Excerpt from Address on the Northwest: Before the American Geographical and Statistical Society; Delivered at New York, December 2, 1858

Although two centuries since the Jesuit missionaries penetrated to the Northwest from the Mississippi, it was not till towards the close of the last century that the North west Company and the Hudson's Bay Company pushed their explorations to the frozen ocean and to the Pacific, in about parallel 52.

About this time they established posts over all this ex tensive country. The explorations of Lewis and Clark at an early part of the present century, made known to us the two great rivers across the continent - the Missouri and the Columbia - and the general character of the country. Theywere soon followed by the American trappers and traders, who planted establishments to, and beyond, the Rocky mountains.

The efforts of John Jacob Astor to found a great trading establishment on the Columbia, and to make tributary to it the whole western slope, by a system of posts, through misfortunes of various kinds, failed, and the whole of that country, as well as the country northward to Hudson's bay, and stretching from the Pacific to the great lakes, came under the control of a foreign company. Thus, so far as concerned the agencies at work to develop the country, the American people had control simply of the portion east of the Rocky mountains, and another jurisdiction, acting through a company whose interest it was to keep the country a desert, to keep it in a condition in which it would be remunerative in its furs, had control of the entire remaining portion of that country.

I will in this connection refer to the treaty of 1846, by which a line was established between the two countries, and to a remark made about, or previous to, that time in the British Parliament, to the effect that so great was the distance from the American settlements to the Pacific, and so serious were the difficulties to be encountered, that it was idle and preposterous to suppose the American States could colonize the Pacific coast. At the very time this confident assertion was being made, our emigrant wagons were mov ing over those mountains, and that same fall American citizens had carved out their homes on the shores of the Pacific ocean, and raised above them the stars and stripes of their country's power. The fact thereby became estab lished, that that western coast was ours by the natural pro cess of colonization, and that American genius and enter prise could scale the Rocky mountains and overcome every difficulty lying between the valley of the Mississippi and the Western ocean. From that time the way was thronged with the emigrant wagons of our people, who went on thelong distant journey with their women and their children. From that time did that country become known to us as a civilized community; as a community of families; as a com munity which would have a great part yet to play in the destinies of the country and of the world.

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