Show In the late 18th century, several imperial powers including Spain, Russia, the United States and Great Britain sought to control North America’s Northwest Coast. After 1824, only the United States, Russia and Britain maintained territorial claims in the region. Both Britain and the US claimed everything west of the continental divide from as far north as Russian Alaska to as far south as Mexico (which at that time included most of present-day California). This area was called the Oregon Territory by the Americans and the Columbia region by the British. The Convention of 1818 resolved some territorial disputes stemming from the War of 1812 and earlier, and resulted in an agreement for both nations to jointly occupy and administer the territory for a period of 10 years. During that time, subjects of both nations would have their rights respected and would be free to trade and settle as they saw fit. Britain had a somewhat stronger claim to the region, largely due to the activities of the North West Company. When talks between the two nations resumed, the Americans proposed a northern boundary at the 51st parallel; the British countered with an extension of the 49th parallel to the Columbia River. Britain wanted to retain the area north of the Columbia to preserve British commercial interests in the fur trade. However, these negotiations were inconclusive. “54-40 or Fight!”The issue remained unresolved until it became a political football during the 1844 US presidential election. Democratic Party candidate James K. Polk won the election on an expansionist platform, which included the annexation of the Republic of Texas. There was considerable expansionist pressure on the Polk administration. Some American pundits argued that the rightful US claim extended as far as the border with Russian Alaska at latitude 54 degrees and 40 minutes. The popular slogan “Fifty-four Forty or Fight!” reflected the position of diehard expansionists that the United States should go to war with Great Britain if they proposed anything other than total American control of the region. (The slogan is also the namesake of the Vancouver band 54-40.) An additional complication was the annexation of the Republic of Texas as a “slave state.” Annexing the Oregon Territory as a “free state” was considered necessary to maintain the balance of free states and slave states in the antebellum United States. (See also American Civil War and Canada.) Signing the TreatyPolk was under pressure to accept no compromises. But the annexation of Texas caused a rapid deterioration in Mexico-US relations. A war with Mexico was looming and the Polk administration knew that it could ill afford to engage in two simultaneous conflicts. So the Americans contacted British representatives to hammer out a deal. The British were also disinclined to fight a war with the United States over this territory, so they agreed to the terms of the Oregon Treaty. (It was a modified version of an earlier American proposal.) The agreement extended the border along the 49th parallel to the Pacific Ocean but kept Vancouver Island within British North America. It was also agreed that British subjects living in the Oregon Territory south of the 49th parallel would retain navigation rights on the Columbia River. The Pig WarThe border dispute was not completely resolved by the Oregon Treaty of 1846. The wording of the treaty was vague when it came to the “channel which separates the continent from Vancouver Island.” Because there are several navigable waterways between Vancouver Island and the mainland, ownership of the San Juan Islands remained contested. British and American settlers on San Juan Island (about 20 km northeast of Fort Victoria) had been suspicious of one another and involved in some minor disputes since 1855. But in 1859, a pig wandered from the British-Canadian side to the American side and was found in an American settler’s garden. The pig was shot, the British demanded compensation, and American troops were sent to occupy the island while British warships patrolled offshore. Tensions remained high, but the conflict never escalated into an actual war. German Kaiser Wilhelm I acted as arbitrator and brought about a resolution; in 1872, the US was awarded the San Juan Islands. This officially completed the setting of the border between the US and British Columbia. See also History of the Canada-US Border in the West; The Fraser River Gold Rush and the Founding of British Columbia; Alaska Boundary Dispute; Historical Boundaries of Canada.
