Page:Centennial History of Oregon 1811-1912, Volume 1.djvu/356



Oregon for all the soil its savage hunters ever wandered over. All the writers- and travelers agree in representing Oregon as a vast extent of mountains and val- lej^s of sand dotted over with green, and cultivable spots. Russia has her Siberia, and England has her Botauj' Bay, and if the United States should ever need a country to which to banish its rogues and scoundrels, the utility of such a region as Oregon will be demonstrated. ' '

And then the wise Senator from Jersej' ventilates his wisdom on the possi- bility of a railroad to this ' ' riddling of creation, ' ' and says :

"The power of steam to reach that country has been suggested. Talk of steam communication — a railroad to the mouth of the Columbia ! A railroad across twenty-five hundred miles of desert prairie and mountains ! The smoke of an engine through these terrible fissures of that great rockj- ledge, where the smoke of the volcano has rolled before! Who is to make this vast internal^ rather external improvement 1 All the mines 'of Mexico and Peru, disembowelled would scarcely pay a penny of the cost."

Dayton lived long enough to become the candidate for Vice-President on the ticket with Fremont in 1856, and died in Paris in 1864, after the railroad had started across the deserts of Kansas and Nebraska towards Oregon ; and if he could arise from his grave and see the two railroads on the Columbia, river daily carrjang more freight than is produced in the state of New -Jersey in a year, he would give up the delusion that Oregon was a desert.

But Dayton was not alone in the opposition, from the northern states to se- curing the territory of Oregon. As great a man as Daniel Webster made open as well as secret opposition to the acciuisition of Oregon. In a public address on November 7, 1845, at Faneuil Hall, in Boston, in discussing the Oregon question, said : "That the vast importance of peace with England, he took for granted; but the question that now threatened that peace and was causing a great alarm, was of forty years' standing, and was now coming to a crisis. It is a question that is a fit subject for a compromise and amicable adjustment, but one which in my opin- ion can be settled on an honorable basis bj^ taking the forty-ninth parallel of north latitude as the boundary line ; the two countries would then keep abreast on that line to the Pacific Ocean."

Later on Mr. Webster declared that the title and government of Oregon would go to the people which had the greatest population in the territory. And still later on, in the United States Senate, as showing his position generally, he de- clared in a speech on March 1st, 1847 :

"In the judgment of the Whig part.y, it is due to the best interests of the country, to declare at once, and proclaim now, that we want no new states or ter- ritory to form new states out of us. as the end of conquest. For one, I enter into this declaration with all mj' heart. We want no extension of territory, we want no accessions of new states. The countrj^ is alreadj^ large enough."

This shows why Dr. Whitman could not move Webster, while Secretary of State, to help Oregon, and shows the under current of apatlij^ not to say dis- loyalty to the West, with which Benton, Linn, Semple and other western states- men had to contend to save Oregon to the nation.

And after all these declarations of Webster has become settled history, Dr. John Fiske, a historian of Yale University attends the Gray Centennial at Astoria in 1892 and puts forward the following excuse for Webster: