A little more than a month after the battle of San Jacinto, the legislature of Connecticut set the ball in motion for the recognition of the independence of Texas by the Government of the United States. On May 27th, 1836, the two Houses of that body passed a resolution instructing the Senators, and requesting the Representatives, in Congress from Connecticut "to use their best endeavors to procure the acknowledgment, on the part of the United States, of the independence of Texas." Evidently the Yankee Commonwealth considered itself, in an especial degree, the motherland of the new state. The founder of the colony, which had now become an independent state, was one of its children, and it hastened to anticipate Virginia, the birthplace of Houston, in owning its offspring. A careful perusal of the whole of this Connecticut document will certainly leave the impression upon the mind of the impartial reader, at this day, that the people of the North then considered the Texan revolution to have been provoked by Mexican misrule and barbarism, and to have been fully justified in political ethics as well as by practical success.
On June 13th, Senator Niles, of Connecticut, presented the Connecticut memorial to the Senate, and it was immediately referred to the committee on Foreign Relations. On the 18th, Mr. Clay, the chairman of the committee, reported a resolution: "That the independence of Texas ought to be acknowledged by the United States whenever satisfactory information shall be received that it has, in successful operation, a civil government capable of performing the duties and fulfilling the obligations of an independent Power." The resolution was adopted by the Senate, on July 1st, without a dissenting voice.
During the course of the debate upon it, Mr. Calhounfrankly told the Senate that he regarded the great importance of the recognition of the independence of Texas to consist in the fact that it prepared the way for the speedy admission of Texas into the Union, which would be a necessity to the proper balance of power in the Union between the slaveholding and the non-slaveholding Commonwealths, upon which the preservation of the Union and the perpetuation of its institutions rested. After such a statement it is difficult to see how anybody could speak of the annexation of Texas being a slaveholders' secret intrigue. Mr. Calhoun, the great leader of the slaveholders, the director of their policy, here at the very outset openly proclaimed their purpose. The fact is that, at the time of the Texan declaration of independence, almost everybody would have favored the annexation of Texas to the United States, out of race sympathy with the Texans and desire for territorial extension, except for the international complications with Mexico, which must inevitably result. It was the struggle over the Abolition petitions in 1836, 1837, and 1838 which turned the thoughts of men upon the internal questions involved in the movement, and caused the North generally to reconsider its attitude upon the question.
On July 4th, 1836, the House of Representatives passed a resolution of the same tenor, and expressed in nearly the same words, as the Senate resolution of July 1st. It seems to have been called forth by memorials from citizens of Ohio and Pennsylvania.
Assured thus of the feeling of Congress, the President sent an agent, Mr. Henry M. Morfit, to Texas during the summer of 1836, in order to procure exact information of the state of affairs there. Mr. Morfit wrote to the Secretary of State, Mr. Forsyth, that theconstitution of March 17th was soon to be put into operation; that General Houston had been elected President; that the constitution was fashioned after that of the United States; that the desire for annexation to the United States was universal; that the boundaries asserted by the new state were the Rio Grande del Norte on the south and southwest, the longitude from the source of the Rio Grande to the boundary of the United States on the west, the southern boundary of the United States on the north and northeast, and the Gulf of Mexico on the east; that the population amounted to about sixty-five thousand souls, of whom about fifty thousand were Anglo-Americans; that the standing army numbered about twenty-two hundred men, and could be increased to seven or eight thousand in an emergency; that the navy consisted of four vessels, carrying twenty-nine guns; that the funds of the State consisted of from fifty to one hundred millions of acres of public lands, worth, at least, ten millions of dollars, and that contributions were flowing in from private individuals in the United States; that the debt was about twelve hundred and fifty thousand dollars; that the supplies for the winter campaign were already provided; and that there was not a Mexican soldier north of the Rio Grande, although there were rumors that the Mexican government was making preparations for a new invasion in the winter, which were not, however, credited by the Texans.
This was certainly a good showing for Texas. If with an army of seven hundred men, under a provisory government, the Texans drove the Mexicans out of Texas, they could, under well established government, and with an army ten times as large, most surely keep them out. It must also be remembered that Santa Anna was still a prisoner in their hands. Mr. Morfit,however, expressed the belief that most of the men and money for the army came from the United States, and, therefore, advised delay in assuming a definite attitude toward the new state.
President Jackson transmitted this information to Congress, in his message of December 21st, 1836, and recommended delay in recognizing the independence of Texas. On January 11th, 1837, however, Senator Walker, of Mississippi, offered a resolution in the Senate to the effect that it would be expedient and proper to recognize the independence of Texas, and stated that he had information that the projected invasion of Texas by a new Mexican army, the rumors of which were reported by Mr. Morfit, had most probably been abandoned.
