# History vs. the Whitman Saved Oregon Story/Strange Treatment of Original Sources

STRANGE TREATMENT OF ORIGINAL SOURCES.
A Review of "Marcus Whitman and the Early Days of Oregon," by Dr. W. A. Mowry. Silver, Burdett & Co., 1901.
(Copyright, 1902, by Principal William I. Marshall, Chicago.)
All rights reserved.
It was owing to Dr. Mowry's strong endorsement of the first published (or Spalding–Gray) version of the Whitman Saved Oregon Story to me, in 1877, that I was imposed upon by it from 1877 to 1882, and I have corresponded extensively with him upon it, especially since I discovered, and (in lectures in the great Peabody Institute course in Baltimore in November, 1884) demonstrated its total falsity; and he, as late as December 9, 1898, wrote me a letter imploring me not to publish the really vital evidence upon it, as follows:
   "I have copied hundreds of typewritten pages from those letters" (i. e., of Whitman and his associates to the American Board) "during the last thirteen years.
   "One thing, however, I have not felt at liberty to copy, and do not think the Board should ever have permitted you or any one else to copy.
   "I refer to the confidential letters written by the missionaries to the Secretary of the Board, relating to their private and personal affairs, and particularly complaints one of another.
   "I do not think you ought to publish any extracts from the letters of that character."
   " .... In my own case, I always showed to the Secretary the matter which I had copied, and I believe that this has been the general practice. I certainly hope you will not make public such private affairs, even though the courtesy was extended to you to copy private letters."
I therefore awaited his "Marcus Whitman" with some curiosity to see whether he had written it on the lines of ​suppression and evasion and special pleading indicated by his above quoted letter, or in accord with the universally accepted canons of honest historical investigation and writing, by which all real historians feel bound to work.
There are no letters in the correspondence of Whitman and his associates with the American Board, which, since the endorsement of the Whitman Saved Oregon Story, by the Missionary Herald, the official organ of that Board, in December, 1866, can with any propriety be considered as private or confidential, the public having an undoubted right to know the contents of all that correspondence in order that it may correctly judge of the validity of the claims made about Marcus Whitman, and of the credence it should give to the "statements" of Messrs. Spalding, Gray and C. Eells (from twenty-three to forty years after 3ie event), on which alone the Whitman Saved Oregon Story rests.
No attempt was made by the Secretary of the American Board to limit the freedom and thoroughness of my investigations.
In his Preface, after informing us that he has been more than twenty years investigating the Whitman Saved Oregon subject, and that he has read "Everything I could lay my hands upon," Dr. Mowry says: "This book is a history. It is not an embellished story like Irving's Astoria or Parkman's Oregon Trail. It was written with the single purpose of stating in a clear and concise manner the important facts with which it has to deal. From first to last it has to do with facts."
On page 114 he says: "It should be the aim of the impartial historian to examine all sides of a disputed question, to sift all statements, to examine all theories, to go, as far as possible, to the original sources for his facts, and, free from bias or prejudice to state only that which appears to be thoroughly corroborated as truth."
Let us compare his performance with this correct statement of his duty.
He says (p. 1): "At one time our government ignored the country" (i. e.. Oregon) "as worthless, and was not unwilling to sell it for a mess of pottage." (P. 2): "Finally the savages were permitted to butcher in cold blood the man who, by bravery and patriotism utterly .unprecedented, wrested that entire country from the gfrasp of the Hudson's Bay Company, and made it possible for the United States to hold it." (pp. 170-71, writing of the spring of 1843, and of Webster's and Tyler's ideas of Oregon): "It was plainly apparent that Lord Ashburton, Sir George Simpson and others, with British proclivities, had thoroughly indoctrinated our statesmen with the idea that the Rocky Mountains were impassable to wagons, that Oregon could not be peopled from the States, and ​therefore its value to this country was small," and that "Webster thought Oregon was useless to our country on account of the impassable character of the mountains," and that "Tyler entertained precisely the same views" (as Webster) "as to the uselessness of Oregon to the United States." (pp. 191-2, speaking of those desiring to migrate to Oregon in 1843): "It is evident from a variety of sources of information that the great drawback to these would-be emigrants was that they could not carry their wagons and families through the mountains. The great Rocky Mountain range and the Blue Mountains were supposed to be impassable for wagons."
ONLY THREE IMPORTANT QUESTIONS CONCERNING WHITMAN.
As to Dr. Whitman there are but three really important questions, to wit:
* What was the origin and the purpose of Whitman's ride from Oregon to the States, begun October 3, 1842?
* What was the condition of the Oregon question at Washington (i. e., the attitude towards it of Tyer's Administration), in the winter of 1842-43 and the spring of 1843, and what influence, if any, did Whitman exert to change the policy of the National Government towards Oregon.
* What was Whitman's real relation to the great overland migration of 1843?
Let us examine Dr. Mowry's treatment of the original sources concerning each of these three points.
ORIGINAL SOURCES AS TO "A."
As to (A) the only important original sources and the only ones that it is certain Dr. Mowry has examined are: First. The correspondence of the Oregon Mission in the archives of the A. B. C. F. M. in Boston, prior to Whitman's return to Oregon in September, 1843, before which none of his associates knew that anything had occurred to make them wish their records different from what they had been written.
These letters, many of them very long (one covering 74 and another 52 pages of very large paper), number more than 200 and must aggregate considerably more than 400,000 words, and in them all is not one sentence expressing the least interest in or concern about the political destinies of any part of the Oregon Territory, or furnishing the least support in any other way to any form of the saving Oregon theory of Whitman's ride, and the same is true of all the correspondence of all these missionaries with their friends (so far as it has yet been published), during the whole time the Oregon question was unsettled, except that after Whitman had visited the States and found the whole country aflame about the Oregon ​question he did, in some of his letters after his return, express some interest in the subject, and made some very extravagant and unfounded claims of having been largely instrumental in settling the question by having led out the 1843 migration.
The nearest to an expression of any interest in the political destiny of Oregon prior to Whitman's Ride is the following passage in an undated and hitherto unpublished letter of W. H. Gray (No. 136, Vol. 138, American Board archives), plainly written after October, 1839, and probably in November or December, 1839: "Dr. McLoughlin said to me that it was his wish that our people should occupy that place, and gave as a reason that then our people would be all together, and have nobody to meddle with us, and in case the boundary line was to be the Columbia River and the Fort" (i. e., Walla Walla) "was to be removed, he should like to have us there, both on account of the influence we might exert on the Indians and the men of the Fort. He did not wish to answer all my questions about the country, because it would imply a claim to the country, which they had none, except what their forts now occupied; he would say that he thought we had just as good a right to occupy any place as they had."
Any proper treatment of Whitman's career requires an honest summary (to the extent of 20 to 25 pages like this), of some 75,000 to 90,000 words of this correspondence, and in addition an accurate quotation of some 8,000 to. 10,000 words more of it.
Of all this correspondence Dr. Mowry quotes only 510 words, and they—even as he quotes them—furnish no support to his theories about the political purpose of Whitman's ride.
All but 86 of these 510 words Professor Bourne had previously quoted in the "Legend of Marcus Whitman" as being the strongest possible evidence against the saving Oregon theory of Whitman's ride, and they have been considered as being conclusive against the theory of any saving Oregon purpose of that ride and as proving it to have been undertaken solely on the business of his mission, by such historians as Professor John Fiske, Dr. Edward Eggleston, Professor John B. McMaster, Professor Allen C. Thomas, Professor Harry P. Judson, Professor Edward C. McLaughlin, Horace E. Scudder, Principal Wilbur F. Gordy, Professor Edward Channing, Professor F. Newton Thorpe, etc., etc. (Cf. Am. Hist. Review, January, 1901 (pp. 276-300) and Tr. Am. Hist. Assn.; 1900, pp. 288-300).
But, whereas, Professor Bourne quoted accurately, Dr. Mowry quotes far otherwise.
The only document Whitman took with him to the American Board from the three men who remained associated with him in the Mission was the following:
   (Signed) "E. Walker, Moderator. "Cushing Eells, Scribe. "H. H. Spalding,"
This Dr. Mowry prints (on pp. 174-5), but omits the last eight words, "in regard to the interests of this mission," being the adverbial phrase which distinctly limited to the business of the mission the purpose for which all of his associates sanctioned his journey.
That this was an intentional omission is evident from the fact that in an article glorifying Whitman, in the Boston Congregationalist, November 18, 1897, Dr. Mowry omitted from his quotation of this document all after the word "practicable," putting a period there, where the document had a comma; and when he was criticised by me for making so deceptive a quotation, he defended it as justifiable, saying, "One sentence was all I needed, and I used that one," whereas there is but one complex sentence in the whole document, and the criticism was because he had not "used that one," but had omitted the two adverbial phrases which stated precisely why Whitman was authorized to make his ride.
Further, Dr. Mowry (p. 129) prefaces the 420 words he has quoted from Rev. E. Walker's letter of October 3, 1842, with the statement that "Father Eells . . . wrote a letter from which the following is quoted," and prints at the end of the extract,
   "(Signed)'Cushing Eells.'"
