise have appeared. Eventually the British government ratified the treaty.

The Ashburton treaty did not touch on the Oregon matter at all; nor was this dealt with by Webster while he was secretary of state. But it came before the Senate at that time, and later on Calhoun took it up, when filling Webster's place in the cabinet, although a final decision was not reached until during Polk's presidency. Webster did not appreciate the importance of Oregon in the least, and moreover came from a section of the country that was not inclined to insist on territorial expansion at the hazard of a war, in which the merchants of the sea-board would be the chief sufferers. Calhoun, it is true, came from a peculiarly militant and bellicose state, but on the other hand from a section that was not very anxious to see the free North acquire new territory. So it happened that neither of Tyler's two great secretaries felt called upon to insist too vehemently upon going to extremes in defense of our rights, or supposed rights, along the Pacific coast; and though in the end the balance was struck pretty evenly between our claims and those of our neighbor, yet it is to be regretted that we did not stand out stiffly for the whole of our demand. Our t.i.tle was certainly not perfect, but it was to the full as good as, or better than, Great Britain's; and it would have been better in the end had we insisted upon the whole territory being given to us, no matter what price we had to pay.

The politico-social line of division between the East and the West had been gradually growing fainter as that between the North and South grew deeper; but on the Oregon question it again became prominent.

Southeastern Democrats, like the Carolinian McDuffie, spoke as slightingly of the value of Oregon, and were as little inclined to risk a war for its possession, as the most peace-loving Whigs of New England; while the intense western feeling against giving up any of our rights on the Pacific coast was best expressed by the two senators from the slave state of Missouri. Benton was not restrained in his desire to add to the might of the Union by any fear of the possible future effect upon the political power of the Slave States. Although a slave-holder and the representative of slave-holders, he was fully alive to the evils of slavery, though as yet not seeing clearly how all-important a question it had become. The preservation and extension of the Union and obedience to the spirit of Democracy were the chief articles of his political creed, and to these he always subordinated all others. When, in speaking of slavery, he made use, as he sometimes did, of expressions that were not far removed from those of men really devoted to the slave interests, it was almost always because he had some ulterior object in view, or for factional ends; for unfortunately his standard of political propriety was not sufficiently high to prevent his trying to make use of any weapon, good or bad, with which to overturn his political foes. In protesting against the Ashburton treaty, he outdid even such slavery champions as Calhoun in the extravagance of his ideas as to what we should demand of foreign powers in reference to their treatment of our "peculiar inst.i.tution"; but he seems to have done this merely because thereby he got an additional handle of attack against the Whig measures.

The same thing was true earlier of his fulmination against Clay's proposed Panama Congress; and even before that, in attacking Adams for his supposed part in the treaty whereby we established the line of our Spanish frontier, he dragged slavery into the question, not, apparently, because he really particularly wished to see our slave territory extended, but because he thought that he might use the slavery cry to excite in one other section of the country a feeling as strong as that which the West already felt in regard to territorial expansion generally. Indeed, his whole conduct throughout the Oregon controversy, especially when taken in connection with the fact that he stood out for Maine's frontier rights more stoutly than the Maine representatives themselves, shows how free from sectional bias was his way of looking at our geographical growth.

