Page:The History of Oregon Bancroft 1888.djvu/137

Rh previous chapter that a bill creating the office of surveyor-general in Oregon, and to grant donation rights to settlers, and for other purposes, was before congress in both houses in January 1848, and that it failed through lack of time, having to await the territorial bill which passed at the last moment. Having been crowded out, and other affairs pressing at the next session, the only trace of it in the proceedings of congress is a resolution by Collamer, of Vermont, on the 25th of January 1849, that it should be made the special order of the house for the first Tuesday of February, when, however, it appears to have been forgotten; and it was not until the 22d of April 1850 that Mr Fitch, chairman of the committee on territories, again reported a bill on this subject. That the bill brought up at this session was but a copy of the previous one is according to usage; but that Thurston had been at work with the committee some peculiar features of the bill show.

There was tact and diplomacy in Thurston's character, which he displayed in his short congressional