accumulated to twenty-three millions of dollars the amount of their payments already m and thus saved in all cases their homes fields, and as much more of their purchas they were able to pay for at the reduced It was an equitable arrangement of a diff subject, and lacked but two features to ma perfect; first, a pre-emptive right to all settlers; and, secondly, a periodical reductio price according to the length of time the should have been in market, so as to allow different prices for different qualities, an accomplish in a reasonable time the sale of whole. Applications were made at that for the establishment of the pre-emptive syst but without effect, and, apparently without prospect of eventual success. Not even a re of a committee could be got in its favor-not more than temporary provisions, as specia -a large sum in itself, but enormous when considered in reference to the payors, only a small proportion of the population, and they chiefly the inhabitants of the new States and territories, whose resources were few. Their situation was deplorable. A heavy debt to pay, and lands already partly paid for to be forfeited if full payment was not made. The system was this: the land was sold at a minimum price of two dollars per acre, one payment in hand and the remainder in four annual instalments, with forfeiture of all that had been paid if each successive instalment was not delivered to the day. In the eagerness to procure fresh lands, and stimulated by the delusive prosperity which multitudes of banks created after the war, there was no limit to purchasers except in the ability to make the first payment. That being accom-vors, in particular circumstances. But pers plished, it was left to the future to provide for rance was successful. The new States conti the remainder. The banks failed; money van- to press the question, and finally prevailed; ished; instalments were becoming due which now the pre-emptive principle has becon could not be met; and the opening of Congress fixed part of our land system, permanently in November, 1820, was saluted by the arrival corporated with it, and to the equal advan of memorials from all the new States, showing of the settler and the government. The se the distress, and praying relief to the purchasers gets a choice home in a new country, due to of the public lands. The President, in his an- enterprise, courage, hardships and privation nual message to Congress, deemed it his duty to subduing the wilderness: the government g bring the subject before that body, and in doing body of cultivators whose labor gives valu so recommended indulgence in consideration of the surrounding public lands, and whose cour the unfavorable change which had occurred and patriotism volunteers for the public defe since the sales. Both Houses of Congress took whenever it is necessary The second, or gra up the subject, and a measure of relief was ation principle, though much pressed, has devised by the Secretary of the Treasury, Mr. yet been established, but its justice and po Crawford, which was equally desirable both to are self-evident, and the exertions to procur the purchaser and the government. The prin- should not be intermitted until successful. ciple of the relief was to change all future sales passage of this land relief bill was attended from the credit to the cash system, and to reduce incidents which showed the delicacy of memb the minimum price of the lands to one dollar, at that time, in voting on questions in wh twenty-five cents per acre, and to give all pre- they might be interested. Many members sent debtors the benefit of that system, by al- Congress were among the public land debt lowing them to consolidate payments already and entitled to the relief to be granted. made on different tracts on any particular one, of their number, Senator William Smith, fr relinquishing the rest; and allowing a discount South Carolina, brought the point before for ready pay on all that had been entered, Senate on a motion to be excused from vot equal to the difference between the former and on account of his interest. The motion to exc present minimum price. This released the pur- was rejected, on the ground that his interest v chasers from debt, and the government from the general, in common with the country, and inconvenient relation of creditor to its own citi-particular, in relation to himself: and that zens. A debt of twenty-three millions of dol- constituents were entitled to the benefit of lars was quietly got rid of, and purchasers were enabled to save lands, at the reduced price, to vote. CHAPTER V. OREGON TERRITORY. measure. The fur trade, the Asiatic trade, and THE session of 1820-21 is remarkable as being tion. The inhabitants of the oldest and the posite the head of the Missouri, asce source in the Rocky Mountains, and the Missouri to the French settleme Upper Mississippi; and thence home. magnificent and a daring project of and on that account the more captivat ardent spirit of Ledyard. He unde went to St. Petersburg-received the of the Empress-and had arrived i when he was overtaken by a revocati permission, and conducted as a spy o country. He then returned to Paris sumed his original design of that explo the Nile to its sources which terminat premature death, and deprived the w young and adventurous explorer, fro ardour, courage, perseverance and geni and useful results were to have been Mr. Jefferson was balked in that, his tempt, to establish the existence of the River. But a time was coming for him t take it under better auspices. He beca sident of the United States, and in that c projected the expedition of Lewis and obtained the sanction of Congress, and se forth to discover the head and course river (whose mouth was then known), double purpose of opening an inland com communication with Asia, and enlargi boundaries of geographical science. Th mercial object was placed first in his m and as the object to legitimate the exp And thus Mr. Jefferson was the first to the North American road to India, and troduction of Asiatic trade on that road; that I myself have either said or written o subject from the year 1819, when I