Page:Essays in Historical Criticism.djvu/123

 Sir, you have no idea of the land you sneer at. Oregon has all the virtues we claim for it. A few Americans have gone thither to develop our nation's wealth. We are far off, but our hearts are with the nation of our birth. We are pioneers, and can it be possible that our claims will be ignored,—that our country can consent to trade off her territory and our allegiance to a foreign power?'

"Dr. Whitman did not rest the question with the Secretary. He visited President Tyler himself, and left no stone unturned until he had awakened an interest in his cause in the minds of the President and a portion of his Cabinet, and a due consideration of the matter induced the final preservation of the greater portion of the Northwest Territory as a portion of the National Domain."

I am indebted for this transcript to Mr. William I. Marshall of Chicago. This earliest version of Whitman's services in behalf of Oregon mainly relates to incidents of which no living person in Oregon in 1864 had any first-hand knowledge. The only men who at any time could have confirmed or denied this story of their own knowledge were Daniel Webster and Marcus Whitman. Webster had been dead twelve years and Whitman seventeen years.

As a newspaper correspondent's report of a speech which reproduced the substance of Mr. Spalding's oral narration, this version of Whitman's work for Oregon in Washington cannot, of course, be pressed for details, but it may be remarked that there is no mention of the Walla Walla dinner, and that the account assumes that the Ashburton Treaty was still unsigned in 1843, and bases Whitman's services on his influence in Washington. It also makes him start in midwinter instead of early in October. The correspondent also explicitly states that to his knowledge it had never before been made public. If this correspondent found no one in that Oregon Assembly who had heard of it before 1864, this year can safely be assumed to be the date of its first revelation by Mr. Spalding. In Myron Eells' Did Marcus Whitman Save Oregon? this article is wrongly credited to the Sacramento Daily Bulletin.