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Hall Jackson Kelley 219

movement which saved to the United States a part of its right- ful domain upon the Pacific."^

"Hall J. Kelley may properly be called the father of the Oregon emigration movement."^^

"Sharing the fate of all idealists, he was a generation in advance of his day. All that he hoped for Oregon was des- tined to come to pass, and largely through his mad propa- ganda. His pamphlets and his newspaper [articles] generated a romantic enthusiasm for the vast realm beyond the Rockies so rapidly slipping from American control. His suggestion that every colonist should receive a grant of two hundred acres of arable land appealed with irresistible force to the homeless and unemployed of the eastern cities, and furnished the foundation for the Donation Act."[?]2^

"It is impossible to show any other American at so early a period not only devoting himself to the intellectual labor of discussing the Oregon question, and to promoting colonization societies, but who undertook and overcame without support, the cost and perils of immigration with the sole object of verifying his teachings to the country .... It is only jus- tice to agree with him that he set on foot by his writings the immigration movement to the shores of the Pacific in all its forms, whether missionary, commercial, or colonizing ....

"If we compare the unprotected services of a Kelley with the paid and protected services of Lewis and Clark, we have to acknowledge that a debt of appreciation and public recog- nition, at least, is due to the Yankee schoolmaster who spent the best years of his life in teaching the United States govern- ment and people the value of the Oregon territory."^

"I consider that the real contest for Oregon was between the

25 Chittenden, The American Fur Trade of the Far W-'tfj*, I, 434-5- a6 Thwaites, Early Western Travels, XXI, 24^. 27 Coman, Economic Beginnings of the Far West, II, 132-3.

2B Victor, Hall J. Kelley, one of the fathers of Oregon, Oregon Historical ^ Society. Quarterly, II, 39.