The Embargo on Beef and the Collector of Customs
Tensions rise at Port Angeles over a federal order prohibiting cattle shipments to Victoria, sparking a heated war of words between the Standard and local authorities.
The story, cleaned up
A cleaned-up reading of the newspaper page: spelling and layout repaired, one story lifted off a crowded page. It follows the original closely but it is not a transcription. The original page is below; read it if a detail matters.
Victor Smith, Collector of Customs at Port Angeles, has met with considerable opposition in enforcing the order from Washington prohibiting further shipments of live stock to Victoria. People in Washington Territory had been carrying on a profitable trade in live stock with our British neighbors. When Capt. Finch called at Port Angeles for a clearance to Victoria, alleging his intention to land the cattle at San Juan on her way to Victoria, the Collector assumed this was an attempt to evade the order, refused to grant a clearance, and seized her for a violation of the revenue laws. The cattle were put ashore at Port Angeles, and the steamer was permitted to resume her trips. No one denounced Collector Smith for refusing to permit cattle to be landed at Victoria—it was not asked. But his offer to permit the animals to be sent to Victoria after being slaughtered at his town of Port Angeles proves his conviction that the order was not intended for application here. We insist that an absolute refusal to enforce it before hearing from Washington would have been more creditable than the resort to such a contemptible evasion of its spirit and intention.
“We insist that an absolute refusal to enforce it before hearing from Washington would have been more creditable than the resort to such a contemptible evasion of its spirit and intention.”
This 1863 dispute highlights the historical tension between federal authority and local trade interests in the Pacific Northwest. Issues of maritime commerce and the boundaries of federal control continue to influence regional economic policy, even as the scale of shipping from ports like Port Angeles has changed dramatically.
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