Page:History vs. the Whitman saved Oregon story.djvu/12

6 from an article covering nearly 8,000 words in an English review, and stating that it was defamatory of Oregon and printed to deceive Americans as to its value and so cause them to abandon the whole of it to England, when not only the evident, but the explicitly avowed purpose of the writer was to persuade England that it ought to yield to the American claim as far North as 49°, and make that the northern boundary of Oregon; or quoting only fourteen words from a long article not published in the London Examiner till July 24, 1847 — more than four years after Whitman started back to Oregon — and deliberately antedating it to 1843, and so making it appear to have been published prior to Whitman's arrival in the States, and to have been designed to deceive us as to the value of Oregon, when, as a matter of fact, the very first sentence in the article (the whole of which is easily accessible, being quoted (but without its date) in the "Introduction to the Works of D. Webster," page CXLIX), plainly shows that it was written some time after the treaty of 1846, fixing the boundary of Oregon was made, and that its purpose was to congratulate the English Government for its wisdom in yielding to the American claim and fixing the boundary at 49°, and so avoiding the expenditure of life and treasure, which must have resulted from going to war over a region whose value would not have justified such expenditure; or prefacing the quotation of a single sentence from a long lecture by Captain William Sturgis, or of two brief sentences from a long speech by Senator Thomas H. Benton, by statements directly contrary to the sentiments of the whole of the lecture and the speech; to absolute forgeries (some of them attributed to Daniel Webster), so clumsily executed that their very language shows that they were never uttered by Webster, since, whatever were his failings, he always discussed great public questions in sensible and dignified English, and not in the style of a "sloppy" and sensational newpaper writer.

Presumably, neither Barrows nor Nixon manufactured these forgeries, but when they are so palpably fabricated, surely it is but little less reprehensible for them by quoting them to have endorsed them without any attempt at verifying them, than to have themselves originated them, precisely as there is little moral or legal distinction in the offense of manufacturing counterfeit money or in circulating it, when a mere glance shows to any fairly intelligent person that it is counterfeit, and when its acceptance by the unsuspecting is due to their faith in the knowledge and integrity of the circulator. Craighead's "Story of Marcus Whitman" (published by the "Presbyterian Board of Missions and Sunday School Work," and so put largely into S. S. libraries), is not only as worthless historically as these other books, but is even more ob-