USA > Washington > History of Washington; the rise and progress of an American state, Vol. IV > Part 27
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Mr. Bagley was for many years much criticised for selling the university lands, and using the money received from them to build temporary buildings, and to pay the current expenses of the institution. Committees from the legislature were sent to make investigations. Wise people said that the lands should have been reserved until the territory or state became more thickly settled, when they would be more valuable. Similarly it might have been contended that they should have been held until all the timber in the state had been sawed and sent to market, when they would bring almost any price that could be asked. Had such a policy been pursued the timber might have burned before it was sold, and the university left with nothing. The fact is there was most urgent need to get the institution started at the earliest moment. Had it not been started when it was a generation might have grown up with very slender advan- tages for education, and the territory would have lost more than the lands would ever be worth. Our common school system in 1860 was very far from being what it is today. A generous government did not then assign two sections of land in every township to the support of schools, nor would such a thing as the appropriation of 100,000 acres each for a scientific school, and a normal school, 90,000 acres for an agricultural college, and seventy-two sections for a university,
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as was done by the enabling act, have been thought of. Ten years earlier members of Congress were doubting whether they had not been too generous in giving to every settler who would go with his family 2,000 miles through a wilderness to get it, 640 acres if he would reside upon it for four years. The public lands were supposed to be the nations most valuable heritage, and the economists of that day feared that it would never be possible to pay a national debt of $65,000,000 and protect the national honor, unless all government land was sold to the highest bidder.
By the time the university lands were selected and ready for sale a new difficulty had appeared, and it caused Mr. Bagley a great deal of trouble. The money principally used on the coast was gold and silver, but the legal tender notes issued by the government during the war were obtainable, and some purchasers were shrewd enough to offer them in payment. As they were legal tender Mr. Bagley was com- pelled to receive them at their face value, although they were constantly depreciating. His accounts easily got into con- fusion in this way. Money received at 100 cents on the dollar often did not pass current at 75 or even 50.
Mr. Bagley's accounts rendered in 1862 were made the subject of considerable controversy during several years, and finally the legislature in 1876 appointed a committee to give them a thorough examination. This committee went carefully over the books, and made a report vindicating Mr. Bagley's management of affairs, and recommending that he be paid out of the territorial treasury for two years' service, for which he had received no compensation, in addi- tion to a balance of $814.76 found to be his due.
If there was ever any occasion for regret because the uni- versity lands were sold so early, and at such a low price, it
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has long since passed away. The ten acres originally donated as a site for it have vastly increased in value during recent years, and will some day make the institution one of the most richly endowed in the country. It already enjoys a consider- able income from ground rents, derived from this property. Buildings of modern construction, ten and twelve stories in height, have been built on it, and others are building. The ground on which they stand has been leased to the builders, at a varying rental to be fixed by appraisement at stated periods, and at the expiration of the leases the buildings become the property of the university. If the city and coun- try continue to prosper, as they have prospered during recent years, as it seems probable they will, any estimate of the value of this property that might seem ridiculously high at the present time, is likely to be ridiculously low in fifty years hence.
Whitman College at Walla Walla has had a curious and interesting history. It was founded by Rev. Cushing Eells in 1859, in the hope that it would become a fitting monument to the name and fame of his friend and associate, and his heroic wife. The hope has already been fully realized, for the institution is one of the most notable in the Pacific Northwest.
After Eells and Walker were forced to leave Eastern Wash- ington, both went to the Willamette Valley, where they engaged in teaching as well as church work for several years. But Eells nourished a longing to return to the scene of his early labors, to renew his missionary work there and :o establish a school. Soon after the country was declared open to settlement, following Wright's successful campaign, he made the journey up the Columbia to Waiilatpu on horse- back. A. B. Roberts, who had been in Kelly's fight with
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the Indians on the Walla Walla, accompanied him, or fell in with him on the way, and to him as they followed the dusty way along the river bank, or sat together about their camp fire in the evening, Eells imparted his hopes and plans. He aspired to found a school that would sometime grow to be a great institution of learning. It would bear the name of his murdered friends, and perpetuate the memory of their virtues, their labors, and their heroic devotion to the work they had undertaken.