Yet Dr. Mowry well knows (having mentioned this identical letter as one of Walker's in 1899, in a letter to the writer of this criticism), that this letter, which he thus ascribes to Gushing Eells, is indexed in the archives of the American Board as a letter from Rev. Elkanah Walker, and that of the 16 pages of this letter, 15, including every one of the 420 words he has quoted from it, are in the handwriting of Elkanah Walker, and that it is signed Elkanah Walker, and not Gushing Eells, and that every word in it which is in G. Eells' handwriting is the following endorsement of its correctness, on its fourteenth page, which, by mistake. Walker had left blank.
To this endorsement by C. Eells, Dr. Mowry never alludes, though knowing all about it as his correspondence with me shows.
Rev. E. Walker's diary (in MS., in possession of the Oregon Historical Society) reads "Monday, Oct. 3, 1842. Commenced my letter to Mr. Greene. Succeeded better than I expected. Tuesday, 4. Continued to write and make slow progress. Wednesday, 5. Busy at writing, but feel as though I could not make out a good one . . . Thursday, 6. Still at my letter . . . Saturday, 8. Finished copying my letter to Mr. Greene and read it to Mr. Eells, who approved it.' So "the short time allowed for writing the letter" was six days.
Not another word besides these 510 is there in Dr. Mowry's book, written by Rev. C. Eells, Rev. H. H. Spalding, Rev. E. Walker, or Mr. W. H. Gray, to the Secretary of the American Board while the mission continued, nor subsequently down,to May 28, 1866 (when Rev. C. Eells first endorsed the Whitman Saved Oregon story, in a letter which the Missionary Herald published in December, 1866), except that in his Appendix, Dr. Mowry prints two letters from Rev. C. Eells, and two from Rev. H. H. Spalding, written in December, 1847, and January, 1848, and relating to nothing but the dreadful massacre of November 29-December 8, 1847, ^^ which Dr. and Mrs. Whitman and twelve others perished, and which destroyed the mission, and to the rescue of the survivors by the Hudson's Bay Company's efforts; and this though there are in the American Board archives letters written by them to the American Board, between Whitman's return to Oregon, in September, 1843, and May, 1866, amounting to about 250,000 words.
Though thus chary of quoting what C. Eells, H. H. Spalding and W. H. Gray wrote prior to the publication of the Whitman Saved Oregon story, in 1864-5-6, Dr. Mowry quotes from their letters, "statements" and other publications subsequent to September, 1865, to the following amounts:
Great as is this amount, it is but a faint index of the extent to which Dr. Mowry uses the statements of Spalding, Gray and C. Eells made subsequent to 1864-5, for practically all of his book that relates to Whitman is a mere condensation of, or a paraphrase of those statements, or of the statements of others whose ideas about the matter are plainly derived from Spalding, Gray and C. Eells.
An example of how very peculiar are Dr. Mowry's ideas as to the proper use of "original sources," is found in his Chapter X, "The. Missionaries Discuss the Situation," of which he devotes 3 pages to C. Eells' "recollections" (in 1866, and subsequent years down to 1882), which "recollections" (from 24 to 40 years after the event) Mr. Eells did not pretend to support by reference to any contemporaneous letters, journals or other written or printed documents, as to the patriotic origin of Whitman's ride, and of the details of the Special Meeting of the Mission held at Whitman's Station, Sept. 26-27, 1842, which authorized his ride.
But neither in Chapter X, nor elsewhere in the book, does he even allude to the 14-page letter (received by D. Greene, Sec, on May 3, 1843), dated Oct. 3, 1842, in Gushing Eells' handwriting and signed by him (and indexed by the American Board among C. Eells' letters), which has a brief note of endorsement of its correctness in E. Walker's handwriting, and signed by him, which letter contains the official report of that Special Meeting of Sept. 26-27, 1842, signed by E. Walker, I Moderator, and Cushing Eells, Scribe, which record, written I but six days after the dose of the meeting, gives only the business of the mission as engaging its attention, without the least i intimation that any political or patriotic ideas were even mentioned during its whole session.
Yet knowing well that this record still exists in the archives of the American Board, Dr. Mowry copies without comment (on p. 129) Rev. C. Eells' statement made in 1882, that the record of that Special Meeting was destroyed at the time of the Whitman massacre!
DR. MOWRY'S TREATMENT OF MRS. WHITMAN'S LETTERS.
The second such "original source" as to "A" is the correspondence of Mrs. Whitman with her parents, brothers and sisters after March, 1840, when Gray began to bring the ​quarrels of the various members of the mission, (and especially of the Whitmans and Spalding, and himself,) to the attention of the American Board, and prior to her husband's return in September, 1843.
Of this there will be found about 42,000 words in the Trans. Ore. Pioneer Associaticm, 1891 and 1893, and to fairly present the relation of the Hudson's Bay Company to the Spalding-Whitman mission at least 20,000 more words of earlier and later dates should be carefully studied and summarized to the extent of fully 1,000 words, while fully 1,000 words more should be quoted from these 20,000. Of the 42,000 above mentioned fully 2,000 should be quoted.
Of these 42,000 words, Dr. Mowry only quotes the following 42 words (p. 122) in a letter to her husband, dated Oct. 22, 1842: "Indeed, much as I shall and do want to see you, I prefer that you stay just as long as it is necessary to accomplish all your heart's desire respecting the interest of this country, so dear to us both, our home."
This brief extract Dr. Mowry declares "Showed what she understood to be the object of his journey."
But how this shows "What his heart's desire was," he fails to explain. He nowhere informs his readers where they can find this letter (which is in Trans. Ore. Pioneer Assn., 1891, p. 167).
Between September 29, 1842, and May 18, 1843, Mrs. Whitman wrote five letters, as follows, to her relatives and her husband, in the first two of which she explicitly stated that his journey was on missionary business, and in the other three stated what amounted to the same thing.
Sept. 29, 1842 (the next day after her husband first proposed the journey), she wrote as follows to her brother, at Quincy, Ill.:
"My beloved husband has about concluded to start next Monday to go to the United States. ... If you are still in Quincy you may not see him until his return, as his business requires great haste. He wishes to reach Boston as early as possible so as to make arrangements to return next summer if prospered. The interests of the missionary cause in this country calls him home." Sept. 30, 1842, she wrote to "My Beloved Parents, Brothers and Sisters: You will be surprised if this letter reaches you to learn that the bearer is my dear husband, and that you will after a few days have the pleasure of seeing him. May you have a joyful meeting. He goes upon important business as connected with the missionary cause, the cause of Christ in this land, which I will leave for him to explain when you see him, because I have not time to enlarge. He has but yesterday fully made up his mind to go, and he wishes to start Monday, and this is Friday.
​. . . He has for a companion Mr. Lovejoy, a respectable, intelligent man and a lawyer, but not a Christian, who expects to accompany him all the way to Boston, as his friends are in that region, and perhaps to Washington. . . . He goes with the advice and entire confidence of his brethren in the mission, and who value him not only as an associate, but as their physician, and feel as much as I do, that they know not how to spare him; but the interest of the cause demands the sacrifice on our part; and could you know all the circumstances in the case you would see more clearly how much our hearts are identified in the salvation of the Indians and the interests of the cause generally in this country." (Trans. Ore. Pioneer Assn., 1893, p. 165-9.)
March 11, 1843, she wrote to her sister Harriet, and descanting on the pain of being "so widely and for so long a time" separated from her husband, continued, "For what would you be willing to make such a sacrifice? Is there anything in this lower world that would tempt you to it? I presume not; at least I can see no earthly inducement sufficiently paramount to cause me voluntarily to take upon myself such a painful trial. Painful, I say? Yes, painful in the extreme to the natural heart. But there is one object, our blessed Saviour, for whose sake I trust both you as well as we are willing, if called to it, to suffer all things. It was for Him, for the advancement of His cause, that I could say to my beloved husband, 'Go; take all the time necessary (to accomplish His work; and the Lord go with and bless you.'" (Idem., 155.)
April 14, 1843, she wrote to her brother Jonas as follows: "Husband's presence is needed very much at this juncture. A great loss is sustained by his going to the States. I mean a present loss to the station and Indians, but hope and expect a greater good will be accomplished by it. There was no other way for us to do. W felt that we could not remain as we was without more help, and we are so far off that to send by letter and get returns was too slow a way for the present emergency." (Idem, p. 161.) May 18, 1843, she wrote to her husband a letter which followed him to Boston, and reaching there Sept. 6, 1843, when he was six days' journey west of Ft. Hall on his return trip, this letter (which was directed on the outside to Dr. Whitman or Rev. David Greene) was retained there, and is No. 106, of Vol. 138 of the Correspondence of the American Board. In it she wrote "wishing you, my dear husband, . as speedy a return to the bosom of your family as the business of the Lord upon which you have gone will admit of." So far as known these five letters are the only ones which Mrs. Whitman ever wrote which stated anything about the origin ​and purpose of his ride (and I have quoted all they contain on those points).
Though knowing about all these letters, Dr. Mowry does not even alludte to any one of them.
DR. MOWRY'S TREATMENT OF THE FIRST TWO ACCOUNTS OF THE ORIGIN AND PURPOSE OF WHITMAN'S RIDE EVER PRINTED.