Before the resolution offered by Mr. Walker was taken up for discussion, a message from the President was communicated to Congress recommending the passage of an act, authorizing the President to make reprisals upon Mexico, in case Mexico should refuse another demand made upon her for an amicable adjustment of the matters in controversy between her and the United States. The citizens and the Government of the United States had many claims against Mexico and the Mexicans for depredating the commerce, seizing the seamen, and insulting the flag of the United States, and the demands for the satisfaction of these claims had been almost uniformly disregarded. The relations between the two Governments were already greatly strained on this account, and when, in the autumn of 1836, President Jackson authorized General Gaines to advance his troops into northwestern Texas, if he should deem it necessary for the protection of the frontiers of the United States against the Indians in Texas, who, on account of theWar between Mexico and Texas, had been thrown into a great state of excitement and unrest, the Mexican Minister, Señor Gorastiza, demanded his passports, issued a sort of manifesto to the people of the United States, and left Washington.
It was hardly to be expected that President Jackson would quietly brook such defiance from a half civilized state and its agents. He immediately caused Mr. Ellis, the Chargé d'Affaires of the Government at the Mexican capital, to make a final demand on the Mexican government. Mr. Ellis made his demand in writing, on September 26th. After much delay the Mexican Minister of Foreign Affairs replied, admitting the justice of some of the claims, and requiring more information about others, but offering no reparation at all for insults to the flag and to the consular officers of the United States. The President's patience was exhausted, and he sent the message of February 6th, 1837, to Congress, asking for authority to make a final demand from the decks of a war-ship.
Congress was not, however, willing to invest the President with the contingent power to make offensive war. The recommendation of the President in the case had, nevertheless, considerable influence in determining the minds of the Senators in regard to the question of recognizing the independence of Texas. On March 1st, 1837, the Senate adopted Mr. Walker's resolution. On the previous day the House of Representatives had voted to insert in the civil and diplomatic appropriation bill an item for the expenses of a diplomatic agent to Texas, whenever the President should receive satisfactory evidence that Texas was an independent Power and should consider it expedient to appoint such a minister. President Jackson had invited this expression of theviews of Congress in his message of the previous December, in which he expressed the view that Congress ought to determine the expediency of recognizing the independence of Texas, and, although the resolutions of the two Houses of February 28th and March 1st, 1837, did not formally assume to recognize that independence, the President evidently attributed to them some virtue, since he soon opened diplomatic intercourse with the Texan agent at Washington. The resolutions of the two Houses of Congress and this act of the President, taken together, were regarded by the people of the United States and by foreign Powers as a recognition of Texan independence.
It was clear to all thinking minds that the next step after independence would be annexation to the United States. There is little question that Texas was big enough and strong enough to stand alone against Mexico, certainly with the aid which she was sure to receive from without and with the growth which she was destined to enjoy; but there was no natural boundary between the United States and Texas, and the inhabitants of Texas were chiefly Anglo-Americans. The natural boundary of the United States on the southwest is the desert between the Nueces and the Rio Grande, and the territorial extension of the United States to that limit was simply the fulfilment of the moral order of the world, which tends to make the lines of states correspond with the lines of physical geography and of ethnical differences. Except for the connection of the question of slavery extension with that of territorial extension after 1836, the question of the annexation of Texas would have been generally viewed in this natural and national light. That connection, however, made the North generally assume the attitudeof opposition to annexation, while it greatly excited the desires of the South in favor of it.
On his way homeward from the Congress which voted in favor of annexation, Mr. Webster made a great speech in New York, in which he declared himself opposed to annexation on the ground that it would extend slavery. Mr. Calhoun had, nearly a year before, as we have seen, declared himself in favor of it for the same reason. After these two declarations, from such leaders, the eyes of the people were open to every feature of the question, and it could not have been any longer a matter of intrigue.
In August, 1837, the Texan agent at Washington, General Hunt, proposed to President Van Buren the annexation of Texas to the United States. The President promptly and firmly declined, and the matter rested during the remainder of his Administration.
The sudden and unexpected accession of Vice-President Tyler to the presidency, in 1841, was the event which opened the way for the commencement of negotiations for annexation. The new President was known to be favorable to the project.
