Page:History vs. the Whitman saved Oregon story.djvu/90

84 private expedition down and up the Columbia River, and I had the extreme pleasure of listening to his eloquent and fascinating descriptions of that country during many interviews with Senators Linn and Breese, who were collecting material to use before the Senate in their discussion upon the merits of the bill, which almost the whole Senate treated with a smile of impatience and indifference whenever the subject was called to their attention. From Dr. Whitman, a missionary to Oregon, much useful information for emigrants and the Senators who had charge of the bill was also obtained at that time."

That Dr. Reed's recollection of what winter it was that he was in Washington is trustworthy is evident from his very great personal interest in his contest for the very important and lucrative office of Surveyor General of the two great States of Missouri and Illinois, to which, he informs us further on in the letter, the President renominated him "On the 14th of March, 1842, and on the 17th I was unanimously confirmed," (which we find verified by examination of the Sen. Ex. Journal for that date), but that his recollections as to the other matters in this quotation are wholly erroneous I shall speedily demonstrate. (1.) As to the calling of that special session of Congress—the first session of the twenty-seventh Congress—Mr. Tyler had no more to do with that call than "the Man in the Moon." Though it did not assemble till after his most untimely death, it was called, not by Mr. Tyler "shortly after" Reed's appointment in April, 1841, but on March 17, 1841, by President Harrison, a fact distinctly stated by President Tyler in his message to it, (as Dr. Reed could have ascertained by five minutes' examination of the Cong. Globe, 1st Sess., 27th Cong., 1841, p. 7, or "Messages of the Presidents, Vol. IV., p. 21). Dr. Reed's assertion, therefore, that "Mr. Tyler was unfortunately persuaded by the Clay wing of the Harrison and Tyler party to call an extra session of Congress for the summer of 1841," is without even a shadow of foundation in fact.

(2.) As to the grotesque inaccuracy of Dr. Reed's statement that "Almost the whole Senate treated Linn's bill with a smile of indifference or impatience," it is only necessary to refer the reader to the Congressional Globe, Twenty-seventh Congress, third session, for the record of the great debate on that bill in the Senate, the report of which covers 165 columns, and in which, of a total membership of fifty, twenty-seven senators took part.

(3.) As to "a large number of emigrants to Oregon in 1841." A letter of Mrs. Whitman, dated "Wielatpoo, Oregon Territory, October 1, 1841," and published in Transactions of the Oregon Pioneer Association for 1891, pages 139-145, says (p. 139): "The emigrants were twenty-four in number—two