Page:How Marcus Whitman Saved Oregon.djvu/46

 The Government, however, was moved to send a special commissioner to Oregon to discover its real conditions and report. But nothing practical resulted.

It is not a pleasant thing to turn the pages of history made by American statesmen during the first third of the century, and even nearly to the end of its first half. There is a lack of wisdom and foresight and broad-mindedness, which shatters our ideals of the mental grandeur of the builders of the Republic.

Diplomatically they had laid strong claim to the now known grand country beyond "the Stony Mountains." They had never lost an opportunity by treaty to hold their interests; and yet from year to year and from decade to decade, they had seen a foreign power, led by a great corporation, ruling all the territory with a mailed hand. While they made but feeble protest in the way we have mentioned, they did even worse, they turned their shafts of oratory and wit and denunciation loose against the country itself and all its interests.

MAP SHOWING OREGON IN 1842, WHITMAN'S RIDE, THE RETURN TRIP TO OREGON, THE SPANISH POSSESSIONS AND THE LOUISIANA PURCHASE. View larger image.

Turn for a brief review of the political record of that period. Among the ablest men of that day was Senator Benton. He, in his speech of 1825, said, that "The ridge of the Rocky Mountains may be named as a convenient, natural and everlasting boundary. Along this ridge the western limits 41 of the Republic should be drawn,