Edward Gaylord Bourne

“ History is full of such touches, which if not true are not essential distortions of the train of events. For examples of the complete legendary reconstruction of history we naturally turn to the Middle Ages or earlier periods, and call to mind the Donation of Constantine or the story of William Tell. That such a reconstruction of history should take place in the latter half of the nineteenth century in the United States and should involve an event of such immense importance and world-wide publicity as the acquisition of Oregon will seem little short of incredible. ”

“ No new sources of value relative to the history of the Oregon question have been discovered and the extraordinary posthumous fame of Marcus Whitman is found to rest upon the unsubstantial foundation of a fictitious narrative first published many years after his alleged achievement.
When a traditional narrative is subjected to criticism two questions present themselves: "Is it true?"—and if not: "How did it come to be believed to be true?" In other words, "What is its origin and history?" The answer to the first question is of especial interest only to students of American history. ”

“ The story first emerges over twenty years after the events and seventeen years after Whitman's death and its conception of the Oregon policy of the government is that handed down by tradition in an isolated and remote community. Criticism of a simple type has winnowed out some of the crudest misconceptions, unconscious that more is needed to substantiate a narrative than to sift out its impossibilities. ”

“ The discovery of America was destined to follow as a consequence of the Portuguese voyages, even if Columbus had never lived. The authenticity of these instructions might be given up without weakening that conclusion. Whether Cabral discovered Brazil in consequence of these instructions or by accident does not matter. A glance at a map of ocean currents will show that either such instructions or such an accident would be inevitable if voyaging down the coast of Africa were kept up. The true glory of Columbus lies in his persistence and resolution in acting upon his intellectual convictions. ”

“ Fifty-two years later, in the most careful appraisal of human achievement in America that has ever been made, the voting for the Hall of Fame at New York University, Marcus Whitman received nineteen out of a possible ninety-eight votes to be ranked as one of the fifty greatest Americans. ”

“ I am a missionary, it is true, but my country needs me now." And taking leave of his missionary associates, his comfortable home, and his weeping companion, with little hope of seeing them again in this world, he entered upon his fearful journey the 2d of October 1842, and reached the City of Washington the 2d of March 1843, with his face, nose, ears, hands, feet, and legs badly frozen. It is well that the good man did not live to see himself and his faithful associates robbed and their character slandered by that very Government he was ready to lay down his life for. ”

“ The sturdy manliness and Christian devotion of Marcus Whitman, the unceasing labors of his life and his death in the service of Christian missions in Oregon, fully deserve every honorable memorial. The perversion of history cannot honor such a man. ”

“ If emigration on a grand scale was to begin, the government ought to protect it and establish supply stations. If anything was to be done to reverse the action of the Board it must be done at once, or a year would be lost.
Dr. Whitman was an energetic, impulsive man, of sanguine temperament, and he revolted at giving up the station at the time when its best opportunity to render material and tangible services to Oregon was at hand. ”

“ If the doctor could establish a wagon route through the mountains to the Columbia River, pronounced impossible by Governor Simpson and Ashburton, he would use his influence to hold on to Oregon. The great desire of the doctor's American soul, Christian withal, that is, the pledge of the President that the swapping of Oregon with England for a cod-fishery should stop for the present, was attained, although at the risk of his life, and through great sufferings, and unsolicited, and without the promise or expectation of a dollar's reward from any source. ”

“ A company of some five or ten men may be found of piety and intelligence, not to be appointed by the Board or to be immediately connected with it, who will go to the Oregon country as Christian men, and who, on some terms to be agreed upon, shall take most of the land which the mission have under cultivation, with the mills and shops at the several stations, with the most of the stock and utensils, paying the mission in produce from year to year, in seed to the Indians, and assistance rendered to them—or in some similar manner, the particulars to be decided upon in consultation with the men. ”

“ Government is instituted no less for protection of the property, than of the persons, of individuals" (p. 342) .
Madison.
"In a general view I see no reason why the rights of property, which chiefly bears the burden of Government and is so much an object of legislation, should not be respected as much as personal rights in the choice of Rulers." ”

“ On November 1 he wrote from the Fort Walla Walla: "my journey across the mountains was very much prolonged by the necessity for me to pilot the emigrants. I tried to leave the party, at different points, and push forward alone, but I found that I could not do so without subjecting the emigrants to considerable risk." Then follows a plea for more help from the mission board:
"We very much need good men to locate themselves two, three or four in a place and secure a good influence for the Indians, and form a nucleus for religious institutions, and keep back Romanism. ”

“ Men now smile when they read or hear of the attempt of Alexander Sixth to divide the undiscovered world between Spain and Portugal, but what single act of any Pope in the history of the Church has exercised directly and indirectly a more momentous influence on human affairs than this last reminder [80] of the bygone world sovereignty of the Holy See? ”

“ Lovejoy's recollection shows not a trace of the Spalding legend of Whitman's having arrived in the nick of time to save Oregon from being "traded off for a cod fishery." Every account that has been published of Whitman's interviews with Tyler and Webster except this of Lovejoy is entirely fictitious, and not only fictitious but impossible, and could have originated only with a man ignorant of diplomacy in general and of the Oregon diplomacy in particular. ”

