Page:History of Oregon volume 1.djvu/667

616 Somewhat ashamed of it all, Secretary Buchanan wrote Shively, on his departure for Oregon, expressing the sympathy of the president, and his regret at the failure of the Oregon bill. He assured the people of Oregon that the president would reiterate his recommendations to congress in regard to Oregon, and assured him there could be no doubt of a near relief.

He referred to the act establishing post routes and offices, and the act of the 19th of May, 1846, providing for a regiment of mounted riflemen, to protect travellers on the road to Oregon. Strong assurance was given that the United States would never abandon or prove unmindful of the welfare of Oregon, but that everything possible should be done for the welfare of that country. Thomas H. Benton also wrote a letter of condolence. He said: 'The house of representatives, as early as the middle of January, passed a bill to give you a territorial government, and in that bill had sanctioned and legalized your provisional organic act, one of the clauses of which forever prohibited the existence of slavery in Oregon. An amendment from the senate's committee, to which this bill was referred, proposed to abrogate that prohibition; and in the delays and vexations to which that amendment gave rise, the whole bill was laid upon the table and lost for the session. This will be a great disappointment to you, and a real calamity; already 5 years without law or legal institution for the protection of life, liberty, and property, and now doomed to wait a year longer. This is a strange and anomalous condition, almost incredible to contemplate, and most critical to endure, a colony of freemen 4,000 miles from the metropolitan government, and without law or government to preserve them. But do not be alarmed or desperate. You will not be outlawed for not admitting slavery. Your fundamental act against that institution, copied from the ordinance of 1787, the work of the great men of the south in the great day of the south, prohibiting slavery in a territory far less northern than yours, will not be abrogated, nor is that the intention of the prime mover of the amendment. Upon the record of the judiciary committee of the senate is the author of that amendment; but not so the fact. It is only midwife to it. Its author, Mr Calhoun, is the same mind that "generated the firebrand" resolutions, of which I send you a copy, and of which the amendment is the legitimate derivation. Oregon is not the object. The most rabid propagandist of slavery cannot expect to plant it on the shores of the Pacific, in the latitude of Wisconsin and the Lake of the