The only remaining "original sources" or contemporaneous accounts of the origin and purpose of Whitman's ride are the two offcial accounts in the Missionary Herald—the monthly organ of the American Board—the first in the number for September, 1843, and the second in the number for July, 1848. Neither Dr. Mowry nor any other advocate of the Saving Oregon theory of that ride has ever dared to quote either of these accounts, and I do not believe any advocate of that theory ever will give his readers a chance to read them. No advocate of the Saving Oregon story ever intimated that any such accounts had ever been published till after Mrs. Victor and Elwood Evans in their investigations found and published them, and since them nearly all advocates of the Saving Oregon story, like Barrows, Craighead, Coffin, Nixon, Mowry, Mrs. Eva Emery Dye, Parker, and Penrose have avoided even alluding to these two official accounts of the origin and purpose of that ride. If based only on the correspondence of the mission with the American Board, these (which are not only the first two, but also the only articles ever printed that gave any account of the origin and purpose of that ride till the Saving Oregon theory was published in 1864-5-6) could not be considered as "original sources," since that correspondence is still in existence (though all its vital parts have always been carefully suppressed by all the advocates of the Saving Oregon story), but as these two accounts might have been based to some extent on what Whitman himself said, when in Boston, March 30–April 8, 1843, they are fairly entitled to rank as "original sources."
The first account is as follows: "It was stated in the last Annual Report that the Southern Branch of this Mission, embracing the stations at Wailatpu, near Walla Walla, and Clear Water and Kamiah, higher up on the waters of Snake River, had been discontinued, but at a special meeting of the mission, held last October, to consider this decision, it was thought advisable that Dr. Whitman should personally communicate the condition and prospects of these stations to the Prudential Committee. After a long and toilsome journey he reached Boston, early in the spring; and, upon hearing the representations which he made, it was resolved to sustain the operations of the mission without any material change. ​other object of Dr. Whitman in making the above mentioned journey was to procure additional laborers. He desired also to induce Christian families to emigrate and settle in the vicinity of the different stations, that they might relieve the missionary of his secular responsibilities, and also contribute directly in various ways to the social and moral improvement of the Indians. How far his wishes in those particulars will be responded to is uncertain." (Miss. Herald, September, 1843, P- 356-) This did not appear till after the receipt by D. Greene, Secretary, of Rev. C. Eells' letter of Oct. 3, 1842, endorsed by Rev. E. Walker, which contained the official re-port of that Special Meeting, and of Walker's letter of Oct. 3, 1842, endorsed by C. Eells as correct, and also of Walker's letter of Feb. 28, 1843, complaining that Whitman started to the States without waiting for their letters, as he had agreed to do, and also H. H. Spalding's long letter of defense and justification of Oct. 15, 1842, as the endorsement of D. Greene, secretary, on these several letters shows. This first published account of the origin and purpose of the ride agrees exactly with the account given in the letters for which Whitman did not wait, and is absolutely irreconcilable with the account Rev. C. Eells gave in his various "statements" in 1866, 1878 and 1883. Turning to p. 193 of the Annual Report of the American Board for 1842 we find that not only were these three out of the four stations discontinued, but that both Rev. H. H. Spalding and Mr. W. H. Gray were recalled to the States by the order of February, 1842. Yet Gray, in 1885, wrote that he had no personal knowledge of that order, or of its being talked about at the Special Meeting of Sept. 26-27, 1842. (Cf. Gray's article in the Oregonian of Feb. 1, 1885, reprinted in "The Whitman Controversy" (pamphlet), Portland, Ore., 1885).
The second account is in the Missionary Herald for July, 1848, in the brief sketch of his life (containing only 162 words), prefacing the account of the massacre, and merely / says, "He made a visit to the Atlantic States in the Spring of 1843, being called hither by the business of the mission."
Not another word about Whitman's ride was printed in this official organ of the American Board till in December, 1866, 18 years and five months later, it published and endorsed Rev. C. Eells' version of its origin and purpose. This second account was published two years after the treaty of 1846 had settled the boundary of Oregon at 49 degrees, and the editors of the Missionary Herald knew that in chronicling the massacre they were also chronicling the final destruction of their Oregon Mission. Who can doubt that with the memory of Whitman's visit only five years before fresh in their minds, and with all the correspondence of the mission and the records of the action of the Board thereon open to their ​tion, they knew, and in this short sentence stated exactly what caused his ride, and who can doubt that if they could honestly have claimed that that ride had any political significance, or had saved any, even the smallest part of Oregon to the nation, they would then have stated it, when the whole country was stirred with sympathetic sorrow over the bloody tragedy which had destroyed their Oregon Mission? This second account of the origin and purpose of Whitman's ride, containing only 22 words, neither Dr. Mowry nor any other advocate of the Saving Oregon theory of that ride has ever quoted, and I think no one of them has ever even intimated that any such account was ever printed.
DR. MOWRY'S TREATMENT OF WHITMAN'S CORRESPONDENCE AFTER HIS RETURN TO OREGON.
Whitman's letters after his return to Oregon cannot be considered as "original sources" as to the origin and purpose of that ride, since his frigid reception by the Secretary of the American Board (who told him he was sorry that he had come), and the fact that the next month after he started on that journey the Indians burned his rude grist mill and a large quantity of grain, involving him in so much expense to rebuild, that, with the expenses of his journey, he was troubled for two years after his return- in his settlements with the American Board, as he states in his letter of April 13, 1846, (which Dr. Mowry refrains from even alluding to), together with the fact that the decadence of the mission which had begun as early as 1839, continued to progress towards its complete destruction so steadily and with such frightful rapidity that on May 20, 1845, less than 20 months after his return, Whitman himself, having been directed at a full meeting of the Mission (at which all were present except Mr. Spalding), held at Whitman's Station, and which closed May 14, 1845, to write to D. Greene, Sec, as to the state of the mission, etc., was compelled to write: "The state of the mission is such as to give no very decided promise of permanency or of much good." All these things subjected Whitman to very strong temptation to exaggerate the importance of his ride, and its influence on the destiny of Oregon, so that he naturally strove to convince the Secretary of the Board that though the mission (whose continuance had been secured only by that ride), seemed destined soon to be a dismal failure, yet his expensive disobedience to the positive order of the Board in making that ride had, somehow, resulted in such benefit to Oregon as justified the expense of the ride and the resulting continuance of the mission.
An indispensable postulate of the Whitman Saved Oregon story being that the mission was of immense benefit to the ​natives, and continued in a flourishing conditioti until it was destroyed by the Whitman massacre of November, 1847, which massacre all the advocates of the Whitman Legend represent as falling on a flourishing and successful mission, while Spalding and Gray (two of the chief witnesses on whom Dr. Mowry and all other advocates of the Whitman Saved Oregon story rely) declared that it was instigated by the Hudson Bay Company, and the Catholics, (which charge was as atrocious and as inexcusable a slander as ever was uttered,) neither Dr. Mowry nor any other advocate of the Whitman Saved Oregon story has ever quoted one sentence of any of the scores of pages of the contemporaneous correspondence and diaries of the mission, which establish beyond dispute that it was in a state of decadence really as early as 1839-40, and steadily suid rapidly went down from that time onward, so that if there had been no Whitman massacre the mission in all probability would soon have been abandoned, as the Methodist Mission to the Oregon. Indians had already been.
Want of space prevents further discussion of these points here, but in my forthcoming book I devote a chapter to "The Long Suppressed Evidence on the Decadence of the WhitmanSpalding-Eells- Walker Mission," and another to "The Long Suppressed Evidence on the True Causes of the Whitman Ma-ssacre," and the readers of them will find them quite as startling as the chapter on "The Long Suppressed Evidence as to the Origin and Purpose of Whitman's ride,"
Sixteen of Whitman's letters between Nov. 1, 1843, and Oct. 18, 1847, aggregating about 26,000 to 28,000 words, are in the archives of the American Board.
Although in several of these letters Whitman made very extravagant and wholly unwarranted claims of great services rendered to the National Government, it is a very significant fact that in none of them, nor in any of his letters to his friends, nor in any of Mrs. Whitman's to her friends, is there any claim that he ever had had any interview with President Tyler, or Secretary Webster, or that he had ever received any promise of any assistance from them, or from any officer of the National Government, or that he had communicated any information of any importance to the Government, or had published in newspapers or otherwise any such information, or held any meetings to promote migration to Oregon, or that he had had anything to do with originating or organizing the migration of 1843, but only, at first, in November, 1843, t^at he was "instrumental in leading the 1843 migration," and later that he "led" that migration, and though he claims, (what is manifestly incorrect,) that the migration of 1843 was a decisive factor in bringing about the treaty of 1846, he nowhere, save in his letter of April 1, 1847,—four and one-half years after he started on ​his ride,—claims that his ride had any other purpose than missionary business.
Dr. Mowry's treatment of this letter illustrates his ideas of going to "original sources wherever practicable."
On pp. 198-9 he says: "In another letter" (whose date he does not give), "to Mr. Greene, is the following: 'It was to open a practical (practicable) route and safe passage, and secure a favorable report of the journey from emigrants, which, in connection with other objects caused me to leave my family and brave the toils and dangers of the journey, notwithstanding the unusual severity of the winter, and the great depth of snow. "Then he mentions the 'saving the mission from being broken up, as 'another' object of his journey."
But instead of going to the "original source" for this inaccurate and deceptive quotation. Dr. Mowry has copied it verbatim (and without credit), from an article defending the Whitman Saved Oregon story (by Rev. Dr. Laurie, the official historian of the American Board), in the Missionary Herald, for September, 1885, p. 350.
Going to the "original source," to wit.: Whitman's own letter (covering 7 pages large sized letter paper), in the archives of the Americam Board, we find the following, viz.:
"It was to open a practical route and safe passage and to secure a favorable report of the journey from immigrants, which, in connection with other objects, caused me to leave my family and brave the toils and dangers of the journey, which carried me on, notwithstanding I was forced out of my direct track, and notwithstanding the unusual severity of the winter and great depth of snow.
