Page:McLoughlin and Old Oregon.djvu/382



XLIII

THE DEATH OF DR. McLOUGHLItf 1849-57

OREGON politics took on a vivid hue in 1849. A young fire-eater from the States, of surpassing oratory, espoused the anti-Hudson's Bay cause and rode on the popular wave to Congress. Congress, that had looked for some lean and bearded trapper from the far-away West, was startled by the youth, the beauty, the boldness, and the eloquence of Oregon's first delegate, a boy from Maine, scarce two years out. They leaned to catch the fiery invective of this brilliant but misinformed young man, who pictured Dr. McLoughlin, the "old monopolist," holding the savages in leash upon the trembling immigrants of Oregon.

Naturally prejudiced, it took but little to carry the tide. Every other settler in Oregon was confirmed in his title to land, but Dr. McLoughlin's was taken away. The old philanthropist, who had filed his papers for American citizenship, and had been the Father of Oregon, was left without a foot of land in all that territory that he had opened up to trade. When the news reached the Pacific, the Oregonians themselves were astonished few had known of this conspiracy, and fewer still approved.

On the other hand, a great conflagration was kindled in England. Fitzgerald's "Hudson's Bay Company " was published to prove that the Hudson's Bay Company, and especially Dr. McLoughlin, had been in