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signatories
The Oregon Treaty[1] is a treaty between the United Kingdom and the United States that was signed on June 15, 1846, in Washington, D.C. The treaty brought an end to the Oregon boundary dispute by settling competing American and British claims to the Oregon Country; the area had been jointly occupied by both Britain and the U.S. since the Treaty of 1818.[2] BackgroundThe Treaty of 1818 set the boundary between the United States and British North America along the 49th parallel of north latitude from Minnesota to the "Stony Mountains"[3] (now known as the Rocky Mountains). The region west of those mountains was known to the Americans as the Oregon Country and to the British as the Columbia Department or Columbia District of the Hudson's Bay Company. (Also included in the region was the southern portion of another fur district, New Caledonia.) The treaty provided for joint control of that land for ten years. Both countries could claim land and both were guaranteed free navigation throughout. Original manuscript of the treaty (transcription), as kept by the U.S. National Archives.Joint control steadily grew less tolerable for both sides. After a British minister rejected the offer of U.S. Presidents James K. Polk and John Tyler to settle the boundary at the 49th parallel north, American expansionists called for the annexation of the entire region up to Parallel 54°40′ north, the southern limit of Russian America as established by parallel treaties between the Russian Empire and the United States (1824) and Britain (1825). However, after the outbreak of the Mexican–American War in April 1846 diverted U.S. attention and military resources, a compromise was reached in the ongoing negotiations in Washington, D.C., and the matter was then settled by the Polk administration (to the surprise of its own party's hardliners) to avoid a two-war situation, and another war with the formidable military strength of Great Britain.[4] Senate vote in June 1846In early June 1846 the British offered to negotiate the boundaries between the United States and British North America in the region west of the Rockies. Some US senators such as Charles Gordon Atherton and Benning Wentworth Jenness were combative and were in favor of rejecting British proposals to negotiate. However others, such as both Alabama senators (Arthur P. Bagby and Dixon Hall Lewis) as well as both Massachusetts senators (Daniel Webster and John Davis) were in favor of accepting British proposals. The Senate agreed that they would vote on whether or not to recommend President Polk accept British offers to negotiate. Watching closely, the British hoped this vote would pass the Senate. On June 12 the Senate voted 38–12 recommending that President Polk accept British proposals to negotiate this boundary. 18 Democrats and 20 Whigs voted in favor, whereas 11 Democrats and one Whig voted against. 3 Democrats and 3 Whigs abstained.[5] NegotiationsThe treaty was negotiated by US Secretary of State James Buchanan and Richard Pakenham, British envoy to the United States. Foreign Secretary Earl of Aberdeen was responsible for it in Parliament.[6] The treaty was signed on June 15, 1846, ending the joint occupation and making Oregonians south of the 49th parallel American citizens, with those north of it becoming British.[7] The Oregon Treaty set the border between the U.S. and British North America at the 49th parallel with the exception of Vancouver Island, which was retained in its entirety by the British. Vancouver Island, with all coastal islands, was constituted as the Colony of Vancouver Island in 1849. The U.S. portion of the region was organized as Oregon Territory on August 15, 1848, with Washington Territory being formed from it in 1853. The British portion remained unorganized until 1858, when the Colony of British Columbia was set up as a result of the Fraser Canyon Gold Rush and fears of the re-asserted American expansionist intentions. The two British colonies were amalgamated in 1866 as the United Colonies of Vancouver Island and British Columbia. When the Colony of British Columbia joined Canada in 1871, the 49th parallel and marine boundaries established by the Oregon Treaty became the Canada–US border. In order to ensure that Britain retained all of Vancouver Island and the southern Gulf Islands, it was agreed that the border would swing south around that area. Ownership of several channel islands, including the San Juan Islands remained in dispute. The San Juan Islands Pig War (1859) resulted; it lasted until 1872. At that time, arbitration began, with German Emperor Wilhelm I as head of a three-man arbitration commission.[8] On October 21, 1872, the commission decided in favor of the United States, awarding the San Juan Islands to the U.S.[9] Treaty definitionsThe treaty states that the border in the Strait of Juan de Fuca would follow “the middle of the channel which separates the continent from Vancouver's Island.” It did not, however, specify which of several possible channels was intended, giving rise to ownership disputes over the San Juan Islands beginning in 1859. Other provisions included:
Issues arising from treatyAmbiguities in the wording of the Oregon Treaty regarding the route of the boundary, which was to follow "the deepest channel" out to the Strait of Juan de Fuca and beyond to the open ocean, resulted in the Pig War, another boundary dispute in 1859 over the San Juan Islands. The dispute was peacefully resolved after a decade of confrontation and military bluster during which the local British authorities consistently lobbied London to seize back the Puget Sound region entirely, as the Americans were busy elsewhere with the Civil War.[11] The San Juans dispute was not resolved until 1872 when, pursuant to the 1871 Treaty of Washington, an arbitrator (William I, German Emperor) chose the American-preferred marine boundary via Haro Strait, to the west of the islands, over the British preference for Rosario Strait which lay to their east. The treaty also had the unintended consequence of putting what became Point Roberts, Washington on the "wrong" side of the border. A peninsula, jutting south from Canada into Boundary Bay, was made by the agreement, as land south of the 49th parallel, a separate fragment of the United States. According to American historian Thomas C. McClintock, the British public welcomed the treaty:
See also
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