Part 16

Fort Walla Walla marks an important strategic point in the early movement of emigration to Oregon. Situated only nine miles below the junction of the two great branches of the Columbia, it was thus also planted at the meeting of two great trans-continental routes of travel, one coming from the United States by way of the South Pass, the other from Hudson's Bay by way of Lake Athabasca and the mountain passes near it. For such of the emigrants as chose to go on by water, Walla Walla was the end of their long overland journey. Fremont found a large body of emigrants, under the lead of Mr. Jesse Applegate, building bateaux here to go down the river in.

But the British trading-post lay on a sandy plain, where scarce a blade of grass or a shrub grew. Dr. Whitman had chosen a pleasant and fertile nook, not far from the fort, where emigrants might recruit themselves among friends; for at the fort itself every effort was made to turn them back or send them into California. Thus everywhere, except at the missions, emigrants found this Oregon Trail a hard road to travel, for our Government left them to the mercy of the Hudson's Bay Company's agents, who hindered them in every way, or failing to stop them, charged exorbitantly for every thing furnished.

Finding emigration would increase in spite of them, this company chose to save itself by bringing in British emigrants from the Red River of the North. It meant to occupy the best lands, as it had the best trading sites. The first colony was on the Upper Columbia when Dr. Whitman heard of it. If Oregon were to be saved to us, there was not a moment to lose. He instantly started for Washington with the news of this threatened invasion.

Dr. Whitman's ride to St. Louis, by way of Santa Fé, will ever be memorable in the annals of Oregon, as well for its perils as for what it accomplished. He found our Government had just signed the Ashburton Treaty,[9] by which Oregon was still left out in the cold, without a boundary or the protection of our laws or flag. His great energy, however, enabled him to get together on the frontier an emigrants' train of two hundred wagons with which, as the leader of an army, he started back in the spring. It was these people whom Fremont had seen setting out, had tracked a thousand miles on their way, and finally come up with at their journey's end. As the Government would not lead, it now had to follow the people's grand march for the Pacific.

With fresh horses Fremont pushed on down the left bank of the Columbia to the Dalles, Mount Hood towering in the distance. Here the whole river rushes through a long and narrow trough of rock, with so swift a tide that in the season of high water boats cannot stem it.

A few miles below, Fremont emerged from the sterile and inhospitable region through which he had been travelling, upon a green spot in the valley, where, among groves of noble forest-trees, the Methodist mission had reared its two dwellings, its one schoolhouse, and its barn, cleared ground for planting, gathered to it a colony of Indians for instruction in the ways and religion of the whites, and so dropped in the wilderness the seed of Christian civilization.

From the Dalles, Fremont sailed down the river to Vancouver, finding here still more emigrants, most of whom were waiting to cross over into the fertile Willamette Valley, which was then their land of promise.

At this point Fremont's journey ended. His explorations had now connected with surveys conducted by Captain Wilkes from the Pacific coast. Fremont therefore turned homeward again, taking with him the most exact knowledge of the country traversed, so far obtained.

FOOTNOTES

[1] J. NICOLAS NICOLLET had first established the sources of the Mississippi. He had returned from exploring a considerable part of Minnesota and Dakota.

[2] THE SOUTH PASS cuts the south part of the Wind River chain.

[3] KANSAS CITY took its name thus early from its neighborhood to the Kansas River (though in Missouri), which has led many to suppose it is in Kansas.

[4] ST. VRAIN'S FORT, a fur-trading post, in communication with Santa Fé by way of Taos. Under the mountains, seventeen miles east of Long's Peak.

[5] FORT LARAMIE, first called Fort William (Sublette), built by Robert Campbell about 1835, since named from the Laramie Fork, near which it stands. Its walls were ranges of adobe houses, in the Spanish style, with bastions at the corners. The house tops or roof formed a banquette, on which, again, was set a row of palisades.

BENT'S FORT, on the Arkansas, established by Charles Bent, was the third of these remote posts, for which the above description will suffice.

[6] CACHE-À-LA-POUDRE. French, hiding-place for the powder.

[7] SALT LAKE was known to early Spanish explorers (see p. 37); had been often visited, but not explored. Ashley of Missouri, who led a party of trappers to the heads of the Colorado in 1823, built the next year a trading-house near Salt Lake. See also Bonneville's account. Fremont's explorations disclosed the existence of a great interior basin between the Rockies and Sierra Nevada, whose waters fall into Utah and Salt Lakes instead of reaching the Columbia or Colorado.

[8] FORT BOISÉ. French, meaning wooded.

[9] ASHBURTON TREATY settled our north-eastern boundary with England, and carried the parallel 49° to the Rocky Mountains, but not beyond. In 1846 a second treaty carried it to the Pacific.

TEXAS ADMITTED.

