Page:The History of Oregon Bancroft 1888.djvu/133

Rh 1849 he introduced into Oregon the vituperative and invective style of debate, and mingled with it a species of coarse blackguardism such as no Kentucky ox-driver or Missouri flat-boatman might hope to excel. Were it more effective, he could be simply eloquent and impressive; where the fire-eating style seemed likely to win, he could hurl epithets and denunciations until his adversaries withered before them.

And where so pregnant a theme on which to rouse the feelings of a people unduly jealous, as that of the aggressiveness of a foreign monoplymonopoly [sic]? And what easier than to make promises of accomplishing great things for Oregon? And yet I am bound to say that what this scurrilous and unprincipled demagogue promised, as a rule he performed. He believed that to be the best course, and he was strong enough to pursue it. Had he never done more than he engaged to do, or had he not privately engaged to carry out a scheme of the Methodist missionaries, whose sentiments he mistook for those of the majority, being himself a Methodist, and having been but eighteen months in Oregon when he left it for Washington, his success as a politician would have been assured.

Barnes, in his manuscript entitled Oregon and California, relates that Thurston was prepared to go to California with him when Lane issued his proclamation to elect a delegate to congress. He immediately