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the Indians was greatly dissipated by the wars between whites and Indians, yet the seed planted by the missionaries survived not only that bitter and bloody strife and the corruption of and robbery of the Indians by a whole generation, of rascally thieving Indian agents, but lived to bear good fruit in later times under the leadership of native preachers and honest government agents. The Eastern Missionary Boards of former times, as well as the immigrants to Oregon of recent years, have never comprehended or appreciated the value of the labors of Lee, Whitman, Walker, Eells, and their associates. The eastern men looked only at the expenditure of money; and the new-comers to Oregon could not see any Indian converts. But the priceless services of the early missionaries to Oregon is not to be measured by dollars and cents or tolled off by church membership. The Rev. Wm Warren, in his little book on Indian missions, tersely states the case for Oregon.

"Indian missions brought the first white women overland to Oregon, opened the first immigrant road to the Columbia river; gave the first governor to the territory; established the first permanent American settlement; and aided essentially in the establishment of the Provisional Government, five years before the United States formed a Territorial Government; brought the first American cattle to the Willamette valley, and saved the country, or at least an important part of it, to the United States.

CHAPTER XI

1834-1848

THE OREGON HALL OF FAME-WHO SAVED OREGON? THOMAS JEFFERSON? THOMAS H. BENTON? HALL J. KELLEY? JASON LEE? MARCUS WHITMAN? JOHN M'LOUGHLIN? JOSEPH L. MEEK? FRANCOIS XAVIER MATTHIEU? GEORGE ABERNETHY? -SAVED BY ALL SETTLERS PULLING TOGETHER.

The first great name naturally associated with the Oregon country is that of Thomas Jefferson. His place in the history of the United States, in the estimation of the great mass of the people, is next to that of Washington. But had it not been for his far-seeing statesmanship which added the Louisiana Territory to that of the thirteen original states, his position would have taken rank after that of Franklin, Hamilton and Madison. His fortunate connection with the Declaration of Independence, while no special evidence of statesmanship, secured for him early recognition, and kept his name to the front at the annual celebration of the great event throughout the length and breadth of the whole country. His part in the actual struggle with the foreign king for national independence, amounts to very little. In the making of the Constitution, where Washington, Hamilton and Madison each towered above all the statesmen of their day, Jefferson took no part. And while recognized as a man of versatile talents, of genius and ability, he barely held the place he achieved in the Continental convention by his persistent advocacy of popular rights. He became early known as the advocate of a democratic as distinguished from constitutional government. And it is a sharp commentary on the weakness of his original propositions of government, that almost the very first of his acts as president of the United States, was admitted by himself to be an infraction of the letter of the Constitution he had sworn to support, and of his own ideas of the proper mission of the Republic. In a letter to John Breckenridge, August 12, 1803, speaking of the purchase of Louisiana, Jefferson says:

"The treaty, of course, must be laid before both houses. They, I presume, will see their duty to their country in ratifying and paying for it (Louisiana), so as to secure a good which would otherwise probably be never again in their power. The Constitution has made no provision for our holding foreign territory, still less for incorporating foreign nations into our Union. The Executive, in seizing the fugitive occurrence which so much advances the good of their country, has done an act beyond the Constitution. The Legislature in casting behind metaphysical subleties, and risking themselves like faithful servants, must ratify and pay for it, and throw themselves on their country for doing for them unauthorized, what we know they would have done for themselves, had they been in a situation to do it."

And to show further the hazy ideas of this remarkable statesman, when it

comes to forming a concrete and persistent nation, take another extract from the same letter:

sons.

"The future inhabitants of the Atlantic and Mississippi states, will be our We leave them in distinct, but bordering establishments. We think we see their happiness in their Union, and we wish it. Events may prove it otherwise, and if they see their interest in separation, why should we take sides with our Atlantic rather than our Mississippi descendants. God bless them both, and keep them in union, if it be for their good, but separate them if it be better."

And when the great Jefferson comes to consider the Pacific coast sons of the Republic, he wanders still farther way from a union which must for all time make us a homogeneous nation. In a letter to John Jacob Astor, May 2, 1812:

"I considered as a great public acquisition the commencement of a settlement on that point (Astoria) of the western coast of America, and looked forward with gratification to the time when its descendants should have spread themselves through the whole length of that coast, covering it with free and independent Americans, unconnected with us by the ties of blood and interest, and employing, like us, the rights of self-government."

And in another letter to Mr. Astor, November 9, 1813, Jefferson says:

"I learn with great pleasure the progress you have made towards an establishment of the Columbia river. I view it as the germ of a great free and independent empire on that site of our continent, and that liberty and self-government spreading from that as well as this side, will insure their complete establishment over the whole. It must be still more gratifying to yourself to foresee that your name will be handed down with that of Columbus, and Raleigh, as the father of the establishment and founder of such an empire. It would be an afflicting thing indeed should the English be able to break up the settlement. The bigotry to the bastard liberty of their own country, and habitual hostility to every degree of freedom in any other will induce the attempt. They would not lose the sale of a bale of furs for the freedom of the whole world."

This letter shows vividly the three predominant characteristics of Jefferson's public life; intense devotion to personal liberty, expansion of the American idea of popular government, and intense hostility to everything British. Had Jefferson lived to read of the formation of the Oregon Provisional Government. he would have hailed it as the embodiment of his life-long principles. As it was, he was emphatically the father of Oregon. Although admitting he violated the Constitution to get control of this vast region, and carry out his long cherished desire to explore the depths of its wilderness and show to the world its vast riches, he put the stamp of his genius and love of liberty on its original government through the brains and labor of the pioneers who had imbibed Jeffersonian principles with their mother's milk. Slavery, he considered a moral and political evil, and declared in reference to it that "he trembled for his country when he remembered that God was just." And one of the first acts of the legislature of the Provisional Government of Oregon was to declare that slavery should never have a foothold in this state.

