The Oregon Treaty of June 15, 1846 , extended the boundary between the United States and British America west of the Rocky Mountains along the forty-ninth parallel north latitude to the Pacific Ocean. This treaty was the peaceful climax of a long-standing territorial controversy that at one time threatened seriously to involve the United States and Great Britain in a war. The territory in dispute lay be tween latitude forty-two north and fifty-four north, and between the Rocky Mountains and the Pacific Ocean. For thirty years neither nation had been willing to agree to a definite division of territory, and two conventions, in 1818 and in 1827, had resulted in an agreement to joint occupation. By 1846 Great Britain had practically abandoned her claim to the territory between the forty-second parallel and the Columbia River, nor did she, in the course of the negotiations of 1844-46 , aggressively assert it. While the United States at all times vigorously asserted her right to the entire territory north to latitude fifty-four forty, she had, by thrice proposing to accept the forty-ninth parallel as a boundary, practically admitted the validity of the English claim north of that line,-the slogan "Fifty-four-forty or fight" to the contrary notwithstanding. The heart of the dispute, then, was the territory between the Columbia River and the forty-ninth parallel.
The treaty of 1846 awarded this entire region to the
United States. Certainly the disputed territory was not
granted to the United States because she had a superior
legal title to it; the English title was not inferior to the
American, and in international politics boundaries are the
products not of law, but of accommodation. How did the
United States manage to secure the region north of the
Columbia River? What factor or factors enabled the United
States to vindicate her claim by the diplomatic triumph of
the Oregon Treaty?
The orthodox answer to this query has perhaps best been
voiced by President Harding in his address at Meacham, Oregon: "But stern determination triumphed, and! the result was conclusive. Americans had settled the country. The country belonged to them because they had taken it; and in the end the boundary settlement was made on the line of the forty-ninth parallel, your great Northwest was saved and a veritable empire was merged in the young Republic."'1 This was for popular consumption, but a prominent historian has given it his support. "It was the Oregon pioneer," writes Dr. Schafer, "who, fulfilling by his arduous trail-making across the continent in the forties earlier prophesies of American expansion to the Pacific, vindicated his government's pretensions to the forty-ninth parallel boundary on the ground of contiguity, and actually prepared the triumph technically won by American diplomacy."2 The acquisition of Oregon is viewed as a victory of our diplomats, indeed, but far more as a victory of our settlers. This doctrine, that the acquisition of Oregon was secured, not in Washington, but on the banks of the Columbia, has undeniable appeal and undeniable force. The doctrine that sovereignty follows settlement has force because, especially in the history of this nation, it has generally been true. In the particular history of the Oregon controversy, too, the territory south of the Columbia River was guaranteed, beyond question, to the United States by the American settlements along the Willamette. Both England and the United States recognized the force of this argument from possession: England by virtually abandoning her claim to this region, the United States by basing her claim to sovereignty so largely on possession.3 The only objection to the application of this theory of territorial acquisition by settlement to the Oregon territory, is that, while it is valid for the region south of the Columbia River, it can have no application to the region between the Columbia and the forty-ninth parallel. This territory could not
1 New York Times, July 4, 1923.
2 Schafer, Joseph, Oregon Pioneers and American Diplomacy, in
Turner Essays in American History; 55.
3 John Quincy Adams in Congressional Globe, Feb. 9, 1846.