Foreword
One miracle bestowed by God on a nation is the continuing chain of thought that sprang new from those in 1776 that wrote
UNITED STATES
Declaration of Independence
The Endowment of The Creator
"All men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights"
Philadelphia, on July 4th, 1776, They declared, "When in the Course of human events, it becomes necessary for one people to dissolve the political bands which have connected them with another, and to assume among the powers of the earth, the separate and equal station to which the Laws of Nature and of Nature's God entitle them, a decent respect to the opinions of mankind requires that they should declare the causes which impel them to the separation."
"We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness. That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the right of the people to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government, having its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form. as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness."
Our Declaration of Independence was derived from common law, "the Laws of Nature and Nature's God," all men being "endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights."
Upon these two foundations, the law of nature and the law of revelation, depend all human laws, that is to, say, no human laws should be suffered (permitted) to contradict these."
Taken in part from "THE LEGACY OF AMERICAN LIBERTY"
By MARK ALEXANDER.
HOLY SCRIPTURE DESCRIBES A BIBLICAL GOVERNMENT
'For he is a servant of God to you for good.
But if you do that which is evil, be afraid,
for he doesn`t bear the sword in vain;
for he is a minister of God,
an avenger for wrath to him who does evil…."
ROMANS 13:4
"He has also set eternity in their hearts, yet
so that man can`t find out the work that God has done from the beginning even to the end."
Ecclesiastes 3:1-11
In 1776
"All men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights"
The Boston Tea Party
On December 16th, 1773, "radicals" from Boston, Massachusetts, members of a secret organization of American Patriots called Sons of Liberty, boarded three East India Company Ships and threw into Boston Harbor 342 chests of tea.
This was more of a symbolic act, in protest of oppressive British taxation and tyrannical rule, became known as the Boston Tea Party.
Resistance to the Crown had been mounting over enforcement of the 1764 Sugar Act, 1765 Stamp Act and 1767 Townshend Acts, which led to the Boston Massacre, and gave rise to the slogan "No taxation without representation." The 1773 Tea Act and resulting Tea Party protest galvanized the Colonial movement opposing British parliamentary acts, which violated the natural, charter, and constitutional rights of colonists.
"Intolerable Acts,"
In response to the rebellion, the British enacted additional measures to punish the Colonies,. labeled the "Intolerable Acts," in hopes ot suppressing the msurrection. Far from accomplishing that outcome. the Crown's countermeasures led colonists to convene the First Continental Congress on September 5th, 1774 in Philadelphia.
Representatives from 12 of the 13 colonies (Georgia did not send delegates) drafted a list of rights and grievances with a request for redress from King George, and they agreed to an economic boycott of England to compel the Crown to concede. Congress also agreed to convene a Second Continental Congress if their grievances were not resolved.
Though the boycott reduced British imports by more than 90 percent, Royalists countered with vigorous enforcement of the Intolerable Acts.
On April 19th, 1775, Paul Revere departed Charlestown (near Boston) for Lexington and Concord in order to warn John Hancock, Samuel Adams and other Sons of Liberty that the British army was marching to arrest them and seize their weapons caches. While Revere was captured after reaching Lexington, his friend, Samuel Prescott, took word to the militiamen at Concord.
In the early dawn of that first Patriots' Day, Captain John Parker, commander of the Lexington militia, ordered, "Don't fire unless fired upon, but if they want a war let it begin here." And it did - American Minutemen fired the "shot heard round the world," as immortalized by poet Ralph Waldo Emerson, confronting British Regulars on Lexington Green and at Concord's Old North Bridge.
Thus, by the time the Second Continental Congress was convened on May l Oth, 1775, the young nation was in open war with the greatest superpower of that time.
On May 15th, Congress adopted a resolution calling on the states to prepare for rebellion. In its preamble, John Adams advised his countrymen to sever all oaths of allegiance to the Crown.
"BEFORE GOD AND THE WORLD...."
Most notably, on July 6th, Congress approved the "Declaration of the Cause and Necessity of Taking up Arms," drafted by Thomas Jefferson and John Dickinson, which noted:
"With hearts fortified with these animating reflections, we most solemnly, before God and the world, declare, that, exerting the utmost energy of those powers, which our beneficent Creator hath graciously bestowed upon us, the arms we have been compelled by our enemies to assume, we will, in defiance of every hazard, with unabating firmness and perseverance employ for the preservation of our liberties; being with one mind resolved to die freemen rather than to live as slaves."
With the Declaration of Independence in 1776 these men were declaring a separation from the authority of the English monarchy government knowingly putting everything they owned including their lives
Samuel Adams proclaimed, "[The people alone have an incontestable, unalienable, and indefeasible right to institute government and to reform, alter, or totally change the same when their protection, safety, prosperity, and happiness require it."
THE GOVERNMENT SPOKEN OF HERE CANNOT BE NOR SHOULD IT BE THE CHURCH--BUT THEY ARE ALIKE IN THAT BOTH ARE THE PEOPLE.
THE CHURCH WAS MOVING INTO THE FAR WEST PART OF AMERICA.
But this movement came by individuals and involved struggle.
The
story starts in 1790s during the time of the United States starting as a small
nation having a ribbon of Colonies along the East Coast. Then individuals and
the U.S. Government began a westward move into the Louisiana Purchase country when
this enormous area changed sovereignty three times in less than a decade.
Our
story involves
The
Oregon Territory during the time when the Territory existed as
Co-occupational.
The Oregon Territory and the United States in the first half of the 19th Century.
Co-occupational with Great Britain
The United States shared the Oregon Territory with Great Britain,
the world's greatest power.
The fact of this co-occupation largely prevented the United States from going to war with Great Brittain. This space of time existed from the end of the War of 1812 to 1846 and offered time for both peace and negotiation between the United States and Great Britain.
Both the United States' political and non-political leaders and the British political and non-political leaders had a very strong interest in the Oregon Territory and competed for this land. The U.S. President, President Thomas Jefferson early on in 1803, had already sent the Lewis and Clark; Corp of Discovery to explore.
The Oregon Territory existed as a huge parcel of land extending from Spanish California to Latitude 54-40 just below Russian Alaska, and from the Pacific Coast to the summit of the Continental Divide. The Oregon Territory offered thousands of miles of coastland and large natural harbors. Despite the many attributes and interests, a strong undisputable claim to the land had not developed. Negotiations and offers continued as each new American Administration came into power.
The Louisiana Purchase, a comparative huge tract of land with Missouri and other large rivers and the fertile Great Plains, but the land's only direct sea access almost nil. The land possessed existed with the large port of New Orleans and had no coastline had passed through Spanish ownership, through French ownership, and finally purchased by the United States involved. That was it.
THE OREGON TERRITORY HAD MAJOR ACCESS TO THE PACIFIC OCEAN.
Following the discovery of the new land of America, the major political powers such as Spain, Russia, France, and England mostly followed the early criteria for claiming a land consisted of national discovery, exploration, and family settlement. Obviously, other interests had collateral involvement. In the early part of the 18th Century, only two of the major countries appeared involved. Large commercial fur companies, of that period of time, carried considerable power but so the people. At first, the popular appeal of fur made the commercial fur business a power to be reckoned with. The Hudson's Bay Company stood out as a dominant power, but individual citizens and non-citizens also had direct involvement. This is one story during those times.
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