USA > Oregon > History of Oregon, Vol. I, 1834-1848 > Part 75
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Frances Ella Reynolds, born in Tenn. in 1815, emigrated to Oregon in 1848, and resided with her sister, Mrs Wells, at the time of her death on the 25th of November, 1879. Portland Advocate, Dec. 4, 1879.
William Porter of Aumsville, Marion Co., had never been farther away from his home than Oregon City, in his 27 years' residence in Oregon, until summoned to Portland by the U. S. district court, to appear as a juror. He has contributed pleasing articles to the columns of the Farmer, but the journey across the plains satisfied completely his love of travel. Salem Farmer, June 25, 1875.
John L. Hicklin, born in Kentucky, June 1793, first removed to Indiana and finally settled in Washington Co., Tualatin plains, Oregon, in 1848, where he continued to reside, surrounded by a large family. He died Oct. 14, 1876, after a long and exemplary life. Portland Standard, Oct. 27, 1876.
David Linenberger emigrated from Virginia. In 1851 he removed to Sis- kiyou Co., Cal., where he engaged in mining. He died Sept. 7, 1868. Yreka Union, Sept. 12, 1868.
Rev. Joseph E. Parrott, a man of fine talents and a firm Methodist, was born in Missouri in 1821, emigrated to Oregon in 184S, and married Susan Garrison in 1851, who died in August 1869. On the 31st of May, 1870, he married Mrs L. A. Worden. On the 3d of September, 1872, he died at his home near Lafayette in Yamhill Co. Portland Advocate, Sept. 19, 1872.
Buford Smith, who settled in Marion Co., after a long residence removed to northern Cal., where he remained a few years, and returned to Oregon, having lost his health. He survived the change but a short time, and the once energetic and always genial pioneer of 1848 passed to his rest at the age of 70 years, Nov. 6, 1870. Salem Farmer, Nov. 12, 1870.
Mrs Elizabeth Smith, wife of Buford Smith, was killed by the accidental discharge of a gun in Nov. 1876. Their sons were A., Charles, and William Smith, who resided at Silverton in Marion County. Salem Statesman, Nov. 24, 1876.
William Greenwood was born in Hardy Co., Va., September 13, 1806. On the 12th of August, 1828, he married Elizabeth Jane Bramel, and in 1832 removed to St Louis, Mo., and 2 years later to near Burlington, Iowa, emigrat- ing in 1848 to Oregon, and settling on Howell Prairie. He was always an upright and industrious citizen. He was elected to the state senate in 1862, serving 4 years. His death occurred May 18, 1869, from injuries received by accident, leaving 2 sons and 2 daughters, and a large estate. Id., Aug. 9, 1869.
Mrs Jane Belknap, wife of Jesse Belknap, died Dec. 10, 1876. Born in Penn. in 1792, she emigrated with her parents to western N. Y. in 1796. At the age of 16 she became a convert to Methodism, and on settling with her husband in Benton Co., kept open house to the ministry, entertaining Bishop Simpson on his first visit to Oregon to preside over the first annual conference of the Methodist church. She had a large family of children. Her husband survived her. Portland Advocate, Dec. 21, 1876.
Rev. John W. Starr was born in Va. in 1795, removed to Ohio in child- HIST. OR., VOL. I. 48
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THE CAYUSE WAR.
hood, and from that state in 1839 to Van Buren Co., Iowa, emigrating in 1848 to Oregon and locating - benton Co. He was an ardent preacher of his faith from youth to old age. Id., March 20, 1869.
Caleb Richey died in Pleasant Valley, Nev., Nov. 28, 1875. Reno State Journal, Dec. 18, 1875.
Jesse Parrish died in Marion County, Oregon, in Sept. 1878. Olympia Transcript, Oct. 5, 1878.
J. J. Lindsay was born in Ripley Co., Ind., Dec. 25, 1838, and emigrated with his parents to Oregon. They remained but one winter in the Willamette Valley, going to Cal. in 1849, and remaining there, where the elder Lindsay died in 1851. His subsequent history belongs to California. Sonoma Co. Hist., 622.
CHAPTER XXVI.
OREGON'S ENVOYS-ERECTION OF A TERRITORIAL GOVERNMENT.
1848.
