Page:Centennial History of Oregon 1811-1912, Volume 1.djvu/226

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action of a timid, if not cowardly, secretary of state in a possible agreement to give up all of Oregon north of the Columbia river. While there is no direct or record proof of this statement, the whole history of the diplomacy with Eng- land about Oregon during the Harrison-Tyler and Polk administrations, goes to show that the weakness and imbecility of our foreign policy was held back from giving Oregon away only by the appeals from Oregon and the threaten- ing speeches of Senators Benton and Linn in Congress. These appeals from Oregon were mainly from the Protestant missionaries, and in the main drafted and forwarded by them. But these brave men did not stop -v^dth appeals on paper. On October 3, 1842, accompanied only by A. L. Lovejoy, Marcus Whit- man bid good bye to his wife and all he held dear in life and made the most wonderful trip on record — a two thousand mile dash across the continent in the winter season, over trails traveled only by wild Indians on horseback, picking up food for horse and man as occasion offered in a wilderness, covered up and snowed in by storms for weeks, fording mountain torrents in icy water, and breaking ice, and ianally -wdnning the goal of his endeavors and rushing on to Washington city before congress could adjourn in 1843.

And what for?

There is nothing in all history so dramatic and forceful as this four months' winter storm ride of Marcus Whitman. And at the very time he was risking his life, his everything for Oregon, Daniel Webster, Secretary of State of President Tyler's administration, was writing to the American minister in London, that the Columbia river at its mouth was not navigable for nine months in the year, and that there were not more than seven hundred white people in the whole of the country, and that it had been suggested, "That the lime of boundary might begin at the sea, or the entrance of the straits of San Juan De Puca, follow up these straits, give us a harbor at the southwest corner of these inland waters and then continue south, striking the (Columbia) river below Vancouver, and then following the river to its intersection with the forty-ninth degree of latitude North."

What was that but giving up the Puget Sound and all of the State of Wash- ington except a narrow strip along the coast, and a triangle adjoining Idaho.

What influence Whitman exerted or representation he made to the Presi- dent or his Secretary was not known. He was not a boaster. It was not a mat- ter to be given to the press after the style of the modern politician. It is suffi- cient to say that Daniel Webster's map of Oregon was not adopted. And Jason Lee was as active, and as faithful in his labors to save Oregon as was Whitman. And in the historical light of that great contest for the possession of this country, the services of these two Protestant missionaries rise to the dignity of a great service to humanity and to their country.