"In connection with this let me say, the other great object for which I went was to save the mission from being broken up just then, which it must have been, as you will see by a reference to the doings of the Committee" (i. e., the Prudential Committee of the American Board), "which confirmed the recall of Mr. Spalding only two weeks before my arrival in Boston. I often reflect upon the fact that you told me you were sorry I came. ... It may not be inappropriate to observe that at that moment the Methodist Mission, as well as our own, was on the point of dissolution."
​If the reader will now turn to Whitman's letters of May 12, 27, 28 and 30, 1843 (pp. 37-8 infra.), he will discover exactly how much (or rather how very little) was Whitman's interest in leading a migration to Oregon at the very time when it was gathering and starting.
Presumably (though he has not accurately quoted this letter) Dr. Mowry knows its contents, and presumably also he knows perfectly well the contents of Mrs. Whitman's letter of April 14, 1843 (quoted on p. 17 ante, but), to which he does not allude. Yet, notwithstanding Whitman in this one explicitly declares that the mission would have been broken up "just then" if he had not made the ride, and Mrs. Whitman wrote, "There was no other way for us to do, we felt that we could not remain, as we was without more help, and we were so far off that to send by letter was too slow a way for the present emergency." Dr. Mowry (carefully suppressing this strictly contemporaneous evidence of the two people who knew best about the urgency of the mission business in causing Whitman to make his winter's ride]) says (p. 131), "But if this" (i. e., the business of the mission) "was the only motive for that hazardous journey, why should he not have waited until spring? It seems quite clear that a summer trip across the continent would have accomplished that end just as well," and (p. 188), "Had his purpose been confined solely to the affairs of the mission he could have waited until spring, and made the journey during the summer months."
AS TO "B."
Three indispensable postulates of Dr. Mowry's claim that Whitman "wrested that entire country" (i. e., the old Oregon Territory) "from the Hudson's Bay Company" are:
First. That as late as March, 1843, that "entire country" i. e., the present states of Oregon, Washington and Idaho, together with about 28,000 square miles of Northwestern Montana and about 13,000 square miles of Northwestern Wyoming, in all about 292,000 square miles, or nearly one-twelfth of all our territory on this continent, was in controversy between the United States and Great Britain.
Yet knowing perfectly well that in 1824 and again in 1827 England offered us the line of 49 degrees to the most northeastern branch of the Columbia, and thence the river to the Pacific, which left really in dispute not "that entire country," but only about 55,000 to 58,000 square miles, or less than one-fifth of "that entire country," being only that part of Washington north and west of the Columbia, and that we both times immediately refused this offer and insisted on 49 degrees to the Coast, Dr. Mowry deems it consistent with his duty as an "impartial historian" to suppress all mention of ​these offers of England, and of the fact that in 1825 the Hudson's Bay Company "officially notified" Dr. McLoughlin, their superintendent in charge of the Oregon region from 1824 to 1845, that "in no event could the British claim extend south of the Columbia" and also to suppress all mention of the fact that Lord Ashburton came over in April, 1842, "specifically authorized," as we shall see later, to renew to us the offer made us in the negotiations of 1824 and 1827, and also to suppress all mention of the fact that in 1826, when not only all the region north of Missouri and west of the Mississippi River, but also everything else north and west of Illinois and Michigan was not even organized as a territory, but was an unbroken wilderness, we notified England that "49 degrees was our ultimatum for the northern boundary of Oregon."
Second. That England could by making settlements and establishing trading posts subsequent to Oct. 20, 1818 (the date of the first of our treaties of "joint policy" relating to Oregon), strengthen her claim to it while the treaty of 1818 and its renewal in 1827 remained in force.
In support of his repeated assertions that England could do this and that the Hudson's Bay Company were actively engaged in doing it. Dr. Mowry quotes, not the Presidents, Secretaries of State and Ministers to England who negotiated for us on the Oregon boundary, all of whom held that England could not do this, but his favorite "original authorities" on the history and diplomacy of Oregon—Rev. H. H. Spalding, Rev. C. Eells and Mr. W. H. Gray.
But the very terms of those treaties made such strengthening of her claims impossible, a position not only always held by every one of our diplomatists and Presidents who negotiated on the Oregon question—James Monroe, John Q. Adams, Albert Gallatin, Andrew Jackson, Edward Livingston, Martin Van Buren, John Tyler, Edward Everett, Daniel Webster, John C. Calhoun, James Buchanan, James K. Polk and George Bancroft—and also by many others of our most eminent statesmen, but also tacitly admitted by all the British diplomatists who negotiated on it, no one of whom ever ventured to assert that such settlements and trading posts had made the British claim one whit stronger than it was Oct. 20, 1818, and also explicitly assented to by Lord Aberdeen (head of the British Foreign Office from 1841 to 1846), in two interviews with Edward Everitt in November and December, 1843. (Cf. on this the authorities cited in Trans. Am. Hist. Assn. for 1900, p. 223 infra, and Berlin Arbitration, p. 126.)
Third. That as late as March, 1843, the Government and the people of the country thought Oregon worthless because the Rocky and Blue Mountains were supposed to be impassable for wagons. To support this Mr. Mowry offers not a ​sentence from any. Congressional Debate on Oregon, nor from any report of a Congressional Committee on Oregon, nor from any report of any Government Explorer of Oregon, nor from any book of travels or magazine article about Or^on printed prior to the invention of the Whitman Saved Oregon story, in 1864-5, but quotes his favorite "original sources" for Oregon history, to wit.: Rev. H. H. Spalding's, Rev. C. Eells' and W. H. Gray's alleged "recollections" from 1864 to 1882, and the "recollections" of others whose ideas are plainly mere echoes of Spalding, C. Eells and Gray.
Prior to March, 1843, ^he Oregon Territory had been far more extensively and thoroughly explored and reported on (in government reports, books of travel and magazine articles) by our citizens, both government expeditions and private citizens; more often and more thoroughly debated in Congress; the subject of more numerous and elaborate reports of congressional committees; the object of more and more important diplomatic negotiations, than any other territorial acquisition we have made on this continent had been up to the date of its full accomplishment; and to the Oregon acquisition there was far less opposition—in Congress and out of it—than to that of any other of these acquisitions except Florida.
Oregon had been discussed at seventeen sessions of Congress, between 1821 and March 1, 1843. In these debates it was repeatedly declared, beginning as early as 1824, that Oregon was easily accessible by wagons over the low passes of the Rocky Mountains, even without any expenditure for road making.
The official record of these debates covers 300 columns, or about 250,000 words in "Annals of Congress," "Debates in Congress," and "Congressional Globe."
Yet Dr. Mowry deems it consistent with his duty as an "impartial historian" not only not to quote one word of all these debates, but not even to mention the above official reports (which are the only "original sources" for these debates).
To these seventeen sessions there were made eleven reports of committees of the Senate or House of Representatives, and besides there were read in the Senate or House the reports of special agents J. B. Provost (1822), Lieut. W. A. Slacum, of the navy (sent to Oregon by the state department by order of President Jackson in 1835, with special instructions to examine and report on everything important for our government to know about Oregon), whose report was read in the Senate in 1837, and was often referred to and quoted in later congressional discussions and in congressional committee reports, and of Secretary of War Poinsett, in 1840, recommending the establishment of a line of military posts from the Missouri River to the mouth of the Columbia.
​There was also the report of Captain Bonneville to the Secretary of War, in 1835, reporting his success in driving twenty loaded wagons through the South Pass over the Rockies and into the Oregon Territory to Green River, in 1832, popularized by Irving's "Bonneville," published in New York and also in England, in 1837, and very widely read in both countries.
All these committee reports were unanimous, all enthusiastic as to the great value of Oregon to us, and the validity of our title at least as far north as 49 degrees, and each was unanimously adopted by the body to which it was made.
As early as 1831 the report of the military committee of the Senate contained the letter of the Rocky Mountain Fur Company to the Secretary of War, dated October 29, 1830, stating that in the preceding five years with from eighty to one hundred men, divided into small parties, they had explored the whole region beyond the Rockies from the Gulf of California to the mouth of the Columbia, and had made discoveries and acquired information they deemed it important to communicate to the government. Then, after describing their driving ten wagons loaded with from 1,800 to 2,000 pounds each from St. Louis to the east end of the South Pass and back to St. Louis between April 10 and October 10, 1830, they continue: "This is the first time wagons ever went to the Rocky Mountains, and the ease with which it was done proves the facility of communicating overland with the Pacific, the route beyond the mountains to the Great Falls of the Columbia being easier than on this side."
The Great Falls of the Columbia are not only west of the Blue Mountains, but more than one hundred miles west of where. Whitman six years later established his mission; and this letter of the Rocky Mountain Fur Company was often referred to and quoted in later congressional committee reports and debates, and in books, newspapers and magazine articles before 1843.
