Page:The Whitman Controversy.pdf/68

 H. H. Spalding, January 9, 1843, this sentence: "By a vote of our mission, which went home in June, I continue at my station till we hear from the board." This is a most unfortunate quotation for Mr. Evans to make, and leaves the impression that, for the moment, he forgot which side of the case he was on. If the action of the meeting in June was what sent Dr. Whitman East, then why did he wait all summer and start only at the near approach of winter? (October 3.)

Mrs. Victor truly says that Dr. Whitman was "quick to think and act." It never took him four months—from June until October—to get ready. His determination to go would soon have been followed by his going. Even Mr. Evans will not deny that it was determined by a vote of the mission that he should go East, and I think he will have to agree with me that it was a later one than the annual meeting in June, held very shortly before the time of his starting; and, in short, the "immense afterthought" is the only tenable ground. The special meeting of September must have been held and its approving vote of the doctor's wish to make the attempt to go East, must have been his warrant for going. Nothing appears to have transpired relating to the missionary business since June, at which time they had under consideration the order from the home board to vacate the two southern stations. Then, what new business could it have been that caused this special meeting and the doctor's hasty departure? It must have been the political aspect—not the missionary business. Mr. Evans says that "no living person in Oregon or Washington prior to July 4, 1865, ever heard national motives or political influence attributed to the winter journey of Dr. Whitman in 1842-43." This is so broad an assertion that I hardly know where to take hold of it. Before me is a letter written by Rev. Horace Lyman, of Forest Grove, Oregon, dated January 16, 1885, from which I take the following extract: "I came to the coast, or rather, to Portland, in November, 1849, and although I can not state the exact date, nor the conversation in which I first heard the claim made that Dr. Whitman went East that winter—1842-43—to make the effort to save Oregon to the United States; yet this decided impression was made upon my mind within one or two years after my coming here, i. e., with my first acquaintance with Mr. Gray, Mr. Spalding, Mr. Eells, and Mr. Walker, that this was one of his great objects in going East, and the main one. In other words, the idea was infused into my mind by various conversations in the earliest years of my Oregon