Mexico threw off her allegiance to Spain in 1821. Not till then did the Spaniards in Mexico abandon their policy of excluding all foreigners from their soil; but the example set them by the United States, with the feeling born of freedom from the Spanish yoke, brought about a change of policy in this regard, and Americans were invited to settle in Texas on the most generous terms. No stronger instance is found of the influence exerted by free institutions from without upon the hereditary prejudices of a whole people. It confessed a failure nobly.

When Texas was thus thrown open to emigration her settlements were few and scattered. Habitual timidity or indolence had restricted them to the neighborhood of fortified posts or missions.[1] The chief ones were San Antonio, Goliad, Refugio and Nacodoches, and around these small parcels of land had been brought under cultivation. But the missions themselves, which had formed the groundwork of Spanish occupation, were fallen into irremediable decay. The Indians who had been gathered into them by the monks had dwindled away until the missions were mostly depopulated. Here, as in California, experience had shown that the natives could not exist under the shadow of the whites. Civilization wasted them away.

To induce settlers to come into Texas, they were offered exemption from all taxes for the space of ten years.

Among the first to avail themselves of these offers was Stephen F. Austin, of Durham, Conn. Acting under a grant of lands made by the Mexican authorities to his father, Austin began a settlement on the Brazos in 1821, which later became the capital of the State, of which he was the foremost founder.

Emigration poured in from the Lower Mississippi Valley,—from Louisiana, Arkansas, and Mississippi,—and even the older States contributed to swell the tide. The law forbade slavery, but many brought negroes with them and held them in spite of it. Many were adventurers who held law in little estimation, or found in Texas a convenient asylum from the pursuit of their creditors. Others were poor people whom the liberal offers of the Mexican Government lured from their homes in the hope of bettering their condition. Though sound at the heart, in no long time Texas had won for itself an unenviable name throughout the Union as the chosen home of lawless men, through its worst elements rising to the top.

Our Government had long coveted Texas, and had made two unsuccessful attempts to buy it of Mexico, considering it as an integral part of Old Louisiana, to which we had a sort of right by the prior discovery of La Salle.

Texas, which the Spaniards had weakly settled and feebly governed, declared herself independent of Mexico in 1835. When this revolt took place there were more Americans than people of Spanish blood in Texas, so bringing over to the Texan cause the warm sympathy and active aid of a large part of the American people.

The conflict was short and bloody. After meeting reverses at Goliad and the Alamo,[2] the Texans won their independence by defeating the Mexican army at San Jacinto,[3] in 1836. General Samuel Houston, the Texan leader, was subsequently made president of the Republic of Texas, which then set up for itself upon the model of the United States.

In no long time Texas applied for admission to the Union. Too weak to maintain herself as an independent power, her interests were now at one with the South. Her soil, climate, and productions were much the same. Her population was largely derived from that source, and owned to like feelings and prejudices with their brethren of that section. The South, therefore, favored the admission of Texas, not only for these general reasons, but because it would add a slave State to the Union, as, since Missouri and Arkansas had come in, there was no more territory, except Florida, open to slavery under the interdicted line of 36° 30´.

For this very reason the growing anti-slavery sentiment of the North strongly opposed the admission of Texas. It was further opposed on the ground that as Mexico had not yet acknowledged the independence of Texas, so unfriendly an act toward Mexico would lead to war. Moreover, Texas was of such vast extent, compared with other States, that the bill for its admission allowed the making of four more new States out of it, so opening the door of the Union not to one, but several slave States in the future.

But the North and South did not separate themselves into two distinct political factions, or their citizens stand wholly together, on this Texas question. With many it was simply a question of national policy or expediency. It was championed by the Democratic party, which believed in the "manifest destiny" of the Union to control the whole continent, while the Whig party was conservative, and its opposition was based on the grounds already given, which many thought equivalent to national dishonor. Southern men were in both parties, and Northern men in both. Each party nominated a Southern man for President upon this issue. This question was carried to the people in the next national election (1844), when Clay, the Whig candidate, and opponent of annexation, was defeated, and Polk,[4] the Democratic candidate and its advocate, elected. The Congress therefore admitted Texas to the Union, Dec. 29, 1845.