The territory along the Pacific coast lying between California on the south and Alaska on the north--"Oregon," as it was comprehensively called--had been a source of dispute for some time between the United States and Great Britain. After some negotiations both had agreed with Russia to recognize the line of 54 40' as the southern boundary of the latter's possessions; and Mexico's undisputed possession of California gave an equally well marked southern limit, at the forty-second parallel. All between was in dispute. The British had trading posts at the mouth of the Columbia, which they emphatically a.s.serted to be theirs; we, on the other hand, claimed an absolutely clear t.i.tle up to the forty-ninth parallel, a couple of hundred miles north of the mouth of the Columbia, and a.s.serted that for all the balance of the territory up to the Russian possessions our t.i.tle was at any rate better than that of the British. In 1818 a treaty had been made providing for the joint occupation of the territory by the two powers, as neither was willing to give up its claim to the whole, or at the time at all understood the value of the possession, then entirely unpeopled. This treaty of joint occupancy had remained in force ever since. Under it the British had built great trading stations, and used the whole country in the interests of certain fur companies. The Americans, in spite of some vain efforts, were unable to compete with them in this line; but, what was infinitely more important, had begun, even prior to 1840, to establish actual settlers along the banks of the rivers, some missionaries being the first to come in. As long, however, as the territory remained spa.r.s.ely settled, and the communication with it chiefly by sea, the hold of Great Britain gave promise of being the stronger. But the aspect of affairs was totally changed when in 1842 a huge caravan of over a thousand Americans made the journey overland from the frontiers of Missouri, taking with them their wives and their children, their flocks and herds, carrying their long rifles on their shoulders, and their axes and spades in the great canvas-topped wagons. The next year, two thousand more settlers of the same sort in their turn crossed the vast plains, wound their way among the Rocky Mountains through the pa.s.s explored by Fremont, Benton's son-in-law, and after suffering every kind of hardship and danger, and warding off the attacks of hostile Indians, descended the western slope of the great water-shed to join their fellows by the banks of the Columbia. When American settlers were once in actual possession of the disputed territory, it became evident that the period of Great Britain's undisputed sway was over.

The government of the United States, meanwhile, was so far from helping these settlers that it on the contrary rather threw obstacles in their way. As usual with us, the individual activity of the citizens themselves, who all acted independently and with that peculiar self-reliance that is the chief American characteristic, outstripped the activity of their representatives, who were obliged all to act together, and who were therefore held back by each other,--our Const.i.tution, while giving free scope for individual freedom, wisely providing such checks as to make our governmental system eminently conservative in its workings. Tyler's administration did not wish to embroil itself with England; so it refused any aid to the settlers, and declined to give them grants of land, as under the joint occupancy treaty that would have given England offense and cause for complaint. But Benton and the other Westerners were perfectly willing to offend England, if by so doing they could help America to obtain Oregon, and were too rash and headstrong to count the cost of their actions. Accordingly, a bill was introduced providing for the settlement of Oregon, and giving each settler six hundred and forty acres, and additional land if he had a family; so that every inducement was held out to the emigrants, the West wanting to protect and encourage them by all the means in its power. The laws and jurisdiction of the Territory of Iowa were to be extended to all the settlers on the Pacific coast, who hitherto had governed themselves merely by a system of mutual agreements.

The bill was, of course, strongly opposed, especially on account of the clause giving land to the settlers. It pa.s.sed the Senate by a close vote, but failed in the House. Naturally Benton was one of its chief supporters, and spoke at length in its favor. He seized the kernel of the matter when, in advocating the granting of land, he spoke of immigration as "the only thing which can save the country from the British, acting through their powerful agent, the Hudson's Bay Company."

He then blew a l.u.s.ty note of defiance to Great Britain herself:--

I think she will take offense, do what we may in relation to this territory. She wants it herself, and means to quarrel for it, if she does not fight for it.... I grant that she will take offense, but that is not the question with me. Has she a _right_ to take offense?

That is my question! And this being decided in the negative, I neither fear nor calculate consequences.... Courage will keep her off, fear will bring her upon us. The a.s.sertion of our rights will command her respect; the fear to a.s.sert them will bring us her contempt.... Neither nations nor individuals ever escaped danger by fearing it. They must face it and defy it. An abandonment of a right for fear of bringing on an attack, instead of keeping it off, will inevitably bring on the outrage that is dreaded.

He was right enough in his disposition to resent the hectoring spirit which, at that time, characterized Great Britain's foreign policy; but he was all wrong in condemning delay, and stating that if things were left as they were time would work against us, and not for us.

