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Show 84 HISTORY OF PUBLIC LAND LAW DEVELOPMENT Oregon Compromise Bernard DeVoto has called 1846 "the year of decision." In that year the War with Mexico was declared; between 15,000 and 20,000 Mormons started their migration across the Mississippi from Nauvoo to Winter Quarters near present Omaha; some 2,000-3,000 Americans trekked across the plains to California and Oregon; and Great Britain and the United States resolved to end their joint occupation of the Oregon region by dividing it at the 49th parallel.15 American claims to the Pacific Northwest rested solidly on Captain Robert Gray's discovery of the Columbia River, the Lewis and Clark expedition, the transfer of Spanish rights to the United States, John Jacob Astor's establishment of Astoria, and the journeys of missionaries Jason Lee and Marcus Whitman and adventurers such as Hall Jackson Kelley and Nathaniel Wyeth to Oregon. Increasing numbers of American settlers followed the Oregon Trail looking for the choice land that Whitman, Lee, Kelley, and Wyeth had described. By 1843 there were enough Americans in the territory south of the Columbia to organize a provisional government that was sanctioned by the local officials of the Hudson's Bay Company. Three years later the rough and ready American immigration had overwhelmed in numbers the few British subjects and had sufficiently alarmed officials of the company that they moved the center of their operations to Fort Victoria. This move was made easier for them by the fact that the company had trapped to the point of extinction the fur-bearing animals in the Columbia Basin.16 At this point British and American agents drafted the Treaty of June 15, 1846, whereby the Oregon country was divided at the 49th parallel except that the southern tip of Vancouver Island was re- 16 Bernard DeVoto, The Tear of Decision (Boston, 1943), p. 29 and elsewhere. 16 Merk, The Oregon Question (Cambridge, Mass., 1967), pp. 244 ff. tained by the British. The settlement of the Oregon question added 180,644,480 acres to the public lands of the United States. Gadsden Purchase One other contiguous territory was yet to be added-the Gadsden Purchase. By the 1850's railroads were being projected in all directions and the Pacific Coast was demanding that it be connected with the East by rail. The shortest, most feasible route connecting San Francisco and Sacramento with the Missouri Valley was by way of the California Trail, the North Platte, South Pass, and the Humboldt River. If a more southerly route was desired, that later followed in part by the Santa Fe Railroad on the 35th parallel by way of the Needles crossing of the Colorado had its advantages. Southern members of Congress and promoters interested in what was called the $100 million railroad to connect San Diego with New Orleans, and those dissatisfied with the territory wrung from Mexico in 1848 combined to demand of Mexico another cession. This, at the least, would make possible the building of an all-American railroad by way of El Paso and Fort Yuma (the Gila River route); at the utmost it would have torn away a large corner of northern Mexico. James Gadsden, a South Carolinian railroad promoter, was placed in charge of negotiations for the acquisition of the additional area and the settlement of other claim matters. After long negotiations Mexico agreed to sell for $10 million a tract south of the Gila River containing 18,961,920 acres that were said by Thomas Hart Benton of Missouri to be "so utterly desolate, desert and God-forsaken" that neither men nor wolves could live on it. Benton was, of course, an advocate of a more central railroad route that would be immediately beneficial to St. Louis. On a per acre basis the cost of the Gadsden Purchase was the second highest of all American territorial purchases, only ex- |