first t up, down to the present day when I still co for it, is nothing but the fruit of the seed ed in my mind by the philosophic hand o Jefferson. Honor to all those who shall in accomplishing his great idea. and I for one had as lief see American ministers going to the emperors of China and Japan, to the king of Persia, and even to the Grand Turk, us to see them dancing attendance upon those European legitimates who hold every thing American in contempt and detestation." Thus I spoke; and this I believe was the first time that a suggestion for sending ministers to the Oriental nations was publicly made in the United States. It was then a "wild" suggestion: it is now history. Besides the preservation of our own territory on the Pacific, the establishment of a port there for the shelter of our commercial and military marine, the protection of the fur trade and aid to the whaling vessels, the accomplishment of Mr. Jefferson's idea of a commercial communication with Asia through the heart of our own continent, was constantly insisted upon as a consequence of planting an American colony at the mouth of the Columbia. That man of large and useful ideas-that statesman who could conceive measures useful to all mankind, and in all time to come-was the first to propose that commercial communication, and may also be considered the first discoverer of the Columbia River. His philosophic mind told him that where a snow-clad mountain, like that of the Rocky Mountains, shed the waters on one side which collected into such a river as the Missouri, there must be a corresponding shedding and collection of waters on the other; and thus he was perfectly assured of the existence of a river where the Columbia has since been found to be, although no navigator had seen its mouth and no explorer trod its banks. His conviction was complete; but the idea was too grand and useful to be permitted to rest in speculation. He was then minister to France, and the famous traveller Ledyard, having arrived at Paris on his expedition of discovery to the Nile, was prevailed upon by Mr. Jefferson to enter upon a fresher and more useful field of discovery. He proposed to him to change his theatre from the Old to the New World, and. proceeding to St. Petersburg upon a passport he would obtain for him, he should there obtain permission from the Empress Catharine to traverse her dominions in a high northern latitude to their eastern extremity-cross the sea from Kamschatka, or at Behring's Straits, and descending the northwest coast of America, I was a member of the bar at St. Louis, in come down upon the river which must head op- then territory of Missouri, in the year 1 CHAPTER VI. FLORIDA TREATY AND CESSION OF TEXA when the Washington City newspapers made which was equally due to him and to myself. known the progress of that treaty with Spain, The treaty was signed on the anniversary of which was signed on the 22d day of February the birth-day of Washington, and sent to the following, and which, in acquiring Florida, gave Senate the same day, and unanimously ratified away Texas. I was shocked at it—at the ces- on the next day, with the general approbation sion of Texas, and the new boundaries proposed of the country, and the warm applause of the for the United States on the southwest. The newspaper press. This unanimity of the Senate, acquisition of Florida was a desirable object, and applause of the press, made no impression long sought, and sure to be obtained in the pro- upon me. I continued to assail the treaty and gress of events; but the new boundaries, besides its authors, and the more bitterly, because the cutting off Texas, dismembered the valley of the official correspondence, when published, showed Mississippi, mutilated two of its noblest rivers, that this great sacrifice of territory, rivers, and brought a foreign dominion (and it non-slave- proper boundaries, was all gratuitous and volunholding), to the neighborhood of New Orleans, tary on our part-" that the Spanish governand established a wilderness barrier between ment had offered us more than we accepted;" Missouri and New Mexico-to interrupt their and that it was our policy, and not hers, which trade, separate their inhabitants, and shelter the had deprived us of Texas and the large country, wild Indian depredators upon the lives and pro- in addition to Texas, which lay between the Red perty of all who undertook to pass from one to River and Upper Arkansas. This was an enigma, the other. I was not then in politics, and had the solution of which, in my mind, strongly nothing to do with political affairs; but I saw at connected itself with the Missouri controversy once the whole evil of this great sacrifice, and then raging (1819) with its greatest violence, instantly raised my voice against it in articles threatening existing political parties with subpublished in the St. Louis newspapers, and in version, and the Union with dissolution. My which were given, in advance, all the national mind went there-to that controversy-for the reasons against giving away the country, which solution, but with a misdirection of its applicawere afterwards, and by so many tongues, and tion. I blamed the northern men in Mr. Monat the expense of war and a hundred millions, roe's cabinet: the private papers of General given to get it back. I denounced the treaty, Jackson, which have come to my hands, enable and attacked its authors and their motives, and me to correct that error, and give me an inside imprecated a woe on the heads of those who view of that which I could only see on the outshould continue to favor it. "The magnificent side before. In a private letter from Mr. Monvalley of the Mississippi is ours, with all its roe to General Jackson, dated at Washington, fountains, springs and floods; and woe to the May 22d, 1820-more than one year after the statesman who shall undertake to surrender one negotiation of the treaty, written to justify it, drop of its water, one inch of its soil, to any and evidently called out by Mr. Clay's attack foreign power." In these terms I spoke, and in upon it-are these passages: Having long this spirit I