FOOTNOTES

[1] TEXAS MISSIONS were established by Franciscan monks as follows: In 1690, that of San Francisco on the Lavaca River, at Fort St. Louis (see "La Salle's Colony"); St. John the Baptist was founded on the Rio Grande, same year. In 1714, those of San Bernard and Adaes, fifteen miles west of Natchitoches. In 1715, Mission Dolores, west of the Sabine; one near Nacodoches, and another near the present town of San Augustine. The mission and fortress of San Antonio de Valero was soon after founded near the present city of San Antonio. In 1721, one was located at the crossing of the Neches; another on the Bay of St. Bernard, called Our Lady of Loretto; and a third, called La Bahia (the Bay), at the lower crossing of River San Antonio. In 1730, the Church of San Fernando, San Antonio, was founded; in 1731, the mission of La Purissima Concepcion, near the same place. All these missions were secularized in the latter part of the eighteenth century.—_Baker, Texas Scrap-Book._

[2] THE ALAMO (Spanish for poplar-tree), was a chapel used in connection with the Mission San Antonio de Valero. Here one hundred and forty-four Texan revolutionists, under W. Barrett Travis, were besieged (1836) by superior Mexican forces under Santa Anna. The insurgents held out ten days, when the Alamo was stormed, and all of its brave defenders put to death. David Crockett of Tennessee was among the slain. The event has been commemorated by a shaft bearing the legend: "Thermopylæ had its messenger of defeat, the Alamo had none."

[3] SAN JACINTO is a small village near Galveston Bay. The decisive battle was fought April 21, 1836.

[4] JAMES K. POLK, of Tennessee. His nomination was the first public news ever sent by telegraph in the United States. Morse's new line was just completed between Baltimore and Washington.

INTERLUDE.—NEW POLITICAL IDEAS.

"_Truth crushed to earth will rise again._"—_Bryant._

As yet any direct attack upon slavery was unpopular in the North. The two antagonistic ideas of limiting or extending it were now running a neck-and-neck race for controlling power; but attachment for the Union itself was stronger at the North than at the South, whose people had been taught to consider it a compact to be kept only during the pleasure of the several States, or so long as their interests were promoted by it. This doctrine was never taught in the North. The prevailing sentiment there was attachment for the Union, "one and indivisible;" while the South, under different teachings, was weighing its worth in the balance with slavery.

One new and potent element, however, had come into the controversy. At the North a little band of men pledged to work for the immediate emancipation of the slave, and deeply in earnest, had begun a warfare that ere long was to shake the Union to its foundations. Though few in numbers, they were both hated and feared. At the North they were called fanatics, at the South abolitionists. At the North they were mobbed, at the South a reward offered for their heads. The North apologized for them, the South demanded they should be put down. But though they were thus held up to public detestation, as enemies of the Union, by both sections, these men felt that they stood for a great and holy principle, which surely must triumph in the end. It made them strong. It made them respected. They were led by William Lloyd Garrison of Massachusetts, whose name is now spoken in the land with as much honor as it once was with bitter scorn and hatred.

Slavery was to be openly attacked through the printing-press, the platform, and the right of petition. The two first agencies would reach the people, and the last their representatives in Congress. Garrison declared in his paper "The Liberator," that he would be heard; and he was heard, though not till he had been dragged through the streets of Boston with a halter round his neck. In Congress, as the outcome of this agitation, John Quincy Adams presented many petitions, praying for the abolition of slavery and the slave-trade in the nation's capital, the District of Columbia. He was assailed with a storm of indignation. Congress would not receive the petitions. They continued to come in by the hundred, some bearing thousands of names. All were refused a hearing. The venerable Adams,—"the Old Man Eloquent,"—then in his sixty-fifth year, was declared an incendiary unworthy of a seat in the Capitol, and a resolution to expel him was even introduced; but his brave stand for the right of petition made a hundred friends for the anti-slavery cause where one had been before.

IOWA ADMITTED.

Iowa was the first free State to be formed out of the Louisiana purchase. She had been admitted with Florida in 1845, but her people, being dissatisfied with the boundaries Congress had prescribed, refused to ratify the Act, so delaying her admission until the next year 1846.

THE WAR WITH MEXICO.

"_You can do any thing with a bayonet but sit on it._"

Those who said war would follow the annexation of Texas were right. It was soon seen that Mexico would not sit down quietly under her loss of territory, or lightly pass over the affront to her national honor. They who reckoned on her doing so forgot that if the Spanish race is indolent, it is also brave.

When nations are resolved on war a pretext is soon found for it.

Texas had brought with her into the Union a dispute with Mexico about her western boundary. She claimed to the Rio Grande, while Mexico claimed to the Nueces,[1] thus leaving in question a tract one hundred miles wide, extending between these rivers.

It is true the tract itself was worth little to either party, it being mostly barren prairie land, but in a military view the Rio Grande offered much the strongest line of defence, and for this reason Texas wanted her boundary fixed on it.

A Spanish proverb says, "Force without forecast is little worth." Mexico was quietly massing troops along the Rio Grande, in the disputed territory, to be ready to fight, while sounding England to see if she would not help her against the United States. England was too wise to do so openly, but stood ready to take advantage of whatever the chance of war might throw in her way. As Mexico owed England money it was thought England would take California as soon as fighting began, both as security for the debt, and to get possession of a Pacific port, which we were preventing her from doing in Oregon, and would prevent in California. On the other hand, if war broke out, our Government had determined to take California itself and at once. So something more than a question of boundary was depending on war with Mexico.