Thomas Jefferson was as accessible to the plain every day farmers, as to the highest dignitary of his own or any foreign government. All titles of honor

were distasteful to him, and he lived and died as the popular incarnation of equality, justice and democracy. And it is to Jefferson that the country is indebted for that necessary enterprise in sending out the Lewis and Clark expedition to explore the unknown region of Oregon, and place the stamp of American title on its whole extent, from the mountains to the sea. Judging from the history of the country, there is not a president since the days of Washington that had the push and enterprise, as well as the American spirit, to expand the nation's boundaries as did Jefferson; and if it had not been for his action in seizing what he termed the "fugitive opportunity," the United States would have been, in its western expansion, limited to the boundary of the Mississippi, and Oregon would have been as British as Canada. It is therefore, justly due that the name of Thomas Jefferson should top the scroll of Oregon's Hall of Fame.

The next prominent character in the long contest for the American title to Oregon was Senator Thomas H. Benton, of Missouri. Benton was not alone in the battle, but was ably supported by his colleague, Senator Lewis F. Linn. Linn was a physician by profession, and a forceful, aggressive man, serving two terms in the senate, but Benton was there for thirty years. Always a commanding figure, resolute and courageous, far beyond the great majority of men who had risen to that high position. Benton, next to Jefferson, early comprehended the great importance of the West to the nation. Living at St. Louis, which was in his day the great gate-way not only to the South and Southwest, but also to the real West beyond the mountains, he saw the national necessity to seize every point of vantage and hold on for the future. And although representing a slave state in the Senate, he was far too large a man not to see that free territory to the west was a 'thousand times more important to St. Louis and to the nation than more slave states. And when the issue came, whether there should be territory added on that would make free states beyond the mountains, and thus disturb the equilibrium between slave and free states, he promptly cast in the whole force of his great influence in the Senate and with the people on the side of the free territory of Oregon. For this act for justice and humanity, for national honor and defense, he was discredited by the slave-holding leaders of the South.

No man understood better the wants and aspirations of the pioneer settlers of Oregon. And no man comprehended as well the future national importance of taking and holding the whole of Old Oregon for settlement by American citizens. His prophetic words, picturing the future greatness of this country, and the great commerce which would ebb and flow through this state, and the Columbia gateway, has been given in the introductory chapter of this book, and we have lived to see it a veritable reality. For long years, and through good and evil report, and in the face of all sorts of misrepresentations of the value of this country by the pigmy men who had gotten into the Senate by some sort of accident, he stood the "lion of the west," making the battle for Oregon. And some day, when this state or some of its merchant princes shall fully comprehend the great work which Thomas H. Benton did to "save Oregon" to the naition, and make Oregon an American state, and the imperial commercial metropolis of the great Pacific, there will arise on some commanding point in the state, the heroic statue in bronze of "Old Bullion," friend of Oregon,

with that uplifted right arm of his commanding figure pointing to the west to emphasize the apothegm that made him famous, "there's India, there's the East!"

And now we come to a man who "saved Oregon," who is wholly unlike every other man connected with Oregon history. Unappreciated and misunderstood, by some called a fanatic, by others a crank, and by the Hudson's Bay Company treated as a horse-thief, the ghost of Hall J. Kelley appears and disappears through the shifting scenery of Oregon's strenuous history with such kaleidoscopic presentment as almost utterly baffles description.

Hall Jackson Kelley was born at Northwood, New Hampshire, February 24, 1790. At the age of sixteen the boy left home and taught school at Hallowell, He studied the classics and graduated with honor at Middlebury College in 1814, and married the daughter of the Rev. Thomas Baldwin, April 17, 1822. After leaving college, Mr. Kelley devoted his time to teaching, the preparation of elementary school books, the introduction of black boards in public schools, the study of the higher mathematics, and making a discovery of an improved method of topographical and geographical surveying which President Jackson promised to introduce in government work.

As early as 1817, while teaching in one of the grammar schools of Boston, Kelley conceived the idea of leading a colony for the exploration and settlement of Oregon, then practically an unknown country. In his memoir he says: "I began first to converse with friends about Oregon, then to lecture and write books and tracts in order to give the widest publicity to my plans and purposes." In 1824, he publicly announced his intentions to settle Oregon and propagate Christianity beyond the Rocky mountains. Here is a definite and indisputable statement that Hall J. Kelley's missionary enterprise antedated that of Jason Lee by ten years, and that of Marcus Whitman by twelve years, and that of the Catholic priests by fourteen years.

And while it is true that Kelley never did come to Oregon to preach the gospel, it is also true that he, more than all others, by his public lectures, letters, pamphlets and circulars, informed and enlightened the people of the Atlantic states as to the character and value of the territory of Oregon. And it was on the public sentiment created and built up by Kelley that the Methodists and Presbyterians were enabled to organize their missionary expeditions to Oregon and to get the first money to pay their expenses. And on this point the following statements are quite satisfactory proof:

"BOSTON, January 30, 1833.

"In the year 1831, I was editor of Zion's Herald, a religious paper, sustaining the faith of the Methodist Episcopal church. In the above year I published for Mr. H. J. Kelley a series of letters addressed to a member of Congress developing his plans for the settlement of Oregon territory. At other times Mr. Kelley made appeals through our paper, with a view to excite the minds of the Christian community to the importance of founding religious institutions in that territory. He was one of the first explorers of that region, and to his zeal and efforts is largely due the establishment of missionary operations in that country.

"WILLIAM C. BROWN."

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