Page:History vs. the Whitman saved Oregon story.djvu/67

Rh

We have seen (on pp. 16-18 ante) that Mrs. Whitman on September 29 and 30, 1842, wrote two letters in which she explicitly declared that her husband was going to make his ride on the business of the Mission, and on March 11, April 14 and May 18, 1843, wrote three more letters, in each of which it was necessarily implied that his ride was on the business of the Mission, and we have seen how Dr. Mowry juggles with these, the only letters in which she ever wrote anything concerning the purpose of his ride. Rev. M. Eells knows perfectly well about all these letters.

How does our candid author "seeking for the truth of history wherever found^' treat these letters? He does not quote a word from them, nor in any way refer to them in such a way that his readers can learn anything about where to look for them, or obtain any other information of their contents than is contained in the following (Reply, p. 35), "He" (i. e., Prof. Bourne) can find from her letters that before the Doctor started East he intended to go to Washington."

The only remaining "original sources" or contemporaneous accounts of the origin and purpose of Whitman's ride are the two official accounts in the Missionary Herald, and (on pp. 1820 ante) they have been quoted and the failure of Dr. Mowry and every other advocate of the Saving Oregon story to quote them has been stated.

How does our "candid" author, in his earnest search for "the truth of history wherever found" deal with these strictly contemporaneous accounts of the origin and purpose of Whitman's ride, and the only accounts of that origin and purpose ever printed till the Saving Oregon theory of it was published in 1864-66, remembering that both these accounts distinctly declare that the ride was on the business of the Mission? To the second account he does not allude in this "Reply," nor in any of the numerous articles he has written in defense of the Whitman Legend, and from the first he only quotes two words, as follows: (Reply, p. 41), (writing of the Special Meeting which authorized Whitman's ride). "In Miss. Herald for September, 1843, it was stated by the editor that such a meeting