Page:Oregon Historical Quarterly volume 12.djvu/388

380 Several score persons read Marshall's manuscript, including historians of national and international reputation, professors of history in universities and colleges, teachers of history in normal schools, high schools and academies, principals of schools, judges, clergymen, lawyers, editors and public officers of various kinds—most of whom had been believers in the Whitman-saved-Oregon story and had indorsed it in lectures or sermons or in newspapers and magazine articles, or in their school and other histories, and therefore very naturally would have preferred not to have it proved false and who subjected all criticism of such evidence adverse to it to the most careful, and some of them to the most hostile scrutiny.

Among these critics Professor Marshall names: George Bancroft, John Fiske, Horace E. Scudder (who was editor of Barrow's "Oregon"), Professors John B. McMaster, of the University of Pennsylvania, Francis N. Thorpe, Harry Pratt Judson, of the University of Chicago; Andrew McLaughlin, formerly of the University of Michigan; Edward Channing, of Harvard University; Allen C. Thomas, of Haverford College; William P. Cordy, superintendent of schools, Springfield, Mass., and "many others."

Then what truth lies behind the legend and why did Whitman make his famous midwinter "ride?"

Quarrels and dissensions and failure to make progress on the part of Whitman and his associates had caused the American board of foreign missions (Congregational, Presbyterian and Dutch Reformed) to order discontinuance of three of the four mission stations, including Whitman's, and return home of two of the missionaries. Whitman and his associates deemed this order fatal to their mission work, and they decided it expedient for Whitman to return to Boston to secure annulment of the order and a reinforcement of clergymen and laymen for whom they had been importuning the board. Whitman was successful in securing annulment of the order at