Page:Oregon Historical Quarterly vol. 5.djvu/66

54 with his command seeking his Mormon enemies by moonlight, and the higher courage that risks life deliberately to "stand for justice, truth and right" by legal methods.

The two forces here were the pioneer class of American citizens, mainly originating south of Mason and Dixon's line used to establishing law and order on lands won from the natice race, suddenly confronted by a horde of fanatics, mainly gathered at that time from the strata just above the submerged tenth of England's population, led by a comparatively few men of mixed nationalities intent on the nursing into existence of a new oligarchical religious system. The shrewd Mormon leaders secured Doniphan and Burnett to defend them under the forms of law in Missouri, which was done under a condition of public feeling so near mob violence that they were justified in one sitting within six feet of the other with a loaded pistol in hand while each in turn made his plea for law and order, and both came out of it with a moral power over their unruly fellows which carved them big niches in American history during the succeeding decade.

The pioneer element of Missouri succeeded, and ultimately Mormonism became an important pioneer element in winning to humanity the central portion of the great American desert, while the frontier family life represented by those who drove the Mormons from Far West came to the lower Columbia basin and began planting the thirty thousand rifles of Jefferson's conception, aided and encouraged by Floyd, Atcheson, Benton, and Linn, disciples of Jefferson. The means those statesmen proposed to use armed occupation of Oregon, encouraged by a permanent interest in the soil had just ended the Florida war of seven years' duration vexatious, harassing and expensive without either treaty negotiated or battle fought. Homebuilders going there, as Senator Benton states, "with their arms and plows."

Dr. Lewis F. Linn, as already stated, introduced a bill into the senate of the United States providing this land inducement so liberal as to be of doubtful passage, and indeed failed to pass the house, but it answered the purpose, and why it did so may (as the writer believes) be largely answered by the