The enterprise seemed at that time to have but little pros- pect of success. There were no white people in that region, or within several hundred miles of it in every direction, except a few of the Hudson's Bay people. The Indians, he well knew, would furnish but little hopeful material for educa- tional purposes. It did not seem probable that the country would soon be settled. He had tried and failed to get help for the enterprise from the missionary board and friends in the east. Nevertheless this optimistic old man was resolved to do what he could do alone to found a school, and trust in God to provide it with pupils.
Arrived in the valley he paid a visit to the unmarked grave in which the victims of the massacre rested, and there, as he afterward said, he believed that the power of the Highest came upon him, and he was more resolved than he ever had been, to go on with the work. During the winter of 1859-60, with the help of Hon. J. C. Smith, he secured a charter for Whitman Seminary, from the territorial legislature. In the spring he borrowed a yoke of oxen, and with his own horses and wagon, removed with his family to Walla Walla, where they arrived March 26th. Meantime he had offered the American Board of Commissioners for foreign missions, a thousand dollars for the section of land which it had required
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under the Donation Act because Whitman had once lived on it.
During that year the gold mines in Idaho were discovered, and the rush of gold hunters through the valley began. Walla Walla was founded and soon became a thriving town, making the prospect for his school quite hopeful. In December of that year the first meeting of the trustees of Whitman Semi- nary was held, and Mr. Eells was chosen president of the board, a position he held until the close of his long and useful life.
Originally the plan had been to build the seminary on the site of Whitman's Station, but this in time was abandoned, as it was evidently more desirable to establish it at Walla Walla. It was not until November 1864, five years after the charter was granted, that some actual progress was made toward establishing and opening the school. Dr. Dorsey S. Baker donated a site consisting of four acres, which he afterwards increased to something more than six acres, in the immediate vicinity of the town, and a building forty-six feet long by twenty feet wide, and two stories high was erected during the following summer. It was dedicated and opened to students on Saturday, October 13, 1865. School was opened on October 15th, with Rev. P. B. Cham- berlain as principal and Misses M. A. Hodgdon and E. W. Sylvester as assistants. In March Chamberlain resigned, and there being no one else to carry on the work, Mr. Eells assumed it himself and conducted it until June 1869.
In the meantime, in June 1867, he had been elected superin- tendent of schools for Walla Walla County, which then em- braced an area nearly as large as Massachusetts. With his accustomed devotion to duty he visited every school in this wide area, though he did not altogether neglect his duties
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as principal of the seminary. "It was a severe and strength- taxing toil for him," says his son and biographer, "to board at home six miles distant, or to board himself at the seminary, teach school five days in the week, spend his Saturdays largely in attending to the county school business, and his vacations in visiting schools." Yet he did the latter so faithfully that the county commissioners willingly raised his salary from $25 a year, the pay of his predecessor, to $500 per year, which was the highest legal limit."
It was difficult from the first to obtain money to support the school even in a most economical way. It was burdened with debt at the beginning. The cost of the buildings had exceeded expectations, and some of the subscriptions had not been paid. To discharge this debt Mr. Eells gave the seminary one half of the Whitman Mission claim, and the trustees tried to sell it for $2,000 but did not succeed. As money could be borrowed only at the rate of from one to two per cent. a month, it was evident that it must be secured from some other source, or the institution would be ruined. Accordingly Mr. Eells went to work to pay the debt himself. He had his farm, some stock and his salary as school superin- tendent, and by selling what he could spare he applied the proceeds to pay interest and gradually lessen the principal. Mrs. Eells, although then more than fifty-seven years of age, had made four hundred pounds of butter during the summer, which was sold and the proceeds applied to the same use.
