Oregon Historical Society

“ Let our conceptions be enlarged to the circle of our duties. Let us extend our duties over the whole of the vast field in which we are called to act. Let our object be OUR COUNTRY, OUR WHOLE COUNTRY, AND NOTHING BUT OUR COUNTRY. And by the blessing of God may that country itself become a great and splendid monument, not of oppression and terror, but of wisdom, of peace, and liberty, upon which the world may gaze with admiration forever! ”

“ Lincoln followed him in an address of twenty-seven printed lines, which, for simple eloquence, is not surpassed in the English language. What was it, what is it, that has made Lincoln's address immortal, while that of Everett is scarcely remembered? One was a polished and gifted orator, the other was a simple, earnest and impressive man, burdened with the responsibilities of power and standing in the performance of duty. His words filled the aching hearts of a waiting people; they were uttered in a great cause, and in memory of those who had sacrificed their lives that the "nation might live." ”

“ These colors, 3400 years in their coming, are now on the summit of the continental divide and the men who bore them hither look out over one of the most beautiful panoramic scenes in all the world. Down through the fathomless abyss of time that landscape had received from the winter's storms its mantles of snow, and with the breath of each succeeding spring it had burst forth into life again. ”

“ The season being late, Nature was at her best. The green carpet of the Umpqua hills was a-gleam with the bloom of wild flowers, which nowhere grow in more profusion. Birds sang from the trees and the fields, and as the old bell in the high belfry rang to call the assembled crowd together, men and women met who had been boys and girls in school there forty years ago. ”

“ Without cultivation of the material and mechanical, which acts upon matter and produces wealth, man is a mere idler and dreamer, at his best little better than the Arabian nomad. Without cultivation of the moral sentiments, or attention to the calls of his inner and higher nature, he loses himself in gross materialism, and no answer is found in him to appeal to ideas, to heroism, or to exalted virtue.
Phases of the life of a people pass away, never to return. In the first settlement of a country the conditions of nature produce our customs, guide our industries, fix our ways of life. ”

“ It is one of the most beautiful localities I have seen in Oregon—on the right bank of the Willamette, with beautiful shade trees, neat cottages, not cramped or huddled together, but with ample spaces for gardens—with a fine view of the woods, which, in a vista of twenty miles, surround it—and, in the background, with the bold slope of the Cascades, renders it one of the most beautiful sites for a city to be found in Oregon. It is not only the political center of Oregon, but it is also destined to become a point of great manufacturing importance. ”

“ The West, instead of proving the Nation destroyer, has proved its savior. What the future is in all its aspects, no man can say. The Briton would have been thought insane ten years ago who would have dared to predict the day that Canada, Australia, and New Zealand would be called upon to uphold the prestige of the empire at the Cape of Good Hope. No American, however pessimistic, contemplates with pleasure the possibility of war, still every American is pleased to see his country protected against the day of war. ”

“ Eight years ago today, these aged friends gave me in wedlock their only daughter ; she has been with me in these wanderings over the Atlantic and Pacific oceans, up and down the rapid rivers of the far west, and over the beautiful flowery prairies of Oregon; and is now floating with me home- ward to the land of our nativity. Surely to these vener- able parents I am indebted, a debt I shall never be able to pay. ”

“ Rocky Mountains hundred ton transcontinental trains with the utmost ease. What a marvelous evolution; what a gift from the benevolent hand of God what a boon to the toiling masses As a power river the Snake ranks with the greatest in the world. ”

“ No more fitting place than the campus of the University of Oregon could be found for the memorial. Here amid these beautiful surroundings, in this institution of learning, acting as an inspiration to Oregon's young manhood and womanhood, this pioneer in bronze will find a hospitable home in the land he loved so well. I am happy in the thought that I have had the opportunity thus to show my love and admiration for those whose life was largely spent in a work whose greatness and value will be better understood when viewed down the perspective of time. ”

“ Spring is a most appropriate time for an old man to take his departure from this earth, when there are spring flowers, birds and everything to brighten and cheer him on to the end with their sweet fragrance and mirthful song, symbolic of a life of happiness, joy and prosperity. ”

“ All the mistakes he ever made were due to the simplicity and trustfulness of his nature. Himself without guile, he never imagined it—even to his latest day—in others. If this was a limitation, it was a fault that leaned to virtue's side.
George H. Williams is beyond praise or blame of men. In him there was intellectual ability the rarest, on one side, and there was unselfishness the rarest on the other. The life of such a man is a heritage of the world and an inspiration to it. Every great career must be estimated by the conditions in which its work is done. ”

