Page:History vs. the Whitman saved Oregon story.djvu/61

Rh any negotiations pending about Oregon which were to be in any manner aflfected by anything he had done or might* do, or that he had published in newspapers— much less in a pamphlet—any information about Oregon while in the East, or held any public meetings to promote migration to Oregon, and that in but one letter, that of April i, 1847, four and onehalf years after he started for the States, did he claim that anything else but missionary business induced him to make his ride.

We have also seen how Dr. Mowry copies Rev. Dr. Thomas Laurie's deceptive quotation from that letter instead of going to the letter itself, and (p. 22 ante) I have for the first time given the public a chance to read exactly what claim Whitman did make in that letter. In my forthcoming book is a chapter on "What Dr. Whitman himself claimed about his services to the Government," in which every sentence in which he makes any claim is quoted exactly as it was written, and compared with the unquestionable facts, so that the public can judge for itself as to what value to attach to his own claims, as well as to the claims made for him by Gray, Spalding, C. Eells, M. Eells, Barrows, Nixon, Craighead, Mowry, et al.

As soon as I read, in February, 1887, Rev. Dr. Laurie's garbled quotation from Whitman's letter of April 1, 1847, in the Missionary Herald, for September, 1885, it seemed to me so palpably dishonest, that I wrote to Dr. Laurie asking him where I could see the original letter. He replied that he presumed I could see it at the American Board rooms in Boston, where he had.

This much surprised me, for ten years before, in answer to my thrice repeated inquiry of an official of the American Board at different meetings with him, I had been assured that there were no letters in Sieir archives which showed the purpose of Whitman's ride. I applied to the American Board for permission to examine the correspondence of the Oregon Mission, and on permission being given was amazed to find the immense amount hereinbefore mentioned.

JOINT LETTERS OF REV C. EELLS AND REV. E. WALKER, DATED OCT. 3, 1842, FOR WHICH WHITMAN DID NOT WAIT AS HE HAD AGREED TO DO.

Within an hour I had found not only this letter of April 1, 1847, but also the 14-page letter written by C. Eells, and endorsed by E. Walker in a brief note as correct, which contained the official report of the Seventh Annual Meeting of the Oregon Mission, May 16- June 8, 1842, and also the report of the Special Meeting Sept. 26-27, 1842, each report signed E. Walker, Moderator, Gushing Eells, Scribe; also E. Walker's