“ Oregon has all the virtues we claim for it. A few Americans have gone thither to develop our nation's wealth. We are far off, but our hearts are with the nation of our birth. We are pioneers, and can it be possible that our claims will be ignored,—that our country can consent to trade off her territory and our allegiance to a foreign power?'
"Dr. Whitman did not rest the question with the Secretary. ”

“ The real Oregon policy of the administration was something very different from Spalding's invention. It was to yield to England the territory north of the Columbia if England would acquiesce in or promote our acquisition of California from San Francisco harbor northward and the annexation of Texas to the United States. English influence was strong in Mexico and it was believed that if England urged these concessions on Mexico she would grant them for a reasonable consideration. ”

“ Nothing could more effectively catch the public ear and prepare the public mind for resentment against the Catholics than to show that Whitman saved Oregon to the United States and then lost his life a sacrifice to the malignant disappointment of the "Jesuits "and the Hudson's Bay Company.
Some of the heads to the various sections in this collection may be quoted to show its range, but no adequate idea of the hodge-podge can be gained by any description. One must believe it unique in all the vast mass which has issued from the Government Printing Office. ”

“ Incidental or collateral assumptions usually accompany this statement to the effect that great ignorance and indifference in regard to Oregon prevailed in Washington and generally throughout the United States, and that Dr. Whitman was able to dispel the ignorance and to transform the indifference into a deep and widespread interest. In both the essentials and the explanatory details the story of how Marcus Whitman saved Oregon is fictitious. It is not only without trustworthy contemporary evidence, but is irreconcilable with well established facts. ”

“ They had nothing to fear, but to be ready on his return. The stopping of wagons at Fort Hall was a Hudson Bay Company scheme to prevent the settling of the country by Americans, till they could settle it with their own subjects, from the Selkirk settlement. This news spread like fire through Missouri. The doctor pushed on to Washington and immediately sought an interview with Secretary Webster—both being from the same State—and stated to him the object of his crossing the
rivers with, a wagon track so deep and plain that neither national envy nor sectional fanaticism would ever blot it out. ”

“ Experience had shown the Portuguese pilots that a direct southerly course down the African coast was subject to delays by calms, adverse currents, and unfavorable winds. Vasco de Gama recommended that Cabral on his voyage to India in 1500 should sail south-west until he reached the latitude of the Cape of Good Hope, when he should sail due east, availing himself of the trade winds. This course would be safer and quicker. [30] The Spanish sovereigns felt it safe to concede something, for Columbus had estimated the distance from the Canaries to the new lands as something over 900 leagues. ”

“ In short, for Madison, all his study of the history of federal government confirmed his diagnosis of the existing evils. Permanent peace, prosperity, and development could not be obtained under any type of confederacy known to history. All have fallen a prey to dissension and disintegration. Some- thing new must be devised in the form of a federal constitu- tion. From the debates in Philadelphia emerged our Constitution, to be recognized and classified as a new type : the Bundesstaat, or Federal State, the creation of Madison's thought more than of any one else's. ”

“ America is too late, and we have got the country." Whitman realizes that if Canadian immigration has really begun the authorities at Washington ought to know it, and a counter American immigration ought to be promoted, so that when the joint occupation of Oregon is terminated, the presence of a majority of American settlers may turn the balance in favor of the United States by right of possession. The government must be informed as to the value of Oregon and its accessibility by overland emigration. ”

“ It is to be hoped that the history of this controversy may some day be published, for the picture of the grapple of criticism with a legend in its earlier growth, and of the survival if not victory of the fiction in spite of crushing attack in an age which flatters itself on its intelligence, would be full of sobering instruction for the historical student.
The strongest champion of the story at this crisis was the Rev. Myron Eells, a son of Cushing Eells. In 1882 he published his History of Indian Missions on the Pacific Coast. ”

“ In Rome there is nothing more impressive than to see the magnificent column of Trajan surmounted by a statue of the Apostle Peter and to reflect on the historic changes that made suitable in the eyes of the Romans of a later day that transformation of the emperor's monument into a pedestal for the figure of a simple missionary of whom he probably never heard. ”

“ The real history of Marcus Whitman is briefly as follows: Sent out as a missionary to the Oregon Indians in 1836, he established a prosperous station which proved a haven of rest for the weary emigrant and traveller. In 1842 he is ordered to give up the station, but at the very time when the orders come a large emigration party arrives much reduced by the hardships of the journey from Fort Hall. Their leader, Dr. White, announces that the United States are going to occupy the country and that many are preparing to come the following year. ”

“ The answer to the second on the other hand will be not only of general, but of scientific interest, for it will trace the steps by which the imaginative reconstruction of history strangely distorting the relative significance of men and events, has slowly but steadily pushed aside the truth, until it has invaded not only the text-books but the works of historians whose reputation gives their utterances a certain authority. ”

“ Calling attention to the Catholic missionary efforts, for which he refers the committee to De Smedt's Indian Sketches, he continues, "I think by a careful consideration of this together with these facts and movements you will realize our feelings that we must look with interest upon this the only spot on the Pacific Coast left where protestants have a present hope of a foothold. It is requisite that some good pious men and ministers go to Oregon without delay as citizens or our hope there is greatly clouded, if not destroyed." ”