Bancroft to Hamilton Fish, September 1, 1873

No. 146. Mr. Bancroft to Mr. Fish.

Sir: I am very sensible of the most friendly and approving language in which Mr. Cushing writes of my labors in the San Juan arbitration.

But I must ask leave to correct one grave error into which he has fallen. Mr. Cushing has observed that in my memorial on the Haro as our boundary I made no use of the pretended settlement of the boundary-line between Canada and the possessions of the company of Hudson’s Bay; and, condemning my conclusions as to that settlement, elsewhere expressed, he writes that I was misled by Mr. Greenhow. In Mr. Greenhow’s History of Oregon, second edition, page 436, he, in a note marked by thorough research, just criticism, and good judgment, establishes, as I think, that the forty ninth parallel of latitude was not selected as the line of separation between the French and British territories in North America by commissaries appointed agreeable to the treaty of Utrecht. In the passage of my writing which Mr. Cushing quotes, I named Mr. Greenhow as an authority, because he was the first who put the matter before the public in a clear light. Additional grounds existed for the statement which I had made. A search in the French archives had failed to find any evidence of the appointment of a boundary commission under the treaty of Utrecht. Further, the most thorough search has now been made in the British archives on the question, and the result establishes the statement of Mr. Greenhow, in which I concurred. After the treaty of Utrecht, “in the Northwest, where Canada joined the possessions of the company of Hudson’s Bay, no treaty, no commission appears to have fixed the limits of the possessions of France.”

I remain, &c.,

I. Extract from a letter from Lord Tenderden to Mr. F. O. Adams, August 11, 1873.

I have had a hunt made for the report of the commissioners under the treaty of Utrecht which Mr. Bancroft wishes to refer to, but we have not got it here, and have asked the rolls to look for it in the record office, as every one who knows anything about anything is out of town. This may take time. We will root it up somehow.