wrote, before the treaty was even known the repugnance with which the eastern ratified. Mr. John Quincy Adams, the Secre- portion of our Union, or rather some of those tary of State, negotiator and ostensible author who have enjoyed its confidence (for I do not of the treaty, was the statesman against whom think that the people themselves have any intermy censure was directed, and I was certainly est or wish of that kind), have seen its aggransincere in my belief of his great culpability. dizement to the West and South, I have been But the declaration which he afterwards made | decidedly of opinion that we ought to be content on the floor of the House, absolved him from censure on account of that treaty, and placed the blame on the majority in Mr. Monroe's cabinet, southern men, by whose vote he had been governed in ceding Texas and fixing the boundary which I so much condemned. After this authoritative declaration, I made, in my place in the Senate, the honorable amends to Mr. Adams, with Florida for the present, and until the public opinion in that quarter shall be reconciled to any further change. I mention these circumstances to show you that our difficulties are not with Spain alone, but are likewise internal, proceeding from various causes, which certain men are prompt to seize and turn to the account of their own ambitious views." This paragraph from Mr. Monroe's letter lifts the curtain which four months after the purchase of Louisianaconcealed the secret reason for ceding Texas- he wrote to Dr. Breckenridge: "Objections are that secret which explains what was incompre-raising to the eastward to the vast extent of our hensible-our having refused to accept as much boundaries, and propositions are made to exas Spain had offered. Internal difficulties, it change Louisiana, or a part of it, for the Floriwas thus shown, had induced that refusal; and das; but as I have said, we shall get the Florithese difficulties grew out of the repugnance of das without; and I would not give one inch of leading men in the northeast to see the further the waters of the Mississippi to any foreign aggrandizement of the Union upon the South nation." So that Mr. Jefferson, neither in 1803 and West. This repugnance was then taking nor in 1819, would have mutilated Louisiana to an operative form in the shape of the Missouri obtain the cession of Florida, which he knew controversy; and, as an immediate consequence, would be obtained without that mutilation; nor threatened the subversion of political party lines, would he have yielded to the threatening disconand the introduction of the slavery question into tent in the east. I have a gratification that the federal elections and legislation, and bring- without knowing it, and at a thousand miles ing into the highest of those elections-those of from him, I took the same ground that Mr. Jef President and Vice-President—a test which no ferson stood on, and even used his own words southern candidate could stand. The repug- "Not an inch of the waters of the Mississippi to nance in the northeast was not merely to terri- any nation." But I was mortified at the time torial aggrandizement in the southwest, but to that not a paper in the United States backed my the consequent extension of slavery in that quar- essays. It was my first experience in standing ter; and to allay that repugnance, and to pre- "solitary and alone;" but I stood it withou vent the slavery extension question from becom- flinching, and even incurred the imputation o ing a test in the presidential election, was the being opposed to the administration—had t true reason for giving away Texas, and the true encounter that objection in my first election t solution of the enigma involved in the strange the Senate, and was even viewed as an opponen refusal to accept as much as Spain offered. The by Mr. Monroe himself, when I first came t treaty was disapproved by Mr. Jefferson, to Washington. He had reason to know befor whom a similar letter was written to that sent his office expired, and still more after it expired to General Jackson, and for the same purpose that no one (of the young generation) had to obtain his approbation; but he who had ac- more exalted opinion of his honesty, patriotism quired Louisiana, and justly gloried in the act, firmness and general soundness of judgment; could not bear to see that noble province muti- would be more ready, whenever the occasio lated, and returned his dissent to the act, and permitted, to do justice to his long and illus his condemnation of the policy on which it was trious career of public service. The treaty, as done. General Jackson had yielded to the have said, was promptly and unanimously rat arguments of Mr. Monroe, and consented to the fied by the American Senate; not so on th cession of Texas as a temporary measure. The part of Spain. She hesitated, delayed, procra words of his answer to Mr. Monroe's letter tinated; and finally suffered the time limite were: "I am clearly of your opinion, that, for for the exchange of ratifications to expire, the present, we ought to be contented with the out having gone through that indispensab Floridas." But Mr. Jefferson would yield to no formality. Of course this put an end to th temporary views of policy, and remained inflexi- treaty, unless it could be revived; and, ther bly opposed to the treaty; and in this he was upon, new negotiations and vehement expostul consistent with his own conduct in similar cir- tions against the conduct which refused to rati cumstances. Sixteen years before, he had been a treaty negotiated upon full powers and in co in the same circumstances-at the time of the formity to instructions. It was in the cour acquisition of Louisiana-when he had the same of this renewed negotiation, and of these war repugnance to southwestern aggrandizement to expostulations, that Mr. Adams used the stro contend with, and the same bait (Florida) to expressions to the Spanish ministry, so enigm tempt him. Then eastern men raised the same tical at the time, "That Spain had offered mo objections; and as early as August 1803-only than we accepted, and that she dare not der with |