Page:History of Oregon volume 1.djvu/811

760 house, January 16, 1847, incorporated the ordinance of 1787, on which were founded the organic laws of the provisional government of Oregon according to the expressed desire of the colonial legislature of 1845, 1848.' This section is numbered in Douglas' bill section 18, and reads: 'That when the lands in said territory shall be surveyed under the direction of the government of the United States, preparatory to bringing the same into market, sections numbered 16 and 36 in each township in said territory shall be, and the same is hereby, reserved for the purposes of being applied to schools in said territory, and in the states and territories to be erected out of the same.' ''Or. Gen. Laws'', 1843–72, 63–5.

Thornton goes on to say that the consideration which decided him 'to make the 20th section a part of the territorial bill, rather than of the land bill, to which it more appropriately belonged,' was the same which governed him in framing sec. 17, relating to the transfer of civil and criminal suits from the courts of the provisional government to those established under the territorial government, namely, the best interests of the people. One is yet more astonished at Judge Thornton's audacity in view of the facts being open to any one taking the trouble to look into the proceedings of congress from 1845 to 1848, or to a file of the Oregon Spectator for 1847, where in the issue dated Sept. 16th is Douglas' bill of Dec. 1846, as it passed the house, and was at first amended by the senate, containing not only the ordinance of 1787, and the section granting the 16th and 36th sections for school purposes, but the section relating to the transfer of the cases already in the Oregon courts to the district courts of the United States; as well as a provision for having all penalties forfeitures, actions, and causes of action recovered under the new organization in the sane manner they would have been under the old; the only difference between this section of the act as it finally passed and the first draught of the bill, being that in the former it is numbered 15, instead of 17; and that two provisos were added to this section before the bill became a law, to guard the constitutionality of the penalties and forfeitures, and to prevent abuses of the interpretation of the old laws. The change in the numbers was effected by the introduction, during a course of amendments, of several new sections, to the disarrangement of the former numbering. There is nothing in the bill of which Thornton particularly claims authorship that was not in the original bill of 1846. Yet he talks about his efforts to neutralize the hostility to this measure, when no opposition in congress ever appeared to granting this land. In his Autobiography, MS., 45, he says, in reference to the school-land section, 'I will frankly admit that when to this section (the 16th) of the public lands, the 36th was added by the passage of the bill, the thought that providence had made me the instrument by which so great a boon was bestowed upon posterity, filled my heart with emotions as pure and deep as can be experienced by man;' after which he talks about being recognized as a benefactor of his race when his toils and responsibilities shall be over. See ''Or. Pioneer Assoc., Trans.'', 1874, 95. I have endeavored to get the true and full history of the first grant by congress of the 36th section of the public lands for school purposes. After going over the congressional records and finding that so far as I could discover, Oregon was the first recipient of this bounty, I wrote to the commissioner of the United States land-office at Washington to learn if possible more about the matter; but found from his reply that he could learn from me, inasmuch as he wrote that the 'act to establish the territorial government of Minnesota' was the first instance of the grant of the 36th in addition to the 16th section for school purposes, of date March 3, 1849, 6 months after the passage of the Oregon bill, containing the grant of these two sections. I therefore came to the conclusion that the reiterated petitions of the early colonists, notably of the Methodist missionaries and Dr White, to congress, the president, and the friends of Oregon, to remember