British Commissioner's Reply. As to the intention of the treaty, the British commissioner replied that Mr. McLane and Mr. Benton were not the actual negotiators of the treaty; that Mr. McLane merely said that the proposition which he described would "most probably" be made; that, in reality, it was not made, and that the fact that no channel was named in the treaty was evidence that the Canal de Haro was not intended. To show that the Canal de Haro could not have been the only channel considered in the United States as the true channel at and after the making of the treaty, the British commissioner cited a map of Oregon and Upper California (published in the city of Washington in 1848) "drawn by Charles Preuss, under the order of the Senate of the United States," in which the boundary line ran through the Rosario Strait; also "a diagram of a portion of Oregon Territory," by the surveyor general of Oregon, dated October 21, 1852, in which the same line was laid down. The British commissioner further said that his own opinion as to the true line had been confirmed by his having been officially informed "by high and competent authority" that Rosario Strait was the channel contemplated by the British Government in the treaty. The "authority" referred to, as was finally disclosed, was the Earl of Clarendon, the British foreign secretary. American Commissioner's Answer. The American commissioner answered that Preuss's map was inaccurate, and was not made with reference to the boundary ques tion, and that while it did not draw the line through the Canal de Haro, neither did it draw it through the Rosario Strait. As to the map of the surveyor-general of Oregon, it bore no official relation to the boundary question. The American commissioner referred to a map published by Arrowsmith in London in 1849, in which the Canal de Haro was given as the boundary. The American commissioner also adverted to the fact that the statement of the Earl of Clarendon, adduced by the British commissioner, did not disclose the authority on which it was based. mise. The British commissioner finally offered to Rejection of Compro- treat the Gulf of Georgia as one channel, and all the channels between the islands lying between that gulf and the Straits of Fuca as one channel, and to make the boundary run through the middle of it, so far as the islands would permit, so as to give the island of San Juan to Great Britain and the rest of the islands to the United States. This offer was made by the British commissioner without prejudice to the right of his government to reject it. The American commissioner refused to entertain it, being, as he declared, unalterably convinced that the claim of the United States to the Canal de Haro was perfect. It has been stated that it was ascertained British Commission- in the course of the discussions between Mr. er's Special In- Campbell and Captain Prevost that the latter structions. had instructions besides those which were exhibited in the first instance to Mr. Campbell. An extract from his additional instructions was communicated by Lord Malmesbury to Mr. Dallas on February 22, 1859. In this extract it was not asserted that the Rosario Strait was intended as the actual line of the treaty; but it was stated that a line drawn down the middle of the Gulf of Georgia would pass just to the eastward of the Matia group, at the head of the Rosario Strait, and being prolonged from thence nearly due south would pass through Rosario Strait into the Strait of Juan de Fuca. It appeared, it was said, to Her Majesty's Government that this line was so clearly and exactly in accordance with the terms of the treaty that it might be hoped that the British commissioner would have no difficulty in inducing the American commissioner to acquiesce in it. If however, the instructions continued, the American commissioner would not adopt this line, the British commissioner would be at liberty, if he should be of opinion that the claims of Her Majesty's Government to Rosario Strait could not be substantiated, to adopt any other intermediate channel on which he and the United States commissioner might agree as substantially in accordance with the description of the treaty. of San Juan Island. After the close of their discussions the AmerMilitary Occupation ican and British commissioners continued their explorations and surveys of the waters and islands involved in the dispute. In 1859 an incident occurred of an exciting nature. The Hudson's Bay Company had an establishment on San Juan Island for the purpose of raising sheep, and on another part of the island there were twentyfive American citizens, with their families. A pig belonging to the company having been killed, one of the American citizens was charged with having shot it; and a threat was made by an officer of the company to arrest him and take him to Victoria for trial under British law. Chiefly on the strength of this incident General Harney, who commanded the military forces of the United States in that quarter, on the 27th of July assumed military occupation of the island with the declared object of protecting the inhabitants against the incursions of Indians and against the interference of the British authorities in Vancouver in controversies between citizens of the United and the Hudson's Bay Company. In the critical situation created by this act, General Scott was, on the 16th of September 1859, instructed to proceed to Washington Territory to assume immediate command of the United States forces on the Pacific, and if possible to arrange for a joint occupation in the spirit of Mr. Marcy's letter to Governor Stevens. General Scott arrived on the scene in the latter part of October, and an arrangement for the joint military occupation of the islands was promptly concluded.' tion. During the years 1859 and 1860 the discusDelays in Negotia- sion as to the boundary was continued by Mr. Cass and Lord Lyons, and on the 10th of December 1860 the latter, no approach to a direct agreement having been made, proposed