Page:History vs. the Whitman saved Oregon story.djvu/34

28 "dream of policy" necessarily implied not surrendering it, but insisting on 49 degrees as our line to the coast, since England certainly would not buy what we did not own.

But no reader of Doctor Mowry's book, or of any other book advocating the Whitman legend, will find in it any intimation of these indisputable facts about the position of our leading statesmen on the Oregon question.

A detailed criticism of Doctor Mowry's treatment of all the "original sources" as to "B" would require very much more space than is available, and as no one has ever pretended that Whitman could by any possibility have influenced the Oregon policy of any other administration than that of Tyler, we will conclude this part of the criticism with a brief examination of his treatment of "original sources" as to the attitude toward and actions upon the Oregon question of President Tyler and Secretary of State D. Webster prior to March 1, 1843.

On pages 170-71 Doctor Mowry positively asserts that Webster and Tyler thought in the spring of 1843 that Oregon was useless to the United States, because "Lord Ashburton, Sir George Simpson and others with British proclivities had thoroughly indoctrinated our statesmen with the idea that the Rocky Mountains were impassable to wagons, that Oregon could not be peopled from the States, and therefore its value to this country was very small."

The reader looks through his book from title page to finis in vain for a single sentence in support of this shocking impeachment of the patriotism and the knowledge of our statesmen, except what Rev. H. H. Spalding, Rev. C. Eells and W. H. Gray thought they remembered (from twenty-three to forty years after the event) that Whitman told them after his return from the States.

Not a word is there in Doctor Mowry's book which intimates that either Webster or Tyler had ever taken the slightest interest in the Oregon question, or had done or said a thing toward securing Oregon to the United States or had any special information about it till Whitman reached Washington, certainly not till late in March, and more likely not till April 10 to 15, 1843.

Let us examine the official records and learn the facts. 1. In both his first and second annual messages in December, 1841, and December, 1842, President Tyler had strong paragraphs on Oregon, in the first recommending the establishment of a line of military posts from the Missouri to the Columbia. To neither of these messages does Doctor Mowry even allude.

2. Elijah White, M. D., had been a Methodist missionary to the Oregon Indians, and stationed nearly 300 miles west of Whitman's mission, from 1838 to 1840, when he was discharged.