Page:Portland, Oregon, its History and Builders volume 1.djvu/201

Rh And to show further the hazy ideas of this remarkable statesman, when it comes to forming a concrete and persistent nation, take another extract from the same letter:

"The future inhabitants of the Atlantic and Mississippi states, will be our sons. We leave them in distinct but bordering establishments. We think we see their happiness in their union, and we wish it. Events may prove it otherwise, and if they see their interest in separation, why should we take sides with our Atlantic rather than our Mississippi descendants. God bless them both, and keep them in union, if it be for their good, but separate them if it be better."

And when the great Jefferson comes to consider the Pacific coast sons of the republic, he wanders still farther away from a union which must for all time make us a homogeneous nation. In a letter to John Jacob Astor, May 2, 1812:

"I considered as a great public acquisition the commencement of a settlement on that point (Astoria) of the western coast of America, and looked forward with gratification to the time when its descendants should have spread themselves through the whole length of that coast, covering it with free and independent Americans, unconnected with us by the ties of blood and interest, and employing, like us, the rights of self-government."

And in another letter to Mr. Astor, November 9, 1813, Jefferson says:

"I learn with great pleasure the progress you have made toward an establishment on the Columbia river. I view it as the germ of a great free and independent empire on that side of our continent, and that liberty and selfgovernment spreading from that as well as this side, will insure their complete establishment over the whole. It must be still more gratifying to yourself to foresee that your name will be handed down with that of Columbus and Raleigh, as the father of the establishment and founder of such an empire. It would be an afflicting thing indeed should the English be able to break up the settlement. Their bigotry to the bastard liberty of their own country, and habitual hostility to every degree of freedom in any "other will induce the attempt; they would not lose the sale of a bale of furs for the freedom of the whole world."

This letter shows vividly the three predominant characteristics of Jefferson's public life; intense devotion to personal liberty, expansion of the American idea of popular government, and intense hostility to everything British. Had Thomas Jefferson lived to read of the formation of the Oregon provisional government, he would have hailed it as the embodiment of his life-long principles. As it was, he was emphatically the father of Oregon. Although admitting he violated the constitution to get control of this vast region, and carry out his long cherished desire to explore the depths of its wilderness and show to the world its vast riches, he put the stamp of his genius and love of liberty on its original government through the brains and labor of the pioneers who had imbibed Jeffersonian principles with their mothers' milk. Slavery, he considered a moral and political evil, and declared in reference to it that "he trembled for his country when he remembered that God was just." And one of the first acts of the legislature of the provisional government of Oregon was to declare that slavery should never have a foothold in this state.

Thomas Jefferson was as accessible to the plain every day farmers, as to the highest dignitary of his own or any foreign government. All titles of honor were distasteful to him, and he lived and died as the popular incarnation of equality, justice and democracy. And it is to Jefferson that the country is indebted for that necessary enterprise in sending out the Lewis and Clarke expedition to explore the unknown country of Oregon, and place the stamp of American title on its whole extent, from the mountains to the sea. Judging from the history of the country, there is not a president since the days of Washington that had the push and enterprise, as well as the American spirit, to expand the nation's boundaries as did Jefferson; and if it had not been for his action