This offer was not accepted by the Legislature, and the cause was delayed until 1827, when it was brought before the courts.  It was argued by such men as Daniel Webster and Martin Van Buren, on the part of the State, and by Thomas Addis Emmett, Ogden, and others for Astor.  The State had no case, and the matter was decided in Astor’s favor.  Then the State consented to compromise.  The famous Astor stock, which paid that gentleman about five hundred thousand dollars, was issued, and the titles of the possessors of the lands confirmed.

The most important of all of Mr. Astor’s undertakings was his effort at founding the settlement of Astoria, on the coast of Oregon.  This enterprise has been made so familiar to the majority of readers by the pen of Washington Irving, that I can only refer to it here.  “His design,” says a writer of thirteen years ago, “was to organize and control the fur trade from the lakes to the Pacific, by establishing trading posts along the Missouri and Columbia to its mouth.  He designed establishing a central depot and post at the mouth of the Columbia.  He proposed sending regular supply-ships to the Pacific posts around the Horn.  By these, stores were to be sent also to the Russian establishments.  It was part of his plan, if possible, to obtain possession of one of the Sandwich Islands as a station, for from the Pacific coast he knew that the Chinese market for his peltries could be most conveniently reached, and thus the necessity for a long and circuitous voyage be avoided.  Instead of bringing the furs intended for China to New York, they could be sent from the Pacific.  By the supply-ships, too, the stock of goods suitable for the Indian trade would be kept up there, and the cargoes purchased with the proceeds of the furs sold in China brought back to New York.  The line of posts across the continent would become a line of towns; emigration would follow, and civilization would belt the continent.

“In this grand scheme, Mr. Astor was only anticipating the course of events which, fifty years later, we are beginning to witness.  When he laid his plans before the Government, Mr. Jefferson, who was then President, ‘considered as a great acquisition,’ as he afterward expressed himself in a letter to Mr. Astor, ’the commencement of a settlement on the western coast of America, and looked forward with gratification to the time when its descendants should have spread themselves through the whole length of that coast, covering it with free and independent Americans, unconnected with us except by ties of blood and interest, and enjoying, like us, the rights of self-government.’  Even Jefferson’s mind, wide as it was, could not take in the idea of a national unity embracing both ends of the continent; but not so thought Astor.  The merchant saw farther than the statesman.  It was precisely this political unity which gave him hope and chance of success in his worldwide schemes.  When the Constitution