When Mr. Eells had obtained all the outstanding notes, which, with accumulated interest amounted to $2,900 he offered to surrender them to the trustees in exchange for the half section of land which he had given the seminary, and which they had been unable to sell for $2,000. This offer
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was accepted, and as some slighting remarks were made about this transaction, he resolved to answer them, if the opportunity should ever occur, by giving a fair share of the profit, if any thould ever be made out of it, to the seminary, and this resolution he carried out in 1872, when he sold the land for $8,000 of which he gave $1,000 to the seminary and another thousand to the American Education Society.
For a number of years the institution had a very precarious existence. Sometimes there was no school held in the build- ding, because the trustees could not raise money to pay teachers. Sometimes teachers of standing were allowed to use the building for a school conducted at their own risk.
From 1882 to 1891 Dr. A. J. Anderson was president, and during his administration some money was raised in the east, but not enough to entirely relieve the seminary from its em- barrassment. It was not until Mr. Eells himself went to the aid of those who were soliciting for it, that it finally began to be established on a firm financial basis.
Largely through the efforts of Mr. Eells the American College and Education Society of Boston was induced to place Whitman College on its list of institutions to be helped, and it has already made several contributions to its support. Dr. D. K. Pearson of Chicago, has also given it $150,000 upon conditions which have secured for it considerable assistance from other sources. Mrs. Frederick Billings, widow of one of the former presidents of the Northern Pacific Railroad, has built a boys' dormitory, known as Billings' Hall, and a girls' dormitory has been built by Dr. Pearson. Residents in Walla Walla are proud of the institution and have contributed liberally to its endowments.
The college confers four degrees: Bachelor of Arts, Bach- elor of Science, Bachelor of Letters, and Bachelor of Music.
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Its graduates are accepted as candidates for the masters degree in one year by several American universities.
At the close of the territorial period there were a number of thriving schools and colleges in Washington, some of which were beginning to be well known all along the Coast. In his final report Governor Moore mentioned the following: The Annie Wright Seminary at Tacoma, which had been liberally endowed by Mr. C. B. Wright, who was for many years president of the Tacoma Land Company. It was
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Puget Sound Academy, at Coupville, in Island County, was a Congregational school, and growing into popularity in the lower part of the Sound district.
The Northwest Normal School at Lynden was particu- larly designed for the education of teachers.
The Olympia Collegiate Institute was in a prosperous condition, at the capital. It was under the charge of the Methodist Episcopal Conference of Puget Sound.
The Chehalis Valley Academy was a Presbyterian school, at Montesano, in Chehalis County.
Holy Angels College, at Vancouver, was a Catholic school for boys, and one of the oldest institutions in the North- west.
Waitsburgh Academy was a thriving school at Waits- burgh.
Washington Academy, at Huntsville, was under the aus- pices of the United Brethren.
Spokane College, at Spokane Falls, was a Methodist Episcopal school.
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There was at Walla Walla a thriving business school.
The Sisters of the Catholic orders, had prosperous schools at Olympia, Vancouver, Seattle, Walla Walla, Yakima, and Spokane.
The convent of the Sisters of Providence, at Vancouver, was in 1889 probably the largest school building in Wash- ington. It was a boarding and day school for girls.
CHAPTER LX. STATEHOOD.
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A TIME came at last when Congress could no longer postpone the demand of the far away territory for full membership in the family of States. It's call for recognition, so feeble at first that it was scarcely heard across the broad continent until Mr. Madison's time, had grown steadily louder and more persistent. It had been easy to neglect, and even ignore it in the time of Floyd and Bayles, when it only asked to be recognized as a part of the sole property of the United States, and not a thing jointly owned with Great Britain; it had been more difficult in Lynn and Benton's time, and when the missionaries with their brides, and the hardy settlers from Illinois, Iowa, Missouri, Kentucky and other border states, had taken their wives and their little ones across two thousand miles of treeless waste and pathless wilderness, to assert the nation's rights in the very presence of a foreign autocrat, who had so easily kept Wyeth and Bonneville and their armed supporters at bay, our senators and representatives in the cushioned luxury of the National Capital, gathered courage to give them their approval.