JOURNEY OF THORNTON-ADVENTURES OF MEEK-THE PIOUS LAWYER AND THE PROFANE TRAPPER-INTERVIEWS WITH THE PRESIDENT-MEMORIALS TO CONGRESS-THE ORDINANCE OF 1787-BILLS BEFORE CONGRESS-THE SLAVERY QUESTION-WARM DISCUSSIONS-FINAL PASSAGE OF THE BILL CREATING THE TERRITORY OF OREGON-APPOINTMENT OF OFFICIALS- ANXIETY OF PRESIDENT POLK-RETURN OF JOE MEEK WITH A LIVE GOVERNOR-LANE AND MEEK AT SAN FRANCISCO BAY-ARRIVAL IN OREGON-LANE'S PROCLAMATION-DECLINE OF MISSION INFLUENCE.
LET us now follow the two Oregon messengers to the national capital, and see what they did there. Thornton, in the United States sloop of war Ports- mouth, Captain Montgomery, arrived at Boston the 5th and at Washington the 11th of May.1 Though no one in Oregon but Abernethy and his counsellors knew exactly his errand, Thornton has represented it as most comprehensive, embracing a petition for no less than twenty-one favors from congress, among which was the old formula of the United States juris- diction. He also asked for grants of land; for con- firmation of the colonial land law and the other legislative acts and decisions of the courts, which had been asked for by the memorial of the legislature of 1845; for money to pay the debt of the provisional government; for troops to protect the settlements, and the immigrants on the road ; and for steam pilotage
1 Thornton's Or. and Cal., ii. 248. In another place Thornton says he arrived in Boston on the 2d. Or. Pioneer Assoc., Trans., 1874, 85.
(755)
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and light-houses, besides Indian agents, and the ex- tinction of the Indian title, which were by no means original requests,
Thornton says that he had an interview with the president on the 13th of May, having previously con- versed with Stephen A. Douglas, to whom he car- ried a lettter from Abernethy, and that soon after the visit to the executive he prepared a memorial to con- gress, which was presented by Benton to the senate. He does not say that he presented the memorial of the "free citizens of the United States resident in Ore- gon," which was placed in the mail-bag of the Whiton, and transferred with other mail matter to the Ports- mouth, but one of his own. Yet it was the petition of the citizens which was presented by Benton, and that too on the 8th of May, before Thornton, according to his own account, reached Washington from New York, where he tarried two or three days. The mail had reached Washington before him.2 If Thornton me- morialized congress subsequently, it does not appear upon the records. However, it is safe to presume that his letters from Abernethy secured him friendly recog- nition, and that but for the appearing of a second and duly authorized messenger of the colonial government, the special mission of Thornton, whatever it was, would have received some consideration.
It will be remembered that Meek did not leave Walla Walla until the end of the first week in March. He arrived in Washington the last week in May, having performed the journey across the continent in the stormy spring months in less than half the time occupied by Thornton in sailing around it. The party had found the snow on the Blue Mountains not so deep but that a trail could be broken by the men walk- ing and leading their horses and pack-mules. Beyond Fort Hall in the mountain passes travelling was more difficult, but they were assisted by some friendly natives and by a man famous among trappers, Peg-leg Smith,
2 Cong. Globe, 1847-8, 737.
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THORNTON'S EFFORTS.
whom they found in the Bear River country. At Fort Bridger they obtained fresh horses, and avoiding the hostile tribes between Independence Rock and Ash Hollow by travelling at night and lying perdu by day, supplying themselves afresh at forts Laramie and Rubideau, they succeeded in reaching the frontier just as the immigrants were crossing the Missouri River on the 4th of May.3
Here all his remaining men left him ; and after a brief visit to his relatives in Missouri, Meek hastened to Washington, being forced to make diplomacy supply the place of money 4 with steamboat captains and stage proprietors, and arriving at the capital in a costume sufficiently ragged and bizarre to command the atten- tion of men, small or great, anywhere in the world. Nor was the messenger at all indifferent to his exalted position and the mighty power of dress. The rags and dirt which covered him, and which might have been the envy of any Peter the Great, were worth more to him at this juncture than twelve suits of broadcloth. He would see the president at once, be- fore civilization should rob him of any particle of this prestige.5 It was better than a bear-fight, better than a Blackfoot's scalp, the glory of being forever known
3 Ebbert's Trapper's Life, MS., 24-31; Barnes' Or. and Cal., MS., 2.
4 The moneyless condition of both the Oregon messengers was about equal. Thornton states that at one time he had only a half-dime; but remembering to pray, that day his wants were supplied.