These fifteen reports covered about 600 pages, or 350,000 to 375,000 words, but of them all Doctor Mowry, as an "impartial historian," only names three, and only quotes from one—Cushing's, in 1839—to the extent of 297 words, and that only on the wholly unimportant point of whether or not Oregon was included in the Louisiana purchase, while he omits to even allude anywhere in his book to Lieutenant Slacum, or to Poinsett's report, or to the Rocky Mountain Fur Company's wagons in 1830, and their extensive explorations in Oregon before 1830, or to Bonneville proving Oregon easily accessible by wagons in 1832, or to the fact that Whitman, in 1835, wrote (in a letter heretofore carefully suppressed) of Bonneville's wagons, and that the route presented little difficulty for wagons; and though quoting freely from Gray's and Spalding's ​declarations in 1864-5 to 1882 that the route to Oregon was deemed impracticable for wagons as late as 1843, he omits to quote from Spalding's letter of September 20, 1836 (published in the Missionary Herald, October, 1837, and giving an account of the overland journey of the Spalding-Whitman party, in 1836), the following: "We drove a wagon to Snake Fort" (i. e., Fort Boise) "and could have driven it through but for the fatigue of our animals. We expect to get it at some future time."
Before March 1, 1843, in presidential messages, or in instructions to diplomats negotiating with England or Russia about Oregon, or in other executive papers, or in correspondence which has been in print for fifteen to fifty years past, or in reports of negotiations on Oregon, or in debates in Congress, or in reports of congressional committees, the following statesmen are on record as holding that Oregon was of great value to the United States, and could be easily occupied by us, while it was practically impossible (as the world then, was) for any European power to people it, and that our title was unquestionable at least as far north as 49 degrees, and that we should insist on not accepting any line south of 49 degrees as the north boundary of Oregon, viz.:
Ten men who have been presidents, Jefferson, Madison, Monroe, J. Q. Adams, Jackson, Van Buren, Tyler, Polk, Pierce and Buchanan; also Calhoun and King, vice-presidents (as had been also Jefferson and Van Buren); also Webster, Clay, Everett, Forsyth, secretaries of state (as had been also Jefferson, Madison, Monroe, J. Q. Adams, Van Buren, Calhoun, Livingston and Buchanan); Gallatin, R. Rush, Livingston and Everett, ministers to England (as were also. J. Q. Adams, Van Buren and Buchanan); also Middleton, Cambreling and Ingersoll, ministers to Russia, and Archer, Baylies, Benton, Berrien, Lewis Cass, Rufus Choate, Caleb Cushing, John J. Crittenden, Drayton, Floyd, John Reed of Massachusetts ("the life member"), Reynolds, Rives, Sevier, Tappan, J. W. Taylor of New York, R. J. Walker, Woodbury and many others of lesser note, while not a single authentic sentence has ever been produced from any man of importance enough ever to have been president or vice-president, or minister to England or Russia, or secretary of state, or even a senator for as much as one full term, which expressed any doubt of our title to all of Oregon south of 49 degrees, or which intimated that we would surrender anything to Great Britain south of 49 degrees.
It is true that Tyler had, to use his own words, "a dream of policy never embodied," about selling that part of the present state of Washington north and west of the Columbia River to England for a good round sum; but this wholly impossible ​"dream of policy" necessarily implied not surrendering it, but insisting on 49 degrees as our line to the coast, since England certainly would not buy what we did not own.
But no reader of Doctor Mowry's book, or of any other book advocating the Whitman legend, will find in it any intimation of these indisputable facts about the position of our leading statesmen on the Oregon question.
A detailed criticism of Doctor Mowry's treatment of all the "original sources" as to "B" would require very much more space than is available, and as no one has ever pretended that Whitman could by any possibility have influenced the Oregon policy of any other administration than that of Tyler, we will conclude this part of the criticism with a brief examination of his treatment of "original sources" as to the attitude toward and actions upon the Oregon question of President Tyler and Secretary of State D. Webster prior to March 1, 1843.
On pages 170-71 Doctor Mowry positively asserts that Webster and Tyler thought in the spring of 1843 that Oregon was useless to the United States, because "Lord Ashburton, Sir George Simpson and others with British proclivities had thoroughly indoctrinated our statesmen with the idea that the Rocky Mountains were impassable to wagons, that Oregon could not be peopled from the States, and therefore its value to this country was very small."
The reader looks through his book from title page to finis in vain for a single sentence in support of this shocking impeachment of the patriotism and the knowledge of our statesmen, except what Rev. H. H. Spalding, Rev. C. Eells and W. H. Gray thought they remembered (from twenty-three to forty years after the event) that Whitman told them after his return from the States.
Not a word is there in Doctor Mowry's book which intimates that either Webster or Tyler had ever taken the slightest interest in the Oregon question, or had done or said a thing toward securing Oregon to the United States or had any special information about it till Whitman reached Washington, certainly not till late in March, and more likely not till April 10 to 15, 1843.
Let us examine the official records and learn the facts. 1. In both his first and second annual messages in December, 1841, and December, 1842, President Tyler had strong paragraphs on Oregon, in the first recommending the establishment of a line of military posts from the Missouri to the Columbia. To neither of these messages does Doctor Mowry even allude.
2. Elijah White, M. D., had been a Methodist missionary to the Oregon Indians, and stationed nearly 300 miles west of Whitman's mission, from 1838 to 1840, when he was discharged.
​In January, 1842 (as we know from contemporaneous written and printed sources), Doctor White appeared in Washington with letters of introduction from Daniel Webster's eldest son to President Tyler, Secretary Webster and Secretary of 1 the Navy A. P. Upshur, and after interviews with them, and with Secretary of War John C. Spencer, and Senator Linn and other friends of Oregon, by order of the president he was commissioned Indian sub-agent for the region west of the Rockies, and directed to raise as large a company as possible and proceed with them to Oregon, which he did, starting from near Westport, Mo., May 16, 1842, as the leader of the first large overland migration consisting of 112 persons.
He remained in Oregon some three years, and was the only official ever commissioned by our government to reside in Oregon, till after the territory was organized in 1848. Being a very "shifty" and selfish politician. White became exceedingly unpopular and consequently his work for Oregon has received very scant mention.
There is no doubt but what a very large part—if not all —of the honest advocacy of the Whitman Saved Oregon story has resulted from transferring to Doctor Whitman the claims which Doctor White made, of the influence on Tyler's Oregon policy, of his interviews with President Tyler and Secretary Webster, just before Ashburton's arrival in Washington, though there is not the slightest reason for believing that Doctor White any more than Dr. Whitman really affected in any way the Oregon policy of the national government.
How does Doctor Mowry treat this matter? Though he mentions "White's Travels in Oregon" (published 1848), in his list of authorities, he does not quote one word from it, and nowhere gives his readers any intimattion that Doctor White had ever been a missionary to the Oregon Indians, or was ever in Oregon before the autumn of 1842, or that he ever was in Washington, or ever saw President Tyler and Secretary Webster, or that he held any official position in Oregon, but only says of him (p. 188): "Doctor White, with a considerable party of settlers, arrived near Whitman's station early in September" (1842).
3. When in August, 1838, Lieut. Charles Wilkes set sail with six ships and nearly 600 men in command of the greatest exploring expedition our government has ever sent out, Van Buren's administration gave him positive instructions to spend six months in exploring "our territory on the northwest coast of America," and the Columbia River, and the coast of California as far south as San Francisco Bay.
April 28, 1841, twenty-four days after Harrison's untimely death brought Tyler to the presidency, Wilkes, with part of his squadron, sighted the mouth of the Columbia, and ​with a "sloop of war, a brig of war, two launches, ten boats, and upward of 300 men" he was busily engaged till October 10, 1841, in a far more extensive and thorough exploration of Oregon by land and water than any other single expedition has ever made, even to this day. He surveyed and chartered Puget's Sound and the navigable waters of the Columbia, visited all the mission stations of the Methodists and of the American Board, and all of the posts of the Hudson's Bay Company south of 49 degrees, except Hall and Boise (which hundreds of Americans 'had visited), and all the settlements in Oregon.
He sent a party from Puget's Sound eastward to the Columbia and back to the sound by a different route, through the center of the region north and west of the Columbia (being all that was really in dispute, and) of the real value of which (according to Spalding's letter of April 7, 1846, edited by Whitman, and published in Palmer's Journal in 1847) the missionaries of the American Board knew absolutely nothing until the party sent from the settlements in the Willamette Valley explored it in the autumn of 1845, i.e., three years after Whitman started to the States.
He also sent a party overland from the Columbia up the Willamette and down the Sacramento to San Francisco.
He dropped anchor at New York June 10, 1842, and three days later filed in the navy department a most enthusiastic "special report" on Oregon (covering 44 pages foolscap), urging the immense value of the Puget's Sound region, and declaring that in Oregon a man could make a living and acquire wealth with only one-third the labor required in the States, and that "No portion of the world beyond the tropics can be found that will yield so readily with moderate labor to the wants of man" as the Oregon territory would.
These statements,—as powerful stimulants to migration as could well be imagined,—with enough more to make 14 pages the House of Representatives took, and on January 4, 1843 (when Whitman was near Bent's Fort), added it to the 64 pages of the Report of the Military Committee of the House on Oregon (of which 5,000 copies had been printed in May, 1842), and ordered another edition of 5,000 copies printed.
In a part of this Special Report which was not printed, in discussing passes over the Rocky Mountains, Wilkes wrote: "Finally the two southern routes, which are preferable, susceptible of being used at almost all seasons, and a good wagon road may be constructed with little expense. ... It is readily to be perceived that the difficulty of communication with the Territory is far less for us than for the British." There was no need for our government to print this, because it had ​printed the same matter substantially in Congressional Debates and Committee Reports many times during the preceding 18 years.