In this respect Calhoun, who opposed the bill, was much wiser. He advocated a policy of "masterly inactivity," foreseeing that time was everything to us, inasmuch as the land was sure in the end to belong to that nation whose people had settled in it, and we alone were able to furnish a constantly increasing stream of immigrants. Later on, however, Calhoun abandoned this policy, probably mainly influenced by fear of the extension of free territory, and consented to a compromise with Great Britain. The true course to have pursued would have been to have combined the ideas of both Benton and Calhoun, and to have gone farther than either; that is, we should have allowed the question to remain unsettled as long as was possible, because every year saw an increasing American population in the coveted lands, and rendered the ultimate decision surer to be for us. When it was impossible to postpone the question longer, we should have insisted upon its being settled entirely in our favor, no matter at what cost. The unsuccessful attempts, made by Benton and his supporters, to persuade the Senate to pa.s.s a resolution, requiring that notice of the termination of the joint occupancy treaty should forthwith be given, were certainly ill-advised.

However, even Benton was not willing to go to the length to which certain Western men went, who insisted upon all or nothing. He had become alarmed and angry over the intrigue for the admission of Texas and the proposed forcible taking away of Mexican territory. The Northwestern Democrats wanted all Texas and all Oregon; the Southeastern ones wished all the former and part of the latter. Benton then concluded that it would be best to take part of each; for, although no friend to compromises, yet he was unwilling to jeopardize the safety of the Union as it was by seeking to make it still larger. Accordingly, he sympathized with the effort made by Calhoun while secretary of state to get the British to accept the line of 49 as the frontier; but the British government then rejected this proposition. In 1844 the Democrats made their campaign upon the issue of "fifty-four forty or fight;" and Polk, when elected, felt obliged to insist upon this campaign boundary.

To this, however, Great Britain naturally would not consent; it was, indeed, idle to expect her to do so, unless things should be kept as they were until a fairly large American population had grown up along the Pacific coast, and had thus put her in a position where she could hardly do anything else. Polk's administration was neither capable nor warlike, however well disposed to bl.u.s.ter; and the secretary of state, the timid, shifty, and selfish politician, Buchanan, naturally fond of facing both ways, was the last man to wish to force a quarrel on a high-spirited and determined antagonist like England. Accordingly, he made up his mind to back down and try for the line of 49, as proposed by Calhoun, when in Tyler's cabinet; and the English, for all their affected indifference, had been so much impressed by the warlike demonstrations in the United States, that they in turn were delighted, singing in a much lower key than before the "fifty-four forty" cry had been raised; accordingly they withdrew their former pretensions to the Columbia River and accepted the offered compromise. Now, however, came the question of getting the treaty through the Senate; and Buchanan sounded Benton, to see if he would undertake this task.

Benton, worried over the Texas matter, was willing to recede somewhat from the very high ground he had taken,--although, of course, he insisted that he had been perfectly consistent throughout, and that the 49th parallel was the line he had all along been striving for. Under his lead the proposal for a treaty on the basis indicated was carried through the Senate, and the line in consequence ultimately became our frontier, in spite of the frantic opposition of the Northwestern Democrats, the latter hurling every sort of charge of bad faith and treachery at their Southern a.s.sociates, who had joined with the Whigs in defeating them. Benton's speech in support of the proposal was pitched much lower than had been his previous ones; and, a little forgetful of some of his own remarks, he was especially severe upon those members who denounced England and held up a picture of her real or supposed designs to excite and frighten the people into needless opposition to her.

In its immediate effects the adoption of the 49th parallel as the dividing line between the two countries was excellent, and entailed no loss of dignity on either. Yet, as there was no particular reason why we should show any generosity in our diplomatic dealings with England, it may well be questioned whether it would not have been better to have left things as they were until we could have taken all. Wars are, of course, as a rule to be avoided; but they are far better than certain kinds of peace. Every war in which we have been engaged, except the one with Mexico, has been justifiable in its origin; and each one, without any exception whatever, has left us better off, taking both moral and material considerations into account, than we should have been if we had not waged it.

CHAPTER XIII.

THE ABOLITIONISTS DANCE TO THE SLAVE BARONS' PIPING.