Page:Oregon Historical Quarterly volume 13.djvu/177

Rh could be taken up entirely independent of other issues and settled on its own merits; that its introduction alongside the older and more pressing ones would inevitably lead to some unfavorable compromise on the Oregon issue, itself, or compel an unfavorable compromise on the other issues in its behalf. He therefore rejected it entirely from consideration, and subsequent events fully justified his action in doing so. He was completely successful in adjusting the other issues in the memorable treaty of 1842; and four years later, when the Oregon Treaty came before the Senate, amicably proposing the forty-ninth parallel as the boundary line of the two governments in the territory, Mr. Webster was there as Senator from Massachusetts to give the treaty his hearty support. The history of the diplomatic negotiations between England and the United States over the Oregon boundary question shows that our government from the beginning maintained that the forty-ninth parallel was the proper boundary line, and that the keynote of Mr. Webster's policy was this line and nothing else. The people of the region of the Columbia, therefore, owe a special debt of gratitude to Mr. Webster for his wisdom in keeping the Oregon question distinct from the unrelated issues with which he had to deal in the perplexing negotiations of 1842.

"It would be pleasant on this occasion, if time permitted, to dwell upon some of the incidents and experiences of that great immigration into this territory which took place between 1841 and 1846, when the sovereign title to this fair domain passed peacefully and permanently into the hands of the United States.

"One of the most picturesque scenes in the early history of New England is the migration of Thomas Hooker and his church, in June, 1635, from Cambridge to the banks of the Connecticut River, where they forthwith made the beginnings of the town of Hartford. The picture of that earnest party in pursuit of a lofty purpose, a party of husbands and wives with their children, taking with them their cattle and their household goods and led by their sturdy pastor, the great founder of American democracy, is a very pleasant one. Mrs. Hooker being in poor health, was carried all the, way on a litter. That was a pilgrimage of something more than one hundred miles, through a country not hard to traverse, under June skies. This Massachusetts pilgrimage in behalf of civil and religious liberty has long been a theme on which historians and liberalminded people have loved to dwell. But how insignificant it appears in comparison with the great pilgrimage to Oregon,