5 In Mrs Victor's River of the West, 439-62, is an amusing account of Meek's début in Washington. The book was in fact written by Mrs Victor at the suggestion of Meek, who furnished the incidents of his life, on which thread is strung a sketch of the American fur companies and of the colonial history of Oregon. All that part of the book relating to the movements of the fur companies and Meek's personal affairs was written from notes fur- nished by Meek; the remainder was gathered from various other sources. Of Meek's characteristics, to which I have referred in his biography, Mrs Victor seems to have had a ready appreciation, and to have presented him very nearly as he was-a fine man spoiled by being thrust out into an almost savage life in his boyhood.
Frances F. Victor, née Fuller, was a native of Rome, New York; her father was born in Connecticut, and her mother, Lucy A. Williams, of the Rhode Island family of that name. Her father removed to Wooster, Ohio, in her girlhood, where her education was completed. Most Ohio people of the period of 1851 will remember a volume of poems brought out by Frances and her sis- ter Metta Victoria, about this time, and while the authors were still in their teens. The sisters married brothers by the name of Victor. Frances, who
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as the roughest and most rolicksome plenipotentiary the great republican capital had ever seen.
It little concerned Meek that his relative was the president's secretary. Was he not a great American citizen, very free and quite unceremonious, and the representative of other great American citizens who looked out on a sea toward the sunset ? Two days had not passed before the apartments of the White House were as familiar to him as the cañons of Snake River. Yet he was not wholly void of compunctions.6
He began to feel in due time that after all in what- soever appertained to greatness, there should be applied the eternal fitness, and so he permitted a tailor to trust him for a suit of 'store clothes.' On the 29th of May President Polk laid before both houses a special message on Oregon affairs, in which he quoted some passages from the memorial of the colonial legislature, forwarded by Meek, touching the neglect of congress, and reminded members that in his annual messages of 1846 and 1847 he had urged the immediate organization of a territorial govern-
continued to write as inclination prompted, removed to the Pacific coast in 1863, with her husband, who belonged to the engineer corps of the United States navy, and who after resigning perished in the foundering of the steamer Pacific in November 1875. Mrs Victor displayed great industry during her residence in California and Oregon, in studying the natural and historical features of the coast. She wrote many magazine articles and letters of travel, and besides the River of the West, Hartford, 1870, published in San Francisco All Over Oregon and Washington, and a volume of western stories and poems called The New Penelope.
6 Mrs Victor gives Meek's own account of his feelings, which do him no discredit. 'He felt that the importance of his mission demanded some dig- nity of appearance-some conformity to established rules and precedents. But of the latter he knew absolutely nothing; and concerning the former he realized the absurdity of a dignitary clothed in blankets and wolf-skin cap. "Joe Meek I must remain," he said to himself as he stepped out of the train, and glanced along the platform at the crowd of porters with the names of their hotels on their hatbands. Learning that Coleman's was the most fash- ionable place, he decided that to Coleman's he would go, judging correctly that it was best to show no littleness of heart even in the matter of hotels. After an amusing scene at Coleman's, which at once introduced him to the cognizance of several senators, he repaired to the presidential mansion, where his cousin Knox Walker was private secretary, to whom also he made him- self known in his peculiar style of badinage. Walker insisted on his being seen by Mrs Polk as well as the president. Says Meek: "When I heard the silks rustling in the passage, I felt more frightened than if a hundred Blackfeet had whooped in my ear. A mist came over my eyes, and when Mrs Polk spoke to me I couldn't think of anything to say in return."'
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THE SLAVERY QUESTION
ment. The colony on the Pacific seaboard were now as then in need of federal aid, and were justly entitled to it.7 Again he called attention to the want of a territorial organization, recommending that a regi- ment of mounted men be raised for the relief of Ore- gon, that Indian agents be appointed to reside among the different tribes, and an appropriation made to en- able them to treat for the restoration and preservation of peace. This he said should be done in time to allow troops to reach the territory that year.
Before entering upon congressional proceedings following Meek's arrival, I shall refer briefly to what had been done since the treaty of 1846, settling the boundary question. It was not because congress had been unmindful of Oregon that the colonists had been compelled to wait so long for the jurisdiction of the United States. The Oregon boundary was hardly determined before the even more momentous ques- tion was asked, How much, if any, of this new domain shall be slave territory? In these days no topic so engendered bitter contest on the floor of con- gress as that of slavery. It was enough to secure its failure in the senate that Douglas' bill8 for establish- ing a territorial government in Oregon, of which men- tion has already been made as having passed the lower