“ But every great man is a product of his time and of times preceding his own; and he works in conditions and upon materials that he finds round about him. It was the same with the Founder of Christianity. Working upon the human spirit, He gave new direction and deeper force to feelings immanent in man. The career of Jesus and its consequences furnish perhaps the most remarkable of all illustrations and proofs of the unity of history; for herein is the most effective force yet brought into action for broadening the spirit of man and linking humanity together in a single chain. ”

“ They knew where to find water and grass, and could sleep in peace while the cavalry wore out men and horses in night rides to hunt trails which they were too cunning to leave. Camp Alvord, at the foot of Stein's Mountain, was almost at the entrance to a rocky defile, up which they fled to a place of safety when alarmed by the approach of an enemy. In a country so immense and so rough as the deserts of Southeastern Oregon and Southwestern Idaho looking for Indians, was like searching for the legendary "needle in the haymow." ”

“ Jefferson likes us because he detests England; he seeks to unite with us because he suspects us less than Great Britain, but he would change his sentiments towards us to-morrow, perhaps, if to-morrow Great Britain ceased to inspire him with fear. Jefferson, although a friend of liberty and the sciences, although an admirer of the efforts we have made to break our chains and dissipate the clouds of ignorance which weigh upon mankind, Jefferson, I say, is an American, and, by that title it is impossible for him to be sincerely our friend. An American is the born enemy of European peoples. ”

“ Being a citizen by adoption, I was free from the influence which being born in a slave State had over good men who had left such States to get away from the institution. Always deeming myself a soldier of and for the United States if the need arose, I never disguised my sentiments but beyond that, took little note of politics. Like a large proportion of foreign-born citizens, I classed myself a Democrat, but never could under- stand how a real Democrat could believe in holding another man in slavery. ”

“ Though fond of mirth and jollity and the life of social re- unions, he never degenerated from the behavior and instincts of a gentleman. Though his love of country amounted to a passion and his mountain life was spent in opposition and rivalry to the Hudson's Bay Company, he never permitted his prejudices to blind his judgment, or by word or act to do injustice to an adversary. Of undoubted truth and honor, he was the unquestioned leader and adviser of men of his class, both British and American, and enjoyed to a great extent the confidence of all parties in the country. ”

“ Out of such partiality has inevitably grown the great man theory of human progression. The student of history passes along from point to point in the bloody trail of the historian, stopping at such characters as Alexander, Cæsar, Charlemagne, Napoleon, etc., until these great destroyers are looked upon as the prime factors of the evolutionary state. Of course, these and such as these must not be ignored or left out, for history would cease to be history without them, but it is equally important to know that man, judged only by them, ceases to be man. ”

“ How glorious it would be for Oregon if the Lewis and Clark Fair Clubs would in dead earnest determine to possess themselves of the philosophy of city making, and to do their best to control municipal activity in Oregon so as to make it conserve highest economic and æsthetic ends and bring about rational unity in all municipal development and foster an architectural spirit. Why not commission a delegate to Dresden? Why not begin to make wholesome, beautiful, and edifying the Oregon village and city, so that, as a whole, each may be a positive joy forever? ”

“ There is almost nothing too great for American industry to achieve, her energies never sleep, and each succeeding anniversary develops something new in literature, the arts and sciences. "No pent up Utica contracts our powers," but the march of improvement is onward and will never cease until the shores of the Pacific and Atlantic are united by rail-road, and that which is now a wilderness and occupied by the savage, will be made to flourish and blossom like the rose. ”

“ The bed of the Missouri is a quicksand, mixed with soil. The water is the color of well-creamed coffee. After drinking it and shutting the mouth one can feel the grit. But still thus it flows eternally on at four knots per hour.
Here we take our final outfit, which done we start forth, leaving civilization and all the comforts of social life behind us. It will be necessary to obtain forty or fifty horses to carry our goods and ourselves part of the time. Our path launches off on a prairie south of the river that ends in the mountains. ”

“ At the city of San Francisco, en route for Washington, Colonel Baker, in fiery and impassioned rhetoric, nailed his banner and Oregon's to the Nation's masthead.
He said "As for me, I dare not, will not, be false to freedom. Where the feet of my youth were planted, there by freedom my feet shall ever stand. I will walk beneath her banner. I will glory in her strength. I have seen her in history struck down on a hundred fields of battle. I have seen her friends fly from her, her foes gather around her. ”