How does Dr. Mowry treat this matter? On pp. 190-191 he has appropriated (without permission from and without credit to the author), a page from a copyrighted manuscript sent him in 1899, by the writer of this criticism, which page does not quote one word from Wilkes' Report, but merely states my inferences (written on first reading the manuscript of this Special Report in 1887, at the Navy Department), as to why the Administration would not allow the whole report to be printed in 1843; but though the immediate context of this page of my inferences in the manuscript sent him contained copious quotations from this Special Report of Wilkes, and from his other unpublished dispatches, giving full information about Oregon and the operations and aims of the Hudson^s Bay Company, Dr. Mowry not only nowhere copies one word of that context, but he nowhere quotes one word from any of Wilkes' Reports, nor prints one word which will give his readers any information as to the cause of, the time of, or the extent and values of Wilkes' explorations of Oregon, or of the time when he filed this Special Report, or of the fact that for nine months before Whitman could by any possibility have reached Washington, Tyler's Administration could, on any day, have had interviews with Wilkes and the other officers of his expedition, who knew a vast deal more about all of Oregon that was really in dispute than all the missionaries—Methodist and American Board put together,—did then, or for many years after.
The facts about Wilkes' exploration and Special Report are so completely destructive of that essential postulate of the Whitman Legend that the Government at Washington was indifferent as to the fate of Oregon, and ignorant as to its value, that not a single advocate of that Legend has ever given his readers any information of the slightest consequence about Wilkes, and most of them (including the two latest advocates of the Legend, Johnson's "Century of Expansion," and Carpenter's "the American Advance,") do not even mention his name!
Gray and Mrs. Dye, carefully refraining from stating anything of any real value about Wilkes' work, wantonly slander him as follows: "To the disgrace of the leader of that squadron, the general impression of all the early settlers of this country is, to the present day, that he understood and tasted the qualities of Dr. McLoughlin's liquors, and received the polite attentions of the gentlemen of the Hudson's Bay Company with far more pleasure than he looked into or regarded ​the wants of this infant settlement of his countrymen." (Cf. Gray's History of Oregon, p. 204.)
"'Dr. McLoughlin's wine has affected his judgment,' said the men of the mission."
Then representing Wilkes as conversing with George Abernethy, the steward of the Methodist Mission (who had then been in Oregon less than a year and a half), Mrs. Dye continues: "'Tell me, what do you Americans think of the Hudson's Bay Company?'"
   "'But,' urged the commodore, 'the missionaries have received untold favors from the Hudson's Bay Company, and if they are gentlemen it is their duty to return them.'"
   "The missionary faced about in the commodore's path. 'Return them? Certainly. I will exchange favors with Dr. McLoughlin or any other man or set of men, but I will not sell country for it.'"
There is not the remotest probability that any part of this dialogue ever was spoken, or that there is a shadow of foundation for it, except in Mrs. Dye's unrestrained imagination.
(4) In April, 1842, Lord Ashburton arrived in Washington, and (after various informal conferences) on June 13, 1842, (the very day Wilkes filed his Special Report on Oregon in the Navy Department), began the formal negotiations which ended August 9, with the signing of the Webster-Ashburton treaty.
As it was generally understood that he was to treat on all points in dispute, there was much disappointment that Oregon was not included in the treaty, but though Benton on this account assailed it most bitterly in the Senate, he could only rally 9 votes against it to 39 for it.
In December, 1842, Benton returned to the subject, and asserted that Webster had proposed to accept of the line of the Columbia instead of standing firmly for 49 degrees to the Pacific. To this partisan accusation Webster could not in person reply in the Senate Chamber, but, fortunately for the vindication of the truth of history, his life-long friend, Rufus Choate, had succeeded him in the Senate, and twice, on January 18 and February 3, 1843, while Whitman (of whose existence even there is no evidence that either Tyler or Webster was then aware) was riding east across what is now Kansas, Choate, replying to Benton's accusations, said (on January 18), as summarized by the official reporter in Congressional Globe, 27th Congress, 3d Session, pp. 171-2): "In commenting upon the speech of the Senator from Missouri, (Mr. Benton), who ​had preceded him, he took occasion to remove an erroneous impression, which, he conceived, was calculated to do great injustice to a distinguished man, Mr. Webster, who could not there defend himself. He alluded to the fears expressed by the Senator from Missouri, that ... the rumor must be correct which had got abroad, that a proposition had been made or entertained by the Secretary of State, to settle down upon the Columbia River as the boundary line. Now he was glad to have it in his power to undeceive the Senator, and to assure him, which he did from authority, for he had been requested by the Secretary himself to do it for him, that he never either made or entertained a proposition to admit of any line south of the 49th parallel of latitude, as a negotiable boundary line for the territory of the United States."
On February 3, 1843, Mr. Choate made another speech (which was printed verbatim in Cong. Globe, App. pages 222–229), and returning to the subject of Benton's accusations, he said: "I desired chiefly to assure the Senator and the Senate that the apprehension intimated by him that a disclosure of these informal communications would disgrace the American Secretary, by showing that he had offered a boundary line south of the parallel of 49 degrees is totally unfounded. He would be glad to hear me say that I am authorized and desired to declare, that in no communication, formal or informal, was such an offer made, and that none such was ever meditated."
Precisely why Oregon was not included in the Ashburton treaty could not be stated with due regard to the diplomatic proprieties, either by Choate in 1843, or Webster in his great speech in defense of the Ashburton treaty in 1846, nor by Everett, his life-long friend, in his brief biography of Webster, in which all he says is "Had he (i. e., Webster) supposed an arrangement could have been effected on this basis" (i. e., 49 degrees to the coast) "with Lord Ashburton, he would gladly have included it in the treaty of Washington" (Cf. Webster's Works, Vol. I, Introduction page CXLVIII), because Ashburton's instructions on Oregon were not printed by the British government and reprinted by our government in "Berlin Arbitration" till 1871-2. These instructions authorized Ashburton to offer: (1) The line of the Columbia River from its mouth to the Snake, and thence due east to the summit of the Rockies. This would have given us about nine-fourteenths of the territory south of 49 degrees.
If he could not secure that line he was (2) authorized to renew the offer made us in 1824 and 1827 by England, of the line of 49 degrees from the summit of the Rockies to the most northeasterly branch of the Columbia, and from thence the river to the ocean, which would have given us a trifle more than four-fifths of the territory south of 49 degrees, and ​(3) he was positively forbidden to accept of the line of 49 degrees to the coast. (Cf. "Berlin Arbitration," pages 218-219.) The writer hereof called Dr. Mowry's attention, in 1887, to these positive denials by Webster himself through his life-long friend Choate of that totally false charge that in the Winter of 1842-43 and Spring of 1843 Webster was indifferent as to the acquisition of Oregon, which is the very cornerstone of the Whitman Saved Oregon story, and has called his attention to them several times since, but he never refers to them, but claims on the "memories" of Gray, Spalding and C. Eells that Webster,' in March, 1843, thought Oregon worthless to us.
(5) In the winter of 1842-43 there was a great debate 00 Linn's bill for the occupation of Oregon in the Senate (which, it must never be forgotten, is a part of the treaty-making power in our government), the report of which fills 165 columns of the Congressional Globe and its appendix, and in which out of 50 Senators 27 took part, and but one—McDuffie of South Carolina—spoke depreciatingly of Oregon, and he had then only been a member of the Senate 22 days, having been elected to serve for four years of a vacancy caused by death, and he was never able to secure re-election.
Over and over again it was declared in this debate, alike by those who favored and those who opposed the pending bill, that "The Senate was unanimous in the opinion that our title to Oregon was incontestable at least as far north as 49 degrees," — even McDuffie asserted this,—^and the chief opposition to the bill was from strong friends of the Oregon acquisition, who feared that to pass it without first giving the twelve monthsnotice (which was all that was needed to abrogate the treaty of 1827) would be such an unjustifiable action as to cause Great Britain to declare war, and that we might thereby run great risk of losing Oregon. The bill passed the Senate February 3, 1843, t>y 24 to 22, and of the four absentees two were declared to favor and two to oppose it. But when we come to analyze the vote, we find that of the 22 voting "No" nine had declared in their speeches that if the provisions which were in plain violation of the treaty of 1827 were dropped, they would support it, so that, without knowing on what grounds the other 13 voted "No," it is certain that 24 plus 9 plus 2 equals 35, or one more than two-thirds of the entire Senate, were ready on February 3, 1843, to vote for any legislation about Oregon which we had a right to pass without first giving the twelve months' notice and abrogating the treaty which preserved our rights to the territory and prevented Great Britain from strengthening its claims while the treaty remained in force. How does Dr. Mowry treat this great debate, in which occurred Webster's twice repeated explicit denial (by the mouth of Choate) of Benton's slanderous and baseless accusation that ​ Webster was ready to accept the Columbia or some other line south of 49 degrees as the north boundary of Oregon, which is th-e very cornerstone of the Whitman Saved Oregon story?
He neither quotes a word from this debate, nor gives any intimation of its importance, and only says (p. 189): "During the winter of 1842-3 a great debate on the Oregon question took place in the Senate, which lasted a number of weeks, and brought out a great diversity of views concerning the Oregon question."
