Page:Portland, Oregon, its History and Builders volume 1.djvu/202

148 in seizing what he termed the "fugitive opportunity," the United States would have been, in its western extension, Hmited to the boundary of the Mississippi, and Oregon would have been as British as Canada. It is therefore justly due that the name of Thomas Jefferson should top the scroll of Oregon's hall of fame.

The next prominent character in the long contest for the American title to Oregon was Senator Thomas H. Benton of Missouri. Benton was not alone in the battle, but was ably supported by his colleague, Senator Lewis F. Linn. Linn was a physician by profession, and a forceful, aggressive man, serving two terms in the senate. But Benton was there for thirty years, always a commanding figure, resolute and courageous far beyond the great majority of men who have risen to that high position. Benton, next to Jefferson, early comprehended the great importance of the west to the nation. Living at St. Louis, which was in his day the great gateway not only to the south and southwest, but also to the real west beyond the mountains, he saw the national necessity to seize every point of vantage and hold on for the future. And although representing a slave state in the senate, he was far too large a man not to see that free territory to the west was a thousand times more important to St. Louis and to the nation than more slave states. And when the issue came, whether there should be territory added on that would make free states beyond the mountains, and thus disturb the equilibrium between slave and free states, he promptly cast in the whole force of his great influence in the senate and with the people on the side of the free territory of Oregon. For this act for justice and humanity, for national honor and defense, he was discredited by the slave-holding leaders of the south.

No man understood better the wants and aspirations of the pioneer settlers of Oregon. And no man comprehended as well the future national importance of taking and holding the whole of old Oregon for settlement by American citizens. His prophetic words, picturing the future greatness of this country, and the great commerce which would ebb and flow through this city, and the Columbia gateway, has been given in the introductory chapter of this book, and we have lived to see it a veritable reality. For long years, and through good and evil report, and in the face of all sorts of misrepresentation of the value of this country by the pigmy men who had gotten into the senate by some sort of accident, he stood the "Lion of the West" making the battle for Oregon. And some day, when this city or some of its merchant princes shall fully comprehend the great work which Thomas H. Benton did to "save Oregon" to the nation, and make Portland an American city and the imperial commercial metropolis of the great Pacific, there will arise on some commanding point in the city the heroic statue in bronze of "Old Bullion," friend of Oregon, with the uplifted right arm of his commanding figure pointing to the west to emphasize the apothegm that made him famous, "There's India, there's the East!"

And now we come to a man who "saved Oregon" who is wholly unlike every other man connected with Oregon history. Unappreciated and misunderstood, by some called a fanatic, by others a crank, and by the Hudson Bay Company treated as a horse thief, the ghost of Hall J. Kelley appears and disappears through the shifting scenery of Oregon's strenuous history with such kaleidoscopic presentment as almost utterly baffles description.

Hall Jackson Kelley was born at Northwood, N. H., February 24, 1790. At the age of sixteen the boy left home and taught school at Hallowell, Maine. He studied the classics and graduated with honor at Middlebury college in 1814, and married the daughter of the Rev. Thomas Baldwin, April 17, 1822. After leaving college, Mr. Kelley devoted his time to teaching, the preparation of elementary school books, the introduction of blackboards in public schools, the study of the higher mathematics, and making a discovery of an improved method of topographical and geographical surveying which President Jackson promised to introduce in government work.