“ Oregon was a fine country in my early days—a park on a large scale, that could not be surpassed even by artificial culture. It mattered not at what point immigrants or travelers entered this western shore of America, at each of its thresholds a scene of beauty awaited them. Before the Anglo-Saxon race penetrated the Rockies there was no civilization in the country that is worth mention. It was in its natural state of beauty, romantic and grand, with its endless prairies, streams and forests and wild animals of all kinds for the use of man. ”

“ If for a ruthless, wasteful course of social evolution that would never reach any desirable goal we would realize one of steady, frictionless progress, with opportunities of fullest life open to all, we must make the Lewis and Clark Centennial fulfill its high mission. If the people of Oregon and the Pacific Northwest do not persist in their determination to make this concerted effort toward the inauguration of the highest policies of social progress here it is hard to see what occasion can bring them so near this mood again. ”

“ Through the Gazette and the territorial papers generally, I wish to speak to the citizens of Puget Sound. The 19th of August I sail from New York with upwards of three hundred war orphans daughters of those brave, heroic sons of liberty, whose lives were given as offerings to appease the angry god of battle on many a plain and field in our recent war to perpetuate freedom and her institutions. I appeal to every true, warm-hearted family to open wide the door and share your home comforts with those whose lot is about to be cast in your midst. ”

“ Henceforth in South and North, as well as West, the men whose eyes were fixed on the future whose interests were higher than cotton or the tariff, whose imagination had been kindled by the vision of a great nation stretching from ocean to ocean, more and more gathering to its broad embrace the commerce of the European world with that ancient and mysterious East, were the tireless champions of Oregon. ”

“ The greater this power, the more certain will be the security. The more extensive our Union, the more powerful we will be ; while one of a thousand States would manage its own affairs as well as if that was the only State on the continent. I have long been convinced, that, under our peculiar and happy form of Government, so well adapted to the genius of our people, no extension of territory will ever endanger the Union ; but, on the contrary, the tendency of extension will be to strengthen the Union. ”

“ Worse than alone, in a savage wilderness, without food, without fire, cold and shivering wolves fighting and howling all around me. Dark clouds hid the stars. All as solitary as death. But that same kind Providence that I had always known was watching over me still. I committed all to Him and felt no fear. As soon as light dawned, I pulled down my tent, saddled my horse, found the Captain able to stand on his feet. Just at this moment one of the emigrants whom I was trying to overtake came up. ”

“ Just now Oregon is the pioneer's land of promise. Hundreds are already prepared to start thither with the spring, while hundreds of others are anxiously awaiting the action of congress in reference to that country, as the signal for their departure. Some have already been to view the country, and have returned with a flattering tale of the inducements it holds out. They have painted it to their neighbors in the brightest colors; these have told it to others; the Oregon fever has broke out, and is now raging like any other contagion. ”

“ To those who derive pleasure in seeing the rough, rugged, wild face of Nature, made to wear the smiles of civilization and of progress, and to witness what money and labor can accomplish, I know of no point where they can visit to see these in all their grandeur than across the Scott's and Trinity mountains, which, in point of difficulty and rugged wildness, surpass any mountain region it has ever been my lot to travel, from the Columbia to the Missouri River. ”

“ From my youth I was an early riser and fond of witnessing "the daily miracle of morning," and these interviews with nature were especially beneficial and delightful at the agency. A morning walk up the river bottom, breathing the sweet, cool air that came gently down from the mountains like a living breath, and viewing the shadows of night scurry- ing up the canyons away from the coming Eastern Flame, was an invigorating inspiration. In one of these walks I chanced to meet an Indian family just arrived from their camp on the Too-too-willa, five miles distant, to commence a day 's plowing. ”

“ As in slavery days, the forgetters are directing their extra-fraternal services against Uncle Tom's Cabin. In the language of Woodrow Wilson, it "is not a truthful picture of slavery." Such good people seem not to have entered into the serene spirit which views the barbarisms practiced down South, not as an indictment of the Southern people, but as a sample of the degradation to which such a denial of human rights could bring a people as good by nature as ourselves. ”

“ We have come here today to witness the dedication of an educational institution named in honor and in kind and affectionate remembrance of Dr. John McLoughlin—the Father of Oregon—one of the best and noblest of men.
Fifty years ago, on the third day of September, 1857, this man—the greatest of Oregon's citizens, the greatest of its benefactors, the greatest of its humanitarians—died in this city, near where this building stands, a martyr to his principles and to his humanity. It is given to comparatively few men to be long remembered, after their deaths, in books and in histories. ”