Meanwhile the diplomatic relations between the United States and Mexico, so suddenly broken off in the latter part of President Jackson's Administration, had been renewed in the early part of President Van Buren's Administration, and, after considerable negotiation in regard to the claims against Mexico, a convention between the two Powers had been arranged, and, on April 8th, 1840, proclaimed by the President as definitely concluded. The convention provided that the claims of the citizens of the United States against Mexico should be submitted to, and decided by, a commission, which should becomposed of two members appointed by the President of the United States, and of two other members appointed by the President of Mexico; that the commissioners should meet in Washington within three months from the date of the exchange of ratifications of the convention; that the commission should terminate its duties within eighteen months from the time of its first meeting; and that when the commissioners could not come to any decision, the question upon which they might disagree should be referred to an arbiter appointed by the King of Prussia, etc. With this the question of the private claims against Mexico, already submitted, was, momentarily, put at rest. The claim of satisfaction for public injuries and affronts remained unsettled, and no provision was made for the consideration of private claims which had not been submitted before the ratification of the convention, or of those which might arise after the same date. Plenty of opportunities were thus left for the rise of difficulties in the claims question which might lead to hostile relations between the two Powers.
As early as the winter of 1841-42, it was suspected that President Tyler's Administration was preparing to move in the matter of annexation. In fact, Mr. Wise, of Virginia, the President's bosom friend, and his organ in the House of Representatives, reiterated upon the floor of the House, on January 26th, 1842, Mr. Calhoun's doctrine about annexation, pronounced in 1836, that the annexation of Texas was essential to slavery extension, that slavery extension was necessary to preserve the balance of power between the North and the South in the Union, and that the preservation of this balance of power was the necessary condition of the perpetuity of the Union.
Mr. Wise expressed this opinion in the midst of an acrimonious debate, and whether he, in an unguarded moment, betrayed the policy of the President, or simply gave vent to his own excited feelings, is still one of the speculations of American history.
So long, however, as Mr. Webster remained at the head of the State Department it was impossible for the President to make any progress with a definite plan for annexation, even if he entertained one. Nevertheless, thirteen anti-slavery Whig members of Congress, led by Mr. John Quincy Adams, issued, on March 3rd, 1843, an address to the people of the non-slaveholding Commonwealths, declaring that there was a definite plan of annexation already settled upon, and about to be consummated, and denouncing the execution of it as being tantamount to a dissolution of the Union.
On May 8th, 1843, Mr. Webster resigned the secretaryship of State. It was said by some that the President drove him out, in order to appoint a Secretary who would carry out his plans for the annexation of Texas; but Mr. Webster himself indicated by his acts and words that he had determined to resign more than a year before, and had remained in office only for the purpose of concluding the negotiations with Great Britain which culminated in the Ashburton Treaty, an agreement in which Mr. Webster's section had an especial interest.
There is little question, however, that President Tyler was glad to have him go, for the President placed the annexation of Texas before every other policy of his Administration.
Soon after Mr. Webster's resignation the President transferred Mr. Upshur from the secretaryship of theNavy to that of State. Mr. Upshur was the man whom suspicion had already marked as the confidant of the President in the annexation scheme. This suspicion was speedily confirmed by his entering, almost immediately, upon negotiations with the Texan agent at Washington, Mr. Van Zandt, for annexation.
Soon after the recognition of the independence of Texas by the United States, Great Britain, France, and Belgium took the same step, presumably for the purpose of establishing commercial relations with the new state. But, in the summer of 1843, the British Government appeared in the character of the most favored mediator between Mexico and Texas for the recognition of the independence of Texas by Mexico; and a friend of President Tyler's Administration wrote, from London, that a representative of the anti-slavery men in Texas was in London, negotiating a loan of money from an English company, with which to pay for the liberation of all the slaves in Texas, and that the interest upon the loan was to be guaranteed by the British Government, on the condition that the Texan Government would abolish slavery.
The Administration professed to credit this story, and Mr. Upshur wrote to General Murphy, the diplomatic agent of the United States in Texas, informing him of this communication from London, and arguing the double danger to the United States of British interference in Texas, and of the abolition of slavery there. This letter bears date of August 8th, 1843, and is considered as marking the beginning of the actual negotiations for annexation. It was certainly intended to prompt General Murphy to sound the Texan Government upon the question of annexation.
The Mexican Government evidently discovered themovement immediately, for, on August 23rd, the Mexican Secretary of State declared to Mr. Thompson, the Minister of the United States to Mexico, that the Mexican Government would consider any act of the United States to annex Texas as a declaration of war on Mexico. For seven years Mexico had made no war on Texas, though professing to regard the new state as only a rebellious province. In September of 1842, several marauding expeditions had crossed the Rio Grande, raided around for a few days, and then returned to Mexico. The Mexican Government called this a continuance of the war, and demanded that the states of the world should observe the attitude of neutrals toward a friendly Power engaged in suppressing a rebellion on the part of certain of its lawful subjects. This was absurd. From the point of view of international law Texas had won her independence, and might make what agreements she pleased with any other Power. The President paid no attention to the Mexican threat. On October 16th, 1843, Mr. Upshur formally proposed annexation to Mr. Van Zandt, and in his message to Congress, at the beginning of the session of 1843-44, the President indicated to Congress that the negotiations for annexation were in progress, and referred to the fact that Mexico threatened war in case the United States should resolve to annex Texas.
