Page:How Marcus Whitman Saved Oregon.djvu/72

60 the part he took in the great historic drama, in which the statesmen of 60 the two nations were to be the actors, with millions of people the interested audience.

In another place we will show how Whitman has been misrepresented by modern historians, and an attempt made to deprive him of all honor, and call attention to the above record, all the more valuable because never intended for the public eye when written.

In the same letter Whitman says, "As I hold the settlement of this country by Americans, rather than by English colonists, most important, I am happy to have been the means of landing so large an immigration on the shores of the Columbia with their wagons, families and stock, all in safety."

Such sentiments reveal only the broad-minded, far-seeing Christian man, who, though many thousand miles away from its protecting influence, still loved "The banner of beauty and glory." He had gone to Oregon with only a desire to teach savages Christianity; but saw in the near future the inevitable, and, without lessening his interest in his savage pupils, he entered the broader field.

Who can doubt that both were calls from a power higher than man? Or who can point to an instance upon historic pages where the great work assigned was prosecuted with greater