on the President with a view that the attention of the governments of the two countries might be "the more earnestly directed to the adoption of all proper measures for a speedy and amicable adjustment" of their "differences and disputes." Notice of abrogration of the treaty of 1827 was communicated by Mr. McLane to Lord Aberdeen on May 22, 1846.2

1

On the 6th of June 1846 Mr. Pakenham preThe Oregon Treaty. sented to Mr. Buchanan a draft of a treaty. This draft the President, before authorizing the Secretary of State to sign it, took the unusual course of submitting to the Senate. The Senate, after three days' deliberation, by a vote of 37 to 12 advised that the proposal of the British Government be accepted, and on the 15th of June the treaty was signed without the addition or alteration of a word.3 After its signature it was again submitted to the Senate, which gave its advice and consent to the exchange of the ratifications by a vote of 41 to 14.4

Views as to Water
Boundary.

In a private and confidential letter to Mr. McLane on the 6th of June 1846, the day the draft of the treaty was presented by Mr. Pakenham, Mr. Buchanan said: "The proviso of the first article would seem to render it questionable whether both parties would have the right to navigate the Strait of Fuca, as an arm of the sea, north of the parallel of 49°; neither does it provide that the line shall pass through the Canal de Arro, as stated in your despatch. This would probably be the fair construction." In a letter to Mr. John Randolph Clay on Saturday,

19 Stats. at L. 109.

2 Br. and For. State Papers, LVI. 1406-1410.

3 For. Rel. 1873, Part 3, p. 310.

4 Curtis's Life of Buchanan, I. 560; Benton's Thirty Years' View, II. Chap. CLIX. 673. Mr. Webster, in a speech at a public dinner in Philadelphia, December 2, 1846, said: "Now, gentlemen, the remarkable characteristic of the settlement of this Oregon question by treaty is this. In the general operation of government, treaties are negotiated by the President and ratified by the Senate; but here is the reverse,-here is a treaty negotiated by the Senate, and only agreed to by the President." (Webster's Works, II. 322.) The debates in Congress on the questions connected with the treaty may be found in the Congressional Globe and Appendix for the first session of the Twenty-ninth Congress. On the 11th of May 1846 President Polk sent his special message to Congress, asking for the recognition of a state of war with Mexico, and on the following day an act was passed declaring that war existed.

5 Curtis's Life of Buchanan, I. 559-560.

the 13th of June, Mr. Buchanan, referring to the fact that the treaty would be signed on the following Monday, said: "The terms are, an extension of the 49th parallel of latitude to the middle of the channel which separates the continent from Vancouver's Island, thence along the middle of this channel and the Strait of Fuca, so as to surrender the whole of that Island to Great Britain." Mr. Benton, in a speech in the Senate in advocacy of the ratification of the treaty, said: "The line follows the parallel of forty-nine degrees to the sea, with a slight deflection through the Straits of Fuca to avoid cutting the south end of Vancouver's Island. When the line reaches the channel which separates Vancouver's Island from the continent it proceeds to the middle of the channel, and thence turning south through the channel de Haro (wrongfully written Arro on the maps) to the Straits of Fuca; and then west through the middle of that strait to the sea. This is a fair partition of these waters, and gives us everything that we want, namely, all the waters of Puget Sound, Hood's Canal, Admiralty Inlet, Bellingham Bay, Birch Bay, and with them the cluster of islands, probably of no value, between De Haro's Channel and the continent." We have already quoted the language used by Mr. McLane in describing, in his dispatch of the 18th of May, the proposition Lord Aberdeen "most probably" would make. In his instructions of the same day to Mr. Pakenham with which the draft of the treaty was sent out, Lord Aberdeen described the line as running from the seacoast in a southerly direction through the centre of King George's Sound and the Straits of Fuca to the Oceanthus giving to Great Britain the whole of Vancouver's Island and its harbors."3 On June 29, 1846, in the House of Commons, Sir Robert Peel, in tendering the resignation of his ministry, described the British offer as follows: "That which we proposed is the continuation of the forty-ninth parallel of latitude till it strikes the Straits of Fuca; that that parallel should not be continued as a boundary across Vancouver's Island, thus depriving us of a part of Vancouver's Island; but that the middle of the channel shall be the future boundary, thus leaving us in possession of the whole of Vancouver's Island, 1 Curtis's Life of Buchanan, I. 561. 2S. Ex. Doc. 29, 40 Cong. 2 sess. 68. 3S. Ex. Doc. 29, 40 Cong. 2 sess. 81

with equal right to navigation of the Straits." It thus appears that while the language of the treaty was, as Mr. Buchanan admitted, capable of more than one construction, the object of the contracting parties in deflecting the boundary southward from its course along the forty-ninth parallel was to give the whole of Vancouver's Island to Great Britain.

On October 19, 1846, Mr. Boyd, chargé Doubt Raised as to d'affaires ad interim of the United States at Boundary. London, informed Mr. Buchanan that it had recently come to his knowledge, through channels not directly official, yet entitled to implicit reliance, that certain British subjects were contemplating the founding of a settlement on Whidby's Island, one of the archipelago south of the fortyninth parallel, and that the government, which had been led to expect a formal application for its sanction of such settlement, had been thrown into doubt whether, according to the boundary described in the recent treaty, that island would fall within British or American jurisdiction. He thought the British Government would deeply regret the occurrence of any difficulty in tracing the channel.