When the stout-hearted settlers had organized a govern- ment of their own, so wisely planned as to command the approval of the authorities in Washington, and at the same time to supplant and include the other government which had long controlled under authority from an adverse foreign power, and a new and even bolder company of pioneers had pushed their way northward from the Columbia, and fixed their residence firmly on the shores of Puget Sound, it was easier than it had been before for the National Administra- tion to assert, and Congress to approve, what both had here- tofore only claimed in language scrupulously diplomatic or parliamentary in form, that the 49th parallel was, and of
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right ought to be the permanent boundary. With this long disputed matter finally and forever settled, the organization of a territorial government naturally followed, and a few years later the creation of a second, and then a third territory, out of what was once the Columbia River and later the Oregon country, was easily arranged.
But there matters rested again. The Civil War recon- struction, the resumption of specie payments, and trans- continental railroad building absorbed public attention. The west advanced steadily and even rapidly. Washington, its richest and remotest part, earliest began to claim, and then to urgently demand recognition of its right to statehood. Its legislators planned and worked according to the light that was in them. Its governors-Ferry among the first-urged the matter in their annual reports to the Interior Department, in their correspondence and in their messages. But the East was conservative and even incredulous. As in the time of Bates and Mitchell and McDuffie it seemed scarcely practicable to extend the borders of the Union so far. It seemed scarcely possible, no doubt, that the new region, so long known yet so little known to many, could deserve what it so persistently asked. Could it be that a sufficient number of people to form a state, had gone two thousand miles to find new homes, when Kansas, Iowa and Minnesota were scarcely more than safely in the Union ? How could it be that this new territory had grown so rapidly, when Ohio and Indiana and Illinois had been so much more deliberate and dignified in their progress ?
But Washington was, at length, no longer alone in demand- ing statehood. Idaho formed wholly, and Montana formed partly out of the Oregon country, and partly out of the Louisiana purchase, and Dakota, large enough for two
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states, were likewise demanding admission, and Congress could defer their claims no longer. An enabling act authoriz- ing five new states to be formed along the Northern border, between Minnesota and the Pacific, was passed by the house and Senate, and became law in February 1889. It was a liberal act, and showed that a mighty change had taken place since Linn's time, in the opinion both of the people and their representatives, in regard to what the government might do for its people. In 1850 the donation law had been looked upon as an experiment of such extreme liberality, that its operations had been limited to three years, and then almost grudgingly extended to five. But now a settler who was American born, or who had become a naturalized citizen, might take a homestead wherever he could find an unoccu- pied or unreserved part of the public domain. In 1853 Con- gress felt that it had done a generous thing in giving two whole townships of wild land to found a territorial University in Washington, but this enabling act gave the new state two sections, in place of one in every township for public school purposes; 50 sections for public buildings; 90,000 acres for an Agricultural College and 100,000 acres for a Scientific School; besides liberal endowments in lands for Manual Schools and other institutions.
The act provided that the Constitution should be formed by a convention composed of delegates to be chosen by the people, and these were elected in June, and assembled at Olympia on July 4, 1889. They were a thoroughly repre- sentative body of men. There was not a developed industry in the territory, or an interest of any sort, without some one to speak for it, in case there should be need, or see to it that its requirements were not overlooked. There were men who had come early to the territory, like R. S. Moore of
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Steilacoom, who had helped to cut the road through the Nachess Pass in 1853, and had afterwards been a lieutenant during the Indian war. There also was Edward Eldridge, one of the earliest settlers in Whatcom County, who had been speaker in the territorial House of Representatives in 1866, and afterwards had helped to make the Walla Walla Consti- tution in 1878. Among others who had seen service in the territorial legislatures of Washington or Oregon were John M. Reed of Whitman, Dr. S. H. Manly and Dr. J. C. Kellogg of Whidby Island, George H. Stevenson of Skamania, who had served in the legislature of the territory, and would also be a member of the first legislature of the State. Among the farmer members were J. P. T. McCroskey of Colfax, ambitious to be the best farmer in the state, and who was to serve several terms in the legislature; Dr. N. G. Blalock of Walla Walla, who had done and was doing more than any other one man to exploit the wheat and fruit growing possibilities of Eastern Washington; D. Buchanan, sturdy old Scotchman and good farmer and business man from Ritzville; O. H. Joy of Boisfort, farmer and mill owner; R. Jeffs, hop grower from King, and Louis Neace of Walla Walla. Frank M. Dallam, who had established the Review in Spokane, and James Powers of La Conner, represented the printing industry, while S. A. Dickey of Kitsap and H. M. Lillis of Pierce were school teachers. Lewis Sohns of Vancouver, widely known and universally respected in the territory, was a manufac- turer and banker at Vancouver, and A. J. West of Chehalis, and C. H. Miller of Walla Walla were also engaged in manufacturing.