7 Cong. Globe, 1847-8, 788-9; S. F. Californian, May 3, 17, 1848; Home Missionary, 22, 63; Amer. Quart. Reg., i. 541-2.
8 Cong. Globe, 1845-6, 24. Thornton has audaciously claimed to have been the author of this bill which was before congress with hardly any alteration from Dec. 1846 until its passage, with a few additions in Aug. 1848. He particularly alleges that he "'incorporated a provision prohibiting slavery in Oregon. This I took,' he says, "from the ordinance of 1787; and I was induced to make it a part of the bill, not only because of my own convictions on the subject of human rights, but also for the reason that the people of Oregon had, under the provisional government, sternly pronounced a rigid interdiction of slavery.' Or. Pioneer. Assoc., Trans., 1874, 87. Benton said in the senate Dec. 8, 1845, that the colonists had presented their form of government, 'subject to the ratification of the United States government,' and it was well understood by the friends of Oregon, and its enemies also for that matter, that the ordinance of 1787 was the base on which the structure of a government for that territory was to be erected, Therefore for Thorn- ton to claim that he framed this part of Douglas' bill, or had anything to do with the framing of it, is brazen assumption. But this is not all. He declares that he ' felt a vehement desire to so multiply, in Oregon, the springs of knowl- edge,' that he 'framed the 20th section of the act of congress of August 14,
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house, January 16, 1847, incorporated the ordinance of 1787, on which were founded the organic laws of the provisional government of Oregon according to the expressed desire of the colonial legislature of 1845,
1848.' This section is numbered in Douglas' bill section 18, and reads: 'That when the lands in said territory shall be surveyed under the direction of the government of the United States, preparatory to bringing the same into market, sections numbered 16 and 36 in each township in said territory shall be, and the same is hereby, reserved for the purposes of being applied to schools in said territory, and in the states and territories to be erected out of the same.' Or. Gen. Laws, 1843-72, 63-5.
Thornton goes on to say that the consideration which decided him 'to make the 20th section a part of the territorial bill, rather than of the land bill, to which it more appropriately belonged, ' was the same which governed him in framing sec. 17, relating to the transfer of civil and criminal suits from the courts of the provisional government to those established under the territorial government, namely, the best interests of the people. One is yet more astonished at Judge Thornton's audacity in view of the facts being open to any one taking the trouble to look into the proceedings of congress from 1845 to 1848, or to a file of the Oregon Spectator for 1847, where in the issue dated Sept. 16th is Douglas' bill of Dec. 1846, as it passed the house, and was at first amended by the senate, containing not only the ordinance of 1787, and the section granting the 16th and 36th sections for school purposes, but the section relating to the transfer of the cases already in the Oregon courts to the district courts of the United States; as well as a provision for having all penalties forfeitures, actions, and causes of action recovered under the new organization in the same manner they would have been under the old; the only difference between this section of the act as it finally passed and the first draught of the bill, being that in the former it is numbered 15, instead of 17; and that two provisos were added to this section before the bill became a law, to guard the constitu- tionality of the penalties and forfeitures, and to prevent abuses of the inter- pretation of the old laws. The change in the numbers was effected by the introduction, during a course of amendments, of several new sections, to the disarrangement of the former numbering. There is nothing in the bill of which Thornton particularly claims authorship that was not in the original bill of 1846. Yet he talks about his efforts to neutralize the hostility to this measure, when no opposition in congress ever appeared to granting this land. In his Autobiography, MS., 45, he says, in reference to the school-land sec- tion, 'I will frankly admit that when to this section (the 16th) of the public lands, the 36th was added by the passage of the bill, the thought that prov- idence had made me the instrument by which so great a boon was bestowed upon posterity, filled my heart with emotions as pure and deep as can be experienced by man;' after which he talks about being recognized as a bene- factor of his race when his toils and responsibilities shall be over. See Or. Pioneer Assoc., Trans., 1874, 95. I have endeavored to get the true and full history of the first grant by congress of the 36th section of the public lands for school purposes. After going over the congressional records and finding that so far as I could discover, Oregon was the first recipient of this bounty, I wrote to the commissioner of the United States land-office at Washington to learn if possible more about the matter; but found from his reply that he could learn from me, inasmuch as he wrote that the 'act to establish the ter- ritorial government of Minnesota ' was the first instance of the grant of the 36th in addition to the 16th section for school purposes, of date March 3, 1849, 6 months after the passage of the Oregon bill, containing the grant of these two sections. I therefore came to the conclusion that the reiterated petitions of the early colonists, notably of the Methodist missionaries and Dr White, to congress, the president, and the friends of Oregon, to remember
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BILLS BEFORE CONGRESS.
as shown by the resolutions attached to the memorial of that body,? to which Benton drew attention Decem- ber 8, 1845.
