Page:Oregon Historical Quarterly vol. 20.pdf/371

 FEDERAL RELATIONS OF OREGON

353

"I have entertained serious apprehensions and have expressed in this diary, that if no Gov(ern)ment was provided for California at the late session of Congress there was danger that that fine territory would be lost to the Union by the establishment of an Independent Government, Gen'l Taylor's opinions as expressed, I hope, have not been well considered. Gen'l Taylor is, I have no doubt, a well meaning old man. He is, however, uneducated, exceedingly ignorant of public affairs, and, I should judge of very ordinary capacity. He will be in the hands of others, and must rely wholly upon his cabinet to administer his Government."

them

Circumstances changed, however, and even if President Taylor did seriously entertain the opinion he expressed to Polk, by the end of 1849 he would have found few in the United States to agree with him; the gold fields, if nothing else,

prevented giving up California, slavery agitation or no

slavery agitation. Nothing in the Annual Message which sent to Taylor Congress in December, 1849, indicated that he retained his pessimistic views on the desirability of keeping the Coast territories. 17 Railroads and canals across the Isthmus,

and

came in for considerable read the the mineral wealth of both attention; for, Message, railroads across the continent,

and Oregon made it certain that a large population both of those regions would demand speedier means of transportation than those actually existing. For Oregon speCalifornia in

he called attention to the land title situation. Congress took up and disposed of most of the issues connected with the land question, although minor questions concifically

tinued to arise for

many

years.

The Indian

title

was

extin-

guished and provision was made for surveys and for disposing of the public domain, and questions of special grants as well as the status of the holdings of the Hudson's Bay Company were brought up. Samuel R. Thurston, the Delegate from Oregon, was sufficiently active in keeping the needs of his constituents before the House.

He

it

was who took the

first

His steps with most of the measures dealing with Oregon. resolution for looking into the matter of extinguishing the e,

XXII,

Pt.

i,

70-1.