If now Mexico had chosen to give up the boundary in dispute, without a fight, there is no telling how the decision might have affected the future of the United States. The question is perhaps, itself, the best apology we can find for the war.

The quarrel having thus become ours, troops were sent to the Lower Rio Grande to hold possession. The Mexicans brought forces to oppose them, and fighting began. After driving back the Mexicans at Palo Alto, and Resaca de la Palma, our forces crossed the Rio Grande into Mexican territory. General Zachary Taylor commanded on this line.

War being thus begun, steps were taken to push it by assembling an army of fifty thousand volunteers, and plans laid to invade Mexico at different points. In Generals Scott, Taylor, and Wool, we had able leaders, but the men they had under them were mostly new to war, being hastily levied and sent off into the field before they could be properly trained in the use of arms.

In the North the war was unpopular.[2] Its coming was foreboded and its consequences viewed with alarm. That section therefore looked on with indifference until the actual fighting roused the national spirit. Then the people, in general, heartily desired the success of our arms, though they still deprecated the war itself.

On the other hand, in the South, and particularly the South-west, the war was hailed with enthusiasm. The people there did not stop to inquire whether its aims were such as should control the acts of one powerful nation toward its weaker neighbor, but gave it unstinted support from the first. In Texas the war spirit was fully aroused by the promise of meeting her old enemy on more equal terms.

The war soon developed the larger issues we have pointed out. So though sometimes called "a little war," it is seen that the contest with Mexico was being waged for a large stake.

FOOTNOTES

[1] THE NUECES had been the acknowledged line between the provinces of Coahuila and Texas, before the latter achieved her independence, as shown by maps of the time.

[2] THE WAR UNPOPULAR. Placards calling for volunteers were posted in the streets, headed with the words "Ho for the Halls of the Montezumas!" The attempt of the administration party to kindle a war spirit, however, fell flat.

The regiment raised in Massachusetts was not even cheered when passing through the streets of Boston on its way to the front, and on its return home its flags were refused a place in the State Capitol.

But in Arkansas, Louisiana, Alabama and Mississippi the war fever ran so high that fifty thousand men could have been furnished by these States alone. In some districts the rush was so great that it was feared there would be too few whites left to keep the negroes quiet.

CONQUEST OF NEW MEXICO.

While the heaviest fighting was going on in Old Mexico, the Government easily took possession of New Mexico and California, by means of expeditions organized on the remote frontiers.

New Mexico was wanted for the emigration to the Pacific. If we were to have California we must also have the right of way to it. In the hands of the Spaniards, New Mexico barred access to the Pacific so completely that the oldest travelled route was scarcely known to Americans at all, and but little used by the Spaniards themselves.

If now we consult a map of the United States it is seen that the thirty-fourth parallel crosses the Mississippi at the mouth of the Arkansas, cuts New Mexico in the middle, and reaches the Pacific near Los Angeles. It was long the belief of statesmen that the great tide of emigration must set along this line, because it had the most temperate climate, was shorter, and would be found freer from hardship than the route by way of the South Pass. This view had set on foot the exploration of the Arkansas and Red rivers. But if we except the little that Pike and Long had gathered, almost nothing was known about it. Yet the prevailing belief gave New Mexico, as related to California, an exceptional importance.

These considerations weighed for more than acquisition of territory, though the notion that New Mexico contained very rich silver-mines undoubtedly had force in determining its conquest. Otherwise it was held to be a poor country, with little arable land, mostly mountainous, and scarcely fertile in the valleys, while in consequence of its great elevation the winters were severe.

Thus New Mexico seemed placed by Nature as a half-way house may stand alone at the summit of a mountain pass with deserts upon either side. It offered a place for the refreshment of the nation's travellers. At best it was only a thin wedge of semi-civilization driven north into barbarism as far as Spanish power could send it, but this force had spent itself long ago, and New Mexico now lay a stumbling-block in the path of progress, in contented isolation. Our Government determined to remove the obstruction.

With this object General Kearney marched from Fort Leavenworth in June, 1846, for Santa Fé, at the head of a force[1] of which a battalion of Mormons formed part. After subduing New Mexico, Kearney was to go on to California, and with the help of naval forces already sent there, for the purpose, conquer that country also.

It is worth while to dwell a moment upon one feature of this expedition, if only for its singularity. The Mormons were to be paid off in California, were to turn the sword into a ploughshare and settle in the country, and had therefore been allowed to take their families and property with them. They were seen when setting out on the march by Mr. Parkman, who thus describes them: "There was something very striking in the half-military, half-patriarchal appearance of these armed fanatics, thus on their way with their wives and children to found, it might be, a Mormon empire in California.