Page:Some Observations Upon the Negative Testimony and the General Spirit and Methods of Bourne and Marshall in Dealing with the Whitman Question.pdf/7

Rh do any deed must be held to outweigh any number of subsequent explanations, however ingenious, that he, and much more that his friends may have put forth to account for his actions." There is a second working hypothesis, not so specifically stated, but practically worked to the limit by both Marshall and Bourne. It is this: Errors by a witness in one part of his testimony invalidate the rest of it. Such, simply and briefly stated, is the basis employed by these two writers in the Whitman case. Starting with this basis they lay down two fundamental propositions. The first is that the letters and other written matter of the period when Whitman is alleged to have "saved Oregon" contain no definite reference to the alleged fact, and that the Whitman claim is built on recollections found in print only after 1864, or more than 20 years after "Whitman's Ride" and 17 years after the Massacre. The second proposition is that the various advocates of the "legend" make many errors in details and numerous contradictions both with the contemporary written records and with each other, and that therefore all their assertions must be rejected. From these two fundamental propositions they arrive at certain conclusions given with definiteness by Bourne on pages 99 and 100, and by Marshall at various points throughout his lengthy work. Divested of verbiage and ephithets, the conclusions of both writers may be summed up in the following points: That "Whitman's Ride" was executed for the purpose of influencing the American Board of Foreign Missions to continue the Mission at Waiilatpu; that Whitman had no thought of national aims, and was no appreciable factor in getting Oregon before the attention of the National Government; that his part in organizing the immigration of 1843 and in getting it to Oregon was unimportant; that Whitman, instead of being a patriot and a hero, was a third rate or a fourth rate man of poor judgment and largely responsible for his own murder; that Whitman's extant letters written between his return to Waiilatpu in 1843 and his death in 1847, in which he claims an important part in the immigration of 1843 and in shaping events to the acquisition of Oregon, were simply an exaggeration of his own services which grew up in his own mind after the immigration of 1843; that the "saved Oregon" idea was never thought of even by Eells, Gray, Walker, Spalding, and other subsequent claimants until about 1864, in which year S. A. Clark, in an article in the Sacramento Union, and soon afterward Spalding, Atkinson, Eells, Gray, Treat, and others interested in Missions, developed the "legend" with such effect that historical writers of national reputation passed it on as veritable history, and it became embedded in many standard works; that the letters to the American Board written by the missionaries in