Unable to find a sentence of any contemporaneous government document or letter, or even newspaper statement, that Whitman ever had any interview with President Tyler or Secretary Webster, or that he in the least degree influenced the Oregon policy of Tyler's administration, after quoting freely from the unsupported "recollections" of Gray, Spalding, C. Eells, Dr. Geiger and others between 1865 and 1882 as to what they thought Whitman had told them in 1843 to 1847, Dr. Mowry prints on pages 172-3 a letter dated June 6, 1898, from Dr. L. G. Tyler, President of William and Mary College, Virginia, and some extracts from his "Letters and Times of the Tylers," which he declares establish his claims about Whitman having interviewed Tyler and influenced his Oregon policy.
Not only are the letter and the quotations entirely inconclusive, but less than a year after the date of that letter he quotes, the writer of this review furnished to President L. G. Tyler extensive typewritten copies of the correspondence of Whitman and his associates with the American Board, which Dr. Mowry and the other advocates of the Whitman Legend have so carefully suppressed, and also full information about Dr. White and his work for Oregon (of which he wrote me that he had never heard before), with the result that he was speedily convinced that both he and his half-brother, John Tyler, Jr., private secretary to President John Tyler, had been imposed upon by Barrows* "Oregon" Twich was published (in 1883) and read by them just before he had his first conversation about Whitman with John Tyler, Jr.), and had confounded Dr. White with Dr. Whitman; and that Dr. Whitman had no influence on the Oregon policy of President Tyler.
(Cf. the review of "The Marcus Whitman Legend," by Professor Hodder, in the Dial for January 16, 1902, in which (p. 42) Professor Hodder writes, "That Dr. Tyler does not regard it" (i. e., what Dr. Mowry has quoted from him) "as sustaining the claim that Whitman influenced the administration, appears from a recent letter to the writer of this review, in which he says, 'I do not believe that Dr. Whitman controlled the policy of President Tyler's administration in any way.'"
Had Dr. Mowry cared to quote original and strictly ​contemporaneous sources on President Tyler's administration, he could easily have found in that same Vol. 2, of "Letters and Times of the Tylers," on pages 447, 448 and 449, over the signature of President John Tyler himself, in three letters to his son Robert, the conclusive evidence that as late as December, 184S, and January, 1846 (i. e., more than two and a half years after Whitman's visit to the States), neither Whitman nor anyone else had changed Tyler's ideas as to the best policy to pursue on the Oregon and California acquisition problem, and that precisely what his correspondence shows that he hoped to accomplish in 1842-3, he still, in 1845-6, thought should be attempted by President Polk. The first letter is dated December 11, 1845, and after commenting on President Polk's discussion .of the Oregon question in his first annual message, continues, "I looked exclusively to an adjustment by the 49th parallel, and never dreamed for a moment of surrendering the free navigation of the Columbia . . . . .I never dreamed of ceding this country, unless for the greater equivalent of California, which I fancied Great Britain might be able to obtain for us through her influence with Mexico; and this was but a dream of policy which was never embodied. I confess that throughout the whole of this business I have been firmly impressed with the belief that our true policy was to let things take their natural course, under an improved treaty of joint policy."
The second was dated December 23, 1845, and again discussing the Oregon question and Polk's message thereon, he wrote, "I think it would be a high stroke of policy to interest Great Britain in our negotiation with Mexico, so as to lead her to concede California, and thus to bring about a tripartite treaty, according to Great Britain the line she offers" (i. e., 49 degrees to the most northeasterly branch of the Columbia, and thence the river to the Pacific), "and we take California, Great Britain to pay so much towards our purchase. It would require great skill to bring this about."
If it would have required "great skill" for Polk, fresh from a triumphant election by the people, and with a good working majority in both Houses of Congress eager to support him, to carry out this "dream of policy," the reader can see how utterly impossible it would have been for Tyler, hated by the Whig leaders, and distrusted by the most influential Democrats, and only half supported part of the time by discordant factions of both parties, to ever have "embodied" his "dream of policy" about Oregon in a treaty that would have had any chance of securing two-thirds of the Senate in favor of its ratification.
The third was dated January i, 1846, and after expressing his objections to war with Mexico iand England, if it can honorably be avoided, he continues, "The United States requires ​still a peace of 20 years, and then they hold in their hands the destiny of the human race. But if war does come, we shall fight on the side of right. Our claim to Oregon to the 49th degree is clear; what lies beyond is attended with colorable title on the part of Great Britain by the exploration of Frazer's river by McKenzie; but it is only colorable."
DR. MOWRY'S TREATMENT OF THE "ORIGINAL SOURCES" AS TO WHITMAN'S TRUE RELATIONS TO THE 1843 MIGRATION.
As to (C) the only really "original sources" that it is certain Dr. Mowry has examined are:
(a) Four letters from Whitman, the first from St. Louis, May 12, 1843, the other three from Shawnee Indian Mission, May 27, 28 and 30, 1843; the first and last to Rev. D. Greene, Secretary, and the second and third to two of Whitman's brothers-in-law.
All about the migration in the first is the following: "I have made up my mind that it would not be expedient to take any families this year, except such as can go at this time."
On page 181, Dr. Mowry prints part of this letter, but carefully omits the above paragraph.
In that of May 27, i. e., five days after the migration had started from its camp, near Independence, Mo., for Or^on, all that relates to it is the following:
   "I cannot tell you very much about the migration to Oregon. They appear very willing, and, I have no doubt, are generally of an enterprising character. There are over 200 men, besides women and children, as it is said. No one can well tell until we are all on the road and get together how many there are. Some have been gone a week, and others have not yet started. I hope to start to-morrow. I shall have an easy journey, as I have not much to do, having no one depending on me."
To this letter Dr. Mowry never alludes.
I have conducted sundry excursions to the Rocky Mountain and Pacific coast regions myself, but while they were gathering I did not stay ten miles away from their rendezvous, nor wait for an invitation to visit and address them, nor say—after they were fairly started—that "I could not tell very much about them," and, still less, that "I expected to have an easy journey, not having much to do, having no one depending upon me," and if there were no other letter but this—the authenticity of which is beyond dispute—it would utterly destroy the whole story that Whitman had any special influence on or concern about the originating or organizing of that migration, or felt any responsibility for its getting through to Oregon, with or without wagons.
​"I have been, as it were, waiting for three weeks I shall start to-morrow or next day. Some of the emigrants have been gone a week, and others are just going I hope to be expeditious in traveling. After we get to Ft. Hall I shall try to go on rapidly, if not before." From this Dr. Mowry (erroneously stating that it was written from St. Louis) quotes, on pages 196-7, considerably more than there is space for here, but carefully omits the last two sentences above quoted, which show that a week after the migration had started (except the few stragglers which always bring up the rear of such a great movement). Whitman intended on reaching Fort Hall (beyond which there was no danger from Indians) to leave the migration behind, though that was the only part where there was not a well-known wagon road, and where he could be of any special service to it.
In that of May 30 he wrote:
   "You will be surprised to see that we are not yet started. . . . I shall start to-morrow. I regret that I could not have spent some of the time spent here in suspense with my friends in the East. I have only a lad of thirteen, my nephew, with me. I take him to have someone to stay with Mrs. W.
   "I cannot give you much of an account of the emigrants until we get on the road. It is said that there are over 200 men, besides women and children."
The proper place for this was on page 197, after that of May 28, but Dr. Mowry neither prints it there, nor puts a footnote of reference to it, but on pages 262-3 he puts it in the Appendix, where few of his readers will peruse it, and fewer note its significance in relation to the claim that Whitman was prominent in originating, organizing and leading the 1843 migration.
(Cf., for the full text of the letters of May 2y and 28, Tr. Or. Pi. Asscn., 1891, pp. 177-9, and for those of May 12 and 30, Vol. 138, MSS. A. B. C. F. M.)
(b) The only detailed contemporaneous account of the migration of 1843 which has ever been printed, being Part 2 of George Wilkes' History of Oregon, published in New York in the spring of 1845.
This account covers 50 pages, or about 40,000 words, and is unquestionably the account which Burnett (Old Pioneer, p. 177) states that he wrote in the winter of 1843-44, "in letters to the New York Herald, covering about 125 pages of foolscap.
Burnett kept a "concise journal" of the whole trip from Missouri to Walla Walla, and so far as known no other journal of that trip was kept, or, if kept, preserved.
The Herald only printed five of these letters in its issues for December 28, 1844, January 5, 6 (two letters) and 18, 1845, breaking off without any explanation or apology, when the ​migration had not crossed the south fork of the Platte and had not traveled one-fourth of the way to the settlements in Oregon. These letters were reprinted in the Oregon Historical Quarterly, December, 1902, with certain editorial comments, which, as far as they reflect on Wilkes' character and treatment of the Burnett account, seem to me wholly unwarranted by the facts in the case.
A careful comparison, sentence by sentence, of the Herald letters with the narrative in Wilkes covering the same part of the journey shows that every fact of the slightest importance in the Herald letters is also in the account in Wilkes, while a similar comparison of every statement of any fact of the slightest importance in the rest of the narrative in Wilkes, with contemporaneous letters, and with parts of Fremont's report covering the same facts shows the account in Wilkes to be correct on every point of the slightest consequence.
This matter is fully discussed in the chapter on "The Truth About the Discovery of Routes Practicable For and the Development of the First Transcontinental Wagon Road as Shown by the Original Documents" in my forthcoming book on "The Acquisition of the Old Oregon Territory and the Long Suppressed Evidence About Marcus Whitman" and space will not permit farther discussion of it here.
