Page:Oregon Historical Quarterly vol. 19.djvu/177

Rh Professor Henderson remained only a year with the college after I entered it as a student. The cause of his severance with the school was not for the reason of dissatisfaction of the patrons with his teaching, nor of the Board of Trustees with his method of conducting the school, but because of his political views. A majority of the Board of Trustees was strongly pro-slavery, while Professor Henderson was a Freesoiler, although he sedulously avoided any reference to the disturbing subject on the school premises, and discussion of it was forbidden by any of the societies connected with the school; still in the mind of the Board he was an incipient abolitionist and therefore unfit to be a tutor of the youths of the land. So after the end of the school year 1858-59 he was supplanted! by a "fire eater" from Maryland. This generation cannot comprehend the bigoted intolerance of the pro-slavery men of that period.

This, however, did not end Professor Henderson's career as a teacher. Afterwards he taught in several places in Oregon and Washington, notably in Lebanon, Oregon, and Dayton, Washington. He gave satisfaction wherever he taught, and always and everywhere was held in affectionate esteem by his pupils.

Professor Henderson was an ordained minister of the gospel in the Cumberland Presbyterian Church, though he never was the pastor of a congregation, that I am aware of. He lucidly and! vigorously set forth in his sermons the tenets of the gospel as he understood them, and his life was the daily expression of his Christian experience.

Professor Henderson took the census of Lane County for the United States in 1870. The country was then thinly settled and largely undeveloped. While engaged in this work he made a careful investigation of the possibilities of the country and made same the subject of a series of newspaper articles, which were helpful factors in directing attention to the latent resources of the country and quickening their development.