When the Oregon messenger arrived he found two bills before congress for the establishment of Oregon Territory. Douglas, who had stepped across from the house of representatives to the senate-chamber, and was chairman of the committee on territories, intro- duced, January 10, 1848, a bill which in place of the section rejected by the senate at the previous session contained one sanctioning the colonial laws of Oregon, which being twice read was referred back to the com- mittee, and reported February 7th without amend- ments, to go through the ordeal of southern opposition when it came to debate. It was not until the 20th of April that Douglas was able to obtain the consent of the senate to make bills relating to territories the special order for the 26th; and when that day came round, the California claims and the $3,000,000 appro- priation being under discussion, the Oregon bill was postponed, so that nothing had been done in the senate for Oregon when on the 8th of May the citizens' me- morial was received, nor yet when on the 29th the legislative petition was presented, together with the special message of the president, and when Washington was full of rumors concerning the affairs of Oregon, emphasized by the presence of two men from that distant territory with requests from individuals and the colonial government for congressional action.
On the 31st, Bright of Indiana, in the absence of Douglas, brought up the Oregon bill, when Benton moved an amendment authorizing the president to
their efforts in behalf of the American title, by liberal grants of land for educational purposes, had first led to this generous provision as made by the Oregon bill of 1846. The precedent once established, however, the other ter- ritories of an even or subsequent date came into the same rich inheritance, due probably to the influence of far-off Oregon on national legislation, but never in any sense due to the influence or the care for posterity due to J. Q. Thornton as alleged. Acts 2dl Sess. 36th Cong., 120. I shall have occasion in another place to refer to similar unfounded pretensions.
9 See chapter XVIII. on the amendment of the organic laws.
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raise a regiment of volunteers in the territory to serve for twenty months, which was agreed to. This amendment was followed by one by Hale of New Hampshire, who moved that the 12th section of the bill of the last session, touching the ordinance of 1787, should be inserted in the place of its substitute in the present bill; but as the subject was one of importance to the whole country, desired the debate on it post- poned until the 12th of June.
Bright opposed the amendment of Hale, on the ground that it would raise discussion and retard the passage of the bill, whereas it was of the utmost im- portance that it should be pressed to an immediate vote. Niles of Connecticut, on the other hand, ob- jected to the unusual urgency displayed by the western senators, and proposed to make Benton's amendment a separate bill and pass it immediately, while the re- mainder of the territorial bill should take time for examination. Hannegan of Indiana, however, ex- pressed a determination to vote against the amendment of Benton. The whole of Oregon, he said, lay within the boundary from which slavery was excluded by the Missouri compromise; which statement being challenged, he declared that no sane man believed that slavery would ever exist in Oregon, and hoped the bill would be passed without delay. "He appealed to every man not to turn a deaf ear to the cries of our citizens in Oregon, surrounded by hostile Indians, and not to be turned from it by this wicked and useless question being agitated."
Benton followed with an eloquent appeal, saying that the Oregon settlers had deserved well of congress for their enterprise, and now the neglect of govern- ment had encouraged the murderous outrages which compelled the settlers to send an express encounter- ing the hardships and dangers of a winter journey across the mountains and plains to ask for the inter- position of an ungrateful government. He closed by calling on senators of every variety of opinion to
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GENERAL DISCUSSION.
unite in passing the bill and preventing any further Indian massacres.
Then Westcott of Florida took occasion to resent an insinuation against the judiciary committee, that it had retarded the passage of the bill10 by thrusting on the senate the question of free territory. "It was not," he said, "thrust on the senate by that committee, but by the house bill (of 1847); and it was not then or now thrust on the senate by any senator from the south. It was not thrust upon them by the com- mittee on territories. The amendment was entirely unnecessary, as it is already in the bill under consider- ation. The laws of Oregon already inhibit slavery. These laws were submitted to the judiciary committee last session, and will be found among the documents. If the bill should pass as it has been reported, it will contain a perfect inhibition of slavery." 11 In conclu- sion he gave notice that he would move to amend the bill by substituting the bill of the previous session as amended by the senate. Davis of Mississippi declared that no one could more earnestly desire that Oregon might have a territorial government than himself, but he wanted time for consideration. The laws of Iowa,12 he declared, were not adapted to Oregon, which required different ordinances. He would recom- mend the recommitment of the bill to the judiciary committee, with instructions to report immediately.
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