On the 3d of November George Bancroft, Bancroft-Palmerston who had become minister of the United States Correspondence. at London, addressed to his government a request for a traced copy, which he had caused to be made while in the Navy Department, of Wilkes's chart of the Straits of Haro. It had, he said, been intimated to him that questions might arise with regard to the islands east of that strait; and he asked authority to meet any such claim at the threshold by the assertion of the central channel of the Straits of Haro as the main channel intended by the treaty. He said he was well informed that some of the islands were of value. On the 28th of December Mr. Buchanan sent him the chart in question, aud, calling attention to Mr. McLane's conversation with Lord Aberdeen, said it was not probable that a claim "to any island lying to the eastward of the Canal de Arro” would be seriously preferred by the British Government. On the 29th of March 1847 Mr. Bancroft reported that his attention had again been called to the probable wishes of the Hudson's Bay Company to get some of the islands properly belonging to the United States. The ministry, he believed, had no such design,

For. Rel. 1873, part 3, p. 309.

but he was not so well assured that the Hudson's Bay Company was equally reasonable. On August 4, 1848, Mr. Baucroft wrote that the Hudson's Bay Company had been trying to get a grant of Vancouver's Island. When he inquired from curiosity about it, Lord Palmerston replied that it was an affair that belonged exclusively to the colonial office; and he then told Mr. Bancroft what the latter had not previously learned, that a proposition had been made at Washington for marking the place where the forty-ninth parallel touched the sea, and for ascertaining the divisional line in the channel by noting the bearings of certain objects. Mr. Bancroft observed that on the mainland a few simple astronomical observations were all that were requisite; that the waters of the Canal de Haro did not require to be divided, since the navigation was free to both parties, though of course the islands east of the center of the channel belonged to the United States. Lord Palmerston said he had no good chart of the Oregon waters, and asked Mr. Bancroft to let him see the traced copy of Wilkes's chart. Mr. Bancroft sent it to him; and on the 3d of November 1848, having obtained copies of further surveys from the Navy Department of the United States, he communicated them also to Lord Palmerston, with a note in which there is the following sentence: "The surveys extend to the line of 49°, and by combining two of the charts your Lordship will readily trace the whole course of the channel of Haro, through the middle of which our boundary line passes." Lord Palmerston acknowledged the receipt of the charts on the 7th of November, and observed that the information contained in them would no doubt be of great service to the commissioners who were to be appointed under the treaty, "by assisting them in determining where the line of boundary described in the first article of that treaty ought to run.”1

Marking Boundary.

The proposal to mark the boundary to which British Proposal for Lord Palmerston referred was submitted by Mr. Crampton, British minister at Washing ton, to Mr. Buchanan on the 13th of January 1848. In the letter in which the proposal was made, Mr. Crampton said that, in regard to the water boundary, "a preliminary ques tion arises which turns upon the interpretation of the treaty rather than upon the result of local observation and survey." The treaty referred to the channel which separated the

1 S. Ex. Doc. 29, 40 Cong. 2 sess. 84-85.

continent from Vancouver's Island. Generally speaking, the word channel, when employed in treaties, meant a deep and navigable channel. In the present case it was, said Mr. Crampton, believed that only one channel, namely, that which was laid down by Vancouver in his chart, had in that part of the gulf been surveyed and used, and it seemed natural to suppose that the negotiators of the Oregon convention, in employing the word "channel," had that particular channel in view. If this construction should be mutually adopted, no preliminary difficulty would exist, and it was to be wished that such an arrangement might be agreed upon, since otherwise much time might be wasted in surveying the various intricate channels between Vancouver's Island and the mainland, and some difficulty might arise in deciding which of them ought to be adopted for the boundary. The main channel marked in Vancouver's chart was, indeed, said Mr. Crampton, somewhat nearer to the continent than to Vancouver's Island, and its adoption would leave on the British side of the line rather more of the small islets with which that part of the gulf was studded than would remain on the American side. But these islands, he said, were of little or no value, and the only large and valuable island belonging to the group, namely, Whidby's, would of course belong to the United States. Accompanying this letter of Mr. Crampton was a draft of instructions. this draft it was proposed that, as that part of the channel of the Gulf of Georgia which lies nearly midway between the forty-eighth and forty-ninth parallels of north latitude appeared by Vancouver's chart to be obstructed by numerous islands, which seemed to be separated from each other by small and intricate channels as yet unexplored, it should mutually be agreed that the line of boundary should be drawn along the middle of the wide channel to the east of those islands, which was laid down by Vancouver and marked as the channel which was explored and used by the officers under his command.'

Disputes as to Jurisdiction.

In

The negotiations were productive of no result, and for a period of almost ten years after the conclusion of the treaty no effective steps were taken by the contracting parties toward ascer taining the boundary. Meanwhile, settlers were entering and occupying the territory, and, besides the danger of collisions, the need

1S. Ex. Doc. 29, 40 Cong. 2 sess. 40-43.