Page:Centennial History of Oregon 1811-1912, Volume 1.djvu/421



THE CENTENNIAL HISTORY OK ORIOUON 'Hu

wii'c (listasleful In liiiii, .•iiid he lived and died as the popular incarnation of ri|n,-ili1y. Jiislicc aiiil ilciiHu-racy. And it is to Jefferson lliat the conuti'y is in- (li'lited fni' that nccrssary iMitci'prise in sending out the Lrwis and Clark ex- pcilition to explore the unknown region of Oregon, and place the stamp of American title on its whole extent, from the mountains to the sea. Judging from the history of the country, there is not a president since the days of Wash- ington that had the push and enterprise, as well as the American spiiit, to ex- pand the nation's boundaries as did Jeff ei*son ; and if it had not been for his action in seizing what he termed the "fugitive opportunity," the United States would have been, in its western expansion, limited to the boundary of the Miss- issippi, and Oregon would have been as British as Canada. It is therefore, .iustly due that the name of Thomas Jefferson should top the scroll of Oregon's Hall of Fame.

The next prominent character in the long contest for the American title to Oregon was Senator Thomas H. Benton, of Missouri. Benton was not alone in the battle, but was ably supported by his colleague, Senator Lewis F. Linn. Linn was a physician by profession, and a forceful, aggressive man, serving two terms in the senate, but Benton was there for thirty years. Always a com- manding figure, resolute and courageous, far beyond the great majority of men who had risen to that high position. Benton, next to Jefferson, earl.y com- prehended the great importance of the West to the nation. Living at St. Louis, which was in his day the great gate-way not only to the South and Southwest, but also to the real West beyond the mountains, he saw the national necessity to seize every point of vantage and hold on for the future. And although rep- resenting a slave state in the Senate, he was far too large a roan not to see that f i-ee territory to the west was a thousand times more important to St. Louis and to the nation than more slave states. And when the issue came, whether there should be territory added en that would make free states beyond the mountains, and thus disturb the equilibrium between slave and free states, he promptly cast in the whole force of his great influence in the Senate and with the people on the side of the free territory of Oregon. For this act for jus- tice and humanity, for national honor and defense, he was discredited by the slave-holding leaders of the South.

No man understood better the wants and aspirations of the pioneer settlers of Oregon. And no man comprehended as well the future national importance of taking and holding the whole of Old Oregon for settlement by American citi- zens. His prophetic words, picturing the future greatness of this country, and the great commerce which would ebb and flow through this state, and the Columbia gateway, has been given in the introductory chapter of this book, and we have lived to see it a veritable reality. For long years, and through good and evil report, and in the face of all sorts of misrepresentations of the value of this country by the pigmy men who had gotten into the Senate by some sort of accident, he stood the "lion of the west," making the battle for Oregon. And some day, when this state or some of its merchant princes shall fully compre- hend the great work which Thomas H. Benton did to "save Oi-egon" to the naition, arid make Oregon an American state, and the imperial commercial metropolis of the great Pacific, there will arise on some commanding point in the state, the heroic statue in bronze of "Old Bullion," friend of Oregon,