Fur, Fortune, and Empire by Eric Jay Dolin

Author:Eric Jay Dolin
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: W. W. Norton & Company
Published: 2010-04-10T04:00:00+00:00

THE NEW-YORK GAZETTE AND GENERAL ADVERTISER PROVIDED a terse obituary for Astoria on November 12, 1814, noting, “The firm of the Pacific Fur Company is dissolved.” A few months earlier, when Astor first began getting reports telling of the enormity of what had happened to his “infant establishment,” he wrote to a colleague, “Was there ever an undertaking of more merit, of more honor and more enterprising, attended with a greater variety of misfortune?”72 Astor’s sense of loss was made bitterer by what he perceived to be McDougall’s treachery. Astor was convinced that McDougall had colluded with the North West Company men and as a result had sold out too cheaply, and that for his duplicity he was richly rewarded by being offered a partnership stake in the company.73 McDougall vehemently denied these charges, claiming that given the powerful forces arrayed against him, he had gotten Astor the best deal possible. Whether Astor or McDougall was correct, Astoria was now in Canadian hands. Nevertheless Astor was not ready to let it go. “While I breathe & so long as I have a dollar to spend,” Astor wrote to one of his former partners, “I’ll pursue a course to have our injuries repaired…. We have been sold, but I do not despond.”74

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