arbitration by the King of the Netherlands, the King of Sweden and Norway, or the President of Switzerland. To this proposition no reply appears to have been made, and for several years the discussion was discontinued. In 1866 the attention of the Government of the United States was recalled to the unsettled state of the question by conflicts between its own civil and military authorities, the latter being required to prevent the exercise of civil jurisdiction on the disputed islands, while the former insisted upon exercising it and proceeded to punish those who prevented them from doing so. Johnson-Clarendon On the 14th of January 1869 Mr. Reverdy Johnson and Lord Clarendon concluded a convention for the submission of the boundary question to the arbitration of the President of the Swiss Confederation. It authorized the arbitrator to determine the line intended by the treaty of 1846, and, if he should be unable to do so, to determine upon some line which, in his opinion, would A characteristic and amusing account of this incident may be found in the Memoirs of Lieutenant-General Scott, LL.D., Written by Himself, II. 604-606. 2 $. Ex. Doc. 29, 40 Cong. 2 sess. 5, 265, furnish an equitable solution of the difficulty and be the nearest approximation that could be made to an accurate construction of the words by which the line was described.1 This convention was submitted to the Senate, but no vote on it was taken. It was understood that it was not favorably regarded by the Senate; and the period prescribed for its ratification was permitted to expire." sion, 1871. When the Joint High Commission between Joint High Commis- the United States and Great Britain met in Washington in 1871, the subject of the northwestern boundary came before it as one of the unsettled questions which affected "the relations of the United States towards Her Majesty's possessions, in North America." 3 Preliminary Discussions. On the 15th of March the British commissioners, in pursuance of their instructions, proposed that an arbitration of the question should be effected on the basis of the Johnson-Clarendon convention. This proposal the American commissioners declined, at the same time expressing a wish that an effort should be made to settle the question in the Joint High Commission. The British commissioners assented to this, and set forth the reasons which induced them to regard Rosario Strait as the channel described in the treaty of 1846. The American commissioners replied, presenting the reasons which induced them to regard the Canal de Haro as the true channel; and they also produced in support of their views some original correspondence of Mr. Edward Everett, to which no allusion had been made in previous discussions of the question. New Evidence. By this correspondence it appeared that Mr. Everett, during his mission to England, from 1842 to 1815, frequently discussed the northwestern boundary with Lord Aberdeen on the basis of the forty-ninth parallel, with such a deflection as to give all of Vancouver's Island to Great Britain. It also appeared that during the controversy preceding the conclusion of the treaty of 1846, Mr. William Sturgis, of Boston, was in confidential correspondence with Mr. Bancroft, his relative, then of President Polk's Cabinet, and also with Mr. Joshua Bates, of London, a member of the house of the Barings. In January 1845 Mr. Sturgis delivered a lecture on the Oregon question, the substance 1 Dip. Cor. 1868, part 1, pp. 400, 404. of which was published in a pamphlet.' This pamphlet and Mr. Sturgis's letters were communicated by Mr. Bates to Lord Aberdeen, and Mr. Bates stated in one of his letters to Mr. Sturgis that Lord Aberdeen had informed him that he considered the pamphlet a fair, practicable, and sensible view of the subject, and that it had been read by all the ministers. Mr. Everett, in a confidential dispatch to Mr. Calhoun of April 2, 1845, stated that "a person very high in the confidence of the government, but not belonging to it," had informed him that he considered Mr. Sturgis's view of the Oregon question as fair and candid. In his pamphlet Mr. Sturgis took the ground that both parties would attain their object in securing a just result "by adopting as the boundary a continuation of the parallel of 49° across the Rocky Mountains to tide-water, say to the middle of the 'Gulf of Georgia'; thence by the northernmost navigable passage (not north of 49°) to the Straits of Juan de Fuca, aud down the middle of these Straits to the Pacific Ocean; the navigation of the Gulf of Georgia, and the Straits of Juan de Fuca to be forever free to both parties, all the islands and other territory lying south and east of this line to belong to the United States, and all north and west to Great Britain. By this arrangement," continued Mr. Sturgis, "we should yield to Great Britain the portion of Quadra and Vancouver's Island that lies south of latitude of 49°, which, in a territorial point of view, is of too little importance to deserve a moment's consideration; and both parties would secure for a considerable extent a well defined natural boundary, about which there could hereafter be no doubt or dispute. Will Great Britain accede to this? I think she will." In a letter to Mr. Archibald Campbell of May 29, 1858, Mr. Everett, referring to the pamphlet and correspondence of Mr. Sturgis, observed that as the "radical principle" of the boundary was the forty-ninth degree of latitude, and the only reason for departing from it was to give the whole of Vancouver's Island to the party acquiring the largest part of it, "the deflection from the 49th degree southward should be limited to that object, and the nearest channel adopted which fulfills the above conditions." 2 The Oregon Question: Substance of a Lecture before the Mercantile Library Association, Delivered January 22, 1845, by William Sturgis. Boston: Jordan, Swift & Wiley, 1845. 2S. Ex. Doc. 29, 40 Cong. 2 sess. 50-51; Papers relating to the Treaty of Washington, V. 27-38. 5627-15 |