Oregon Boundary Dispute - Joint Occupation

Joint Occupation

The dispute arose as a result of competing claims between the United States and the United Kingdom to the Oregon Country, which consisted of what is now the Pacific Northwest of the United States and southern British Columbia, Canada. Both nations claimed the region based on earlier exploration and the "right of discovery". Following long European precedent, both sides recognized only limited sovereign rights of the indigenous population.

In 1818, diplomats of the two countries attempted to negotiate a boundary between the rival claims. The Americans suggested dividing the Oregon Country along the 49th parallel, which was the border between the United States and British North America east of the Rocky Mountains. British diplomats wanted a border further south along the Columbia River, so as to maintain the North West Company"s (later the Hudson's Bay Company) control of the lucrative fur trade along that river. As a compromise, the Anglo-American Convention of 1818 (or Treaty of 1818), which settled most other disputes from the War of 1812, called for the joint occupation of the region for ten years. As the expiration of the ten-year agreement approached, a second round of negotiations from 1825 to 1827 failed to resolve the dispute, and so the joint occupation agreement was renewed, this time with the stipulation that a one-year notice had to be given when either party intended to abrogate the agreement.

Early in the 1840s, negotiations that produced the 1842 Webster-Ashburton Treaty (a border settlement in the east) addressed the Oregon question once again. British negotiators still pressed for the Columbia River boundary, which the Americans would not accept since it would deny the U.S. an easily accessible deep water port on the Pacific Ocean, and so no adjustment to the existing agreement was made. By this time, American settlers were steadily pouring into the region along the Oregon Trail, a development that some observers—both British and American—realized would eventually decide the outcome.

The HBC belatedly reversed its policy on colonization. In 1841, on orders from HBC Governor Sir George Simpson, James Sinclair guided nearly 200 settlers from the Red River Colony west in an attempt to retain the area for Britain.

In 1843, John C. Calhoun famously declared that the U.S. government should pursue a policy of "wise and masterly inactivity" in Oregon, letting settlement determine the eventual boundary. That year over 700 U.S settlers arrived via the Oregon Trail in the "Great Migration". The Provisional Government of Oregon was established that year. Many of Calhoun's fellow Democrats, however, soon began to advocate a more direct approach.