Page:Oregon Historical Quarterly vol. 7.pdf/429

Rh missionary colleague of Dr. Whitman's, contributed $500 to send a deputation to California to solicit aid from representatives of the National Government there. Three notes were given by private individuals, amounting in all to $2,800, to provide means for the support of the war. The Commissary General, if he had kept within the bounds prescribed for him by the financial legislation for the war, would have been compelled to confine himself to making requisitions on the loan commission and receiving the funds and other property they delivered to him. However, he and his agents not only bought goods outright, giving receipts and due bills when they had no cash in hand, but they even "pressed the wheat of certain farmers whose granaries were better filled than their neighbors'.

The circumstances connected with the sending of a messenger to Washington bearing dispatches to the President and a memorial to Congress, exhibit some typical