Turning now to the account in Wilkes, we find that Burnett says (p. 67, George Wilkes), "A meeting was held in the latter part of the day" (May 18, 1843) "which resulted in appointing a committee to return to Independence, and make inquiries of Dr. Whitman, missionary, who had an establishment 1 on the Walla Walla, respecting the practicabilities of the route."
Although this account in Wilkes does not say another word about Whitman, or about any information received from or services rendered by him till September 23, 1843 (when the migration was 31 miles west of Fort Boise), Dr. Mowry enlarges (p. 193) on what he imagines Whitman told this committee.
(Page 85, George Wilkes). Under date of September 23, 1843, after stating that they were obliged to make a most uncomfortable camp, with no water except in a puddle in the bed of a dry creek, Burnett continues: "Two miles further on would have taken us to a good encampment, with plenty of fine range and water, but the Indian pilot who had been employed for us by Dr. Whitman was ahead, and out of reach, with the foremost wagons,"
There is not another mention of Whitman, directly or indirectly, in the whole narrative, till (George Wilkes, p. 89) it describes their arrival at his mission station, October 8, 1843, and their purchase from him of wheat at $1 and potatoes at 40 ​cents a bushel, and no intimation in the whole narrative that Whitman had anything whatever to do in originating, organizing, or (except in the hiring of the Indian guide beyond Boise) in leading this migration anywhere from the Missouri frontier to the Columbia River. Dr. Mowry wholly ignores this on page 85, and though he quotes to the extent of more than 600 words from other parts of this account (which he three times erroneously ascribes to Wilkes, who, he says, was a member of the migration, though, in fact, he was a New York City Democratic politician and newspaper man and had nothing to do with the migration), there is not in all he quotes the least reference to Whitman, except in the extract from page 67 above.
DR. MOWRY'S DISINGENUOUS TREATMENT OF SUNDRY "WITNESSES" WHOSE ALLEGED "RECOLLECTIONS" HE HAS SUBSTITUTED FOR THE ORIGINAL SOURCES OF OREGON HISTORY.
Having seen how Dr. Mowry has juggled with the real "original sources" as to the origin and purpose of Whitman's ride, let us briefly glance at his treatment of the chief witnesses whose vague and contradictory and demonstrably false "recollections" he substitutes for the genuine "original sources."
There would never have been any Whitman Saved Oregon story without the alleged "recollections" of three men (never published till 1864-5-6), viz.: Rev. H. H. Spalding, Rev. Cushing Eells and Mr. W. H. Gray.
Two of these three signed the brief "Resolve" of September 28, 1842 (quoted on p. 13 ante), which authorized Whitman to go to the States, not on any political errand, but "to confer with the committee of the A. B. G. F. M. in regard to the interests of this mission," while the third one, W. H. Gray, though he did not sign it, (because no longer a member of the mission, having just deserted it), unquestionably knew of it, and understood perfectly well the true origin and purpose of Whitman's ride. Yet each of these three men, in their first published versions of the Whitman saved Oregon story explicitly stated that the sole purpose of that ride was to save Oregon to the nation, without the least hint that there was any missionary business impelling him to make the ride, and no one of them ever, to the day of his death, in any of his "statements" and newspaper articles in defense of the saving Oregon story, ever admitted knowing anything about the order of the Board discontinuing three out of the four stations of the mission, including Spalding's and Whitman's, and recalling to the States Spalding and Gray (i. e., two out of the five men connected with the mission), or about recollecting that that ​order was even mentioned at the special meeting of the mission, held September 26-27, 1842, though the official record of that meeting (which they all refrain from quoting), shows that it discussed nothing but that order, and Gray's sudden (and, as Eells and Walker both declared) dishonorable desertion of the mission. Dr. Mowry, knowing that this claim that the sole purpose of Whitman's ride was to save Oregon is false, in all his extensive quotations from Gray, Spalding and C. Eells, carefully refrains from even mentioning that they had ever made any such claim.
Furthermore, except Spalding's signature to the resolve of September 28, 1842, Spalding and Gray wrote nothing con^ temporaneously (so far as has ever yet appeared) as to the origin and purpose of Whitman's ride, but when, in 1865-6, they published their version of the Saving Oregon theory of that ride, they agreed in ascribing it to a taunt at a crowded dinner table at Fort Walla Walla a few days before he started on Ooctober 3, 1842, anent the announcement that the Red River emigrants would soon arrive to settle Oregon and secure it for the Hudson's Bay Company, and to the end of their lives (Spalding died in 1874, and Gray in 1889), they both insisted that that was the true account of the origin of Whitman's ride. But it having been proved beyond any possibility of dispute that the whole Walla Walla dinner story is pure fiction, because the Red River settlers came in 1841, as stated, not only in Spalding's diary for September 10, 1841, and in E. Walker's diary for September 21, 1841, but also in Dr. Whitman^s letter of November 11, 1841, in which, out of about 6,000 words in the letter. Whitman devotes the whole of thirty words to the bare announcement of their arrival (in connection with other matters of much more personal concern to himself), and to show how unimportant in his mind was their coming, puts those thirty words in a parenthesis, as follows: "(A large party of settlers as half servants to the company, were at that time" (i. e., October 4, 1841,) "at the fort," (i. e., Walla Walla), "on their way from the Red River to settle on the Cowlitz.)" Dr. Mowry, by not only not even mentioning it, but by substituting for it Rev. C. Eells' entirely different and totally contradictory account, totally repudiates Gray's and Spalding's account of the origin of that ride, which was the only thing about it that was a matter within their own personal experience, and concerning which, therefore, their recollections, if correct, might have had some evidential value, but he quotes extensively and endorses as correct the "recollections" of Spalding and Gray as to what took place between Whitman and Tyler and Webster. That is, totally repudiating as wholly untrue, all that Gray and Spalding constantly declared as long as ​they lived was the true account of all about Whitman's ride that came within their own personal observation and experience, to wit., its origin, our autjor imposes on the credulity of his readers what these same men "recollected," from twenty-three to forty years after the event, about what they thought Whitman told them took place more than 3,000 miles away from them, and concerning which, as they have never been able to produce so much as one short sentence in any contemporary book, magazine, newspaper, government document, diary or letter, that supports their "recollections," it is certain that they knew nothing except from hearsay, or a lively imagination. But that is not the end of Dr. Mowry's offense in these quotations from Gray and Spalding, for both of them "recollected" as clearly as they did anything else of what they claimed took place in Washington, that Whitman succeeded in preventing the trading off of Oregon in the Ashburton treaty, "for a codfishery on Newfoundland.^' (Cf., Lecture by Rev. H. H. Spalding, quoted in Sen. Ex. Doc. 37, 41st Cong., 3d session; also W. H. Gray's Hist, of Or., pp. 290, 316.) That, however, having been proved by the date of the signing of the Ashburton treaty to have been as destitute of truth as their account of the origin of Whitman's ride, Dr. Mowry from his quotations from Gray and Spalding carefully omits what they "recollected" about the Ashburton treaty, though as late as 1870 and 1871 they both "recollected" the Ashburton treaty as certainly as anything else either "recollected"—or imagined — about Whitman's ride.
Perrin B. Whitman, the nephew, thirteen years old, whom Dr. Whitman took back with him in 1843, on February 10, 1882, wrote a letter from Lapwai Indian Agency, Idaho, to Rev. M. Eells (which is to be found on pages 12 and 13 of Mr. Eells' pamphlet, "Marcus Whitman, M. D. Proofs of His Work in Saving Oregon to the United States and in Promoting the Immigration of 1843." Portland, Ore., 1883).
In it Perrin Whitman wrote, "I heard him" (i. e., Dr. Whitman) "say repeatedly on the journey, and after we reached his mission, Wailatpu, that he went to the States in the winter of 1842 and 1843 for the sole purpose of bringing an immigration with wagons across the plains to Oregon."
This Dr. Mowry quotes (on p. 137), but omits the word "sole." It would be interesting, if space permitted, to examine the multitude of geographical and historical errors in this book not herein touched upon.
Suffice it to say that some of them are extremely laughable and others saddening as illustrations of the old adage, "How desperate are the shifts of a confirmed theorist," but as Dr. Mowry has written all the rest of the book on the same lines as the parts herein criticized, after this examination of his ​treatment of every important original source, it seems unnecessary to further notice his treatment of minor "original sources" or his numerous errors in other matters.
Dr. Mowry asserts that his "Marcus Whitman" is a "history," and that "from first to last it deals with facts," and very positively denies that it is "an embellished story."
Just how he "deals with facts" is plainly shown herein, and one cannot help wondering what sort of a book he would have produced if he had exercised his intellect in the production of an "embellished story" instead of "history."
It is said that a friend whom he did not wish to disoblige having persistently importuned President Lincoln to write a notice of a book, which he could not conscientiously commend, Lincoln at last penned the following:
"Having read Dr. Blank's book, I am free to say that, for people who like this kind of a book, this seems to me an excellent sample of the kind of a book they like."
So, for those who think the proper course for a historical writer to pursue with all "original sources" that cannot be twisted so as to support his preconceived theories, is to either ignore or deliberately suppress or misquote them, or to substitute for them the contradictory and demonstrably false "recollections" of their authors written 30 to 40 years later, Dr. Mowry's "Marcus Whitman" may be recommended as a very finely executed specimen of the kind of writing they are willing to accept as historical