Of all the professions and occupations the doctors and lawyers were most numerously represented. Among the
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former not already mentioned was Dr. T. T. Minor of King, who was one of the most active workers in the Convention. He had long been a leading spirit in all public undertakings in Seattle, and was equally interested in the advancement of the state. No member of the Convention excelled him, in patient attention to the business in hand, and few showed a keener or clearer comprehension of what a Constitution should contain. His untimely death, which occurred only a few weeks after the Convention had completed its work, was universally regretted.
Among the lawyers were many who held, and deserved to hold, first places at the bar. Of these George Turner of Spokane had been a justice of the Supreme Court of the territory, and later would be Senator; later still he would, with others, be charged with the important duty of fixing the Alaska boundary, a thing of international interest and consequence. R. O. Dunbar of Klikitat, would be a mem- ber of the first Supreme Court of the new state, and would long hold a place on that bench. Theodore L. Stiles, of Pierce, and John P. Hoyt, of King, were also to serve as members of the Court for a single term. S. G. Cosgrove, of Garfield, already ambitious to be governor, would win that honor in time but not live to enjoy it. D. J. Crowley, gentlest, wisest and best of men, and a most useful member of the Convention, venerable in appearance though still young, would also die before his time, and be generally regretted. J. J. Browne of Spokane, lawyer and business man, M. M. Godman of Columbia, John R. Kinnear of King, Hiram E. Allen of Spokane, J. J. Weisenberger of Whatcom, E. H. Sullivan of Colfax and P. C. Sullivan of Pierce, the youngest member of this Convention, Colonel W. F. Prosser of Yakima, would all take an active part in the debates and deliberations.
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The members of the Convention were sworn in by C. H. Hanford, the last Chief Justice of the territory, who would soon be elevated to the federal bench, on the day appointed for their assembly, and immediately organized by selecting Judge John P. Hoyt as Chairman. Committees were selected in due course, the work of the Convention distributed among them, and the Convention proceeded to the work in hand.
Although a full stenographic report of the Convention's proceedings was made from day to day, it has never been printed. Even its journal has not been published. Liberal appropriations for printing have been made by every legis- lature, but this record, which is a thing of ever increasing value and interest, has not been put in enduring form. The reporters' notes have not been transcribed, and it is reported that some part of them no longer exist. If this be true it is to be regretted, and it is to be hoped that the next legisla- ture will take measures not only to preserve what remains of them, but to put them where the people, or those who may have use for them, may have easy access to them.
Before the delegates were ready to begin their work a large number of petitions, memorials and communications of various sorts, containing suggestions as to what the Con- stitution should and should not provide for, had reached the Capital and were awaiting attention. Some of these proposed universal suffrage; some that the manufacture, sale and use of ardent spirits in every form should be prohibited, or regulated by stringent local option laws; some insisted that corporations should be so limited in their powers and opera- tions that they never could be dangerous, or even useful. Some advanced theories for a more or less automatic govern- ment of cities, by which the rights of taxpayers would be invariably safeguarded and protected, without much effort
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