Page:Oregon Historical Quarterly vol. 6.djvu/394

388 documents. These show how public meetings were held, especially in Ohio, for the purpose of urging Congress to pass the Linn bill. These meetings resulted in the famous Oregon Convention at Cincinnati in July, 1843, which virtually determined that plank of the 1844 Democratic platform summarized in the phrase "Fifty-four Forty or Fight," and incidentally had a marked effect upon emigration as well.

We have the minutes of several meetings held in Bloomington, Iowa Territory, whose object was to raise a local company of emigrants for Oregon ; and we find that every detail of the preparation for the journey was carefully discussed in advance. The Platte (Missouri) Eagle notices editorially a lecture on Oregon delivered by Peter H. Burnett, and remarks that this gentleman is arousing great enthusiasm for the settlement of that most desirable country. The article concludes dramatically: "The American eagle is flapping his wings, the percursor of the end of the British lion on the shores of the Pacific. Destiny has willed it!"

For the organization of the company and the journey across the plains we have a number of distinct sources; but I shall notice only a few of the most important. So far as is known only one member of this party of nearly one thousand persons kept a diary which has been preserved. This was Peter H. Burnett, whose children, living in or near San Francisco, still possess the original document. It has never been printed entire; but we have a series of letters written by Burnett in the winter of 1843-44 to the New York Herald, and printed in part a year later, which are based upon the facts noted in his diary and upon recollections of the journey then still fresh in mind. The letters give an account of the trip as far as the Sweetwater. In Burnett's "Recollections and Opinions of an old Pioneer," New York, 1880, there is a brief account of the