The great difficulty in the way of the negotiations was the fear on the part of the Texans that, upon the signature of the Treaty by the Presidents of the two countries, and before its ratification by the respective Senates, as required by the respective Constitutions, the Mexicans would collect all their forces and make one supreme effort to reconquer Texas. The Texans wanted theprotection of the United States in this interim, and the embarrassing question for Mr. Tyler's Administration was whether the President of the United States had the constitutional power to extend it. Would not war, undertaken in defence of one foreign Power against another, be offensive war, in the sense of the Constitution of the United States, such war as Congress alone can authorize? Or, could Texas be considered a part of the United States from the moment that the two Presidents signed the Treaty of annexation, and before its ratification by the respective Senates, thus making war in her defence defensive war, such war as the President of the United States may, of his own power, undertake?
About the middle of January, 1844, Mr. Van Zandt demanded of Mr. Upshur whether, in case the President of Texas should agree to the proposition of the President of the United States for annexation, the President of the United States would protect Texas, from the moment of this agreement between the two Presidents, against all foreign attack. Mr. Upshur seems to have been greatly perplexed by the question, for he made no reply.
About the middle of February, the President of Texas caused the same question to be put to the United States agent in Texas, General Murphy. Murphy was a blunt, brave man, full of chivalry, but quite empty of constitutional and international law. He immediately returned an affirmative answer, whereupon President Houston sent a special envoy to Washington, armed with plenary power to conclude a treaty of annexation.
Whether Secretary Upshur, and, of course, the President, knew of the promise which Murphy had made for his Government to Texas, before the sudden death of Mr. Upshur, on February 28th, has never been determined.
During the second week of March, Mr. John Nelson, the Secretary of the Navy, was temporarily transferred to the State Department, and one of his first acts was to officially disavow Murphy's promise to President Houston. He very nearly informed Murphy, however, that President Tyler was personally pleased with what he had done. The Texan agents at Washington refused, however, to proceed with the negotiations until President Tyler would ratify Murphy's promise. Mr. Nelson would not risk his reputation as a constitutional lawyer by inventing an interpretation of the Constitution which would warrant this. At the end of the month Mr. Calhoun was put in his place, and he was remanded to the Department of the Navy.
About a fortnight after taking possession of his office, Mr. Calhoun officially informed the Texan agents at Washington that the President had ordered the concentration of a strong squadron of war-vessels in the Gulf of Mexico, and had commanded the movement of land forces to the southwestern boundary of the United States to meet all eventualities, and that the President would use "all the means placed within his power by the Constitution" to protect Texas against foreign invasion during the pendency of the Treaty of annexation. On the day following this communication, the Treaty of annexation was signed by the President of the United States and by the Texas plenipotentiary for the President of Texas.
Ten days after this, the Treaty was sent to the Senate of the United States for ratification. In the message accompanying the Treaty the President informed the Senate of the disposition he had made of the troops and naval vessels, and justified the same by the claim that the Presidentmakesthe treaties, that the Senate only ratifiesthem, that the validity of the treaties, therefore, dates from the President's agreement, and that, therefore, in this case, Texas was, from and after April 12th, 1844, a part of the territory of the United States, all of which the President was bound to defend against foreign attack. Whether this was President Tyler's constitutional law or Mr. Calhoun's we do not know. If this doctrine is to be ascribed to Mr. Calhoun it certainly marks a great departure from the general principles taught by him after 1830. One would think that his "States' sovereignty" theory of the Union would have led him to attribute as little power as possible to the general Government, and as much of that little as possible to the Senate, but here were both nationalism and Cæsarism combined.
The Treaty was before the Senate, in secret session, from April 22nd until June 8th, when it was rejected by a vote of thirty-five to sixteen. It is not necessary to examine the reasons which moved the Northern Senators to vote against it, but it is important to understand some of the grounds upon which Senators from the slaveholding Commonwealths opposed it. Senator Benton declared that the Treaty annexed not only Texas but parts of four other Mexican provinces, which would be an international outrage upon Mexico. Most of the Southern Senators, however, were influenced by the fear of war with Mexico. But the most significant objection to it, from the point of view of subsequent events, was that urged by Mr. Archer, of Virginia, the chairman of the Senate committee for Foreign Affairs. He claimed that a foreign state could not be annexed to the United States by means of a treaty, and that, if a foreign state could become connected with the Union at all, it must be by means of an act of Congress. A large number of the Senators approved of thisdoctrine. It was a pregnant idea to the President and Mr. Calhoun. It indicated that there was another way to accomplish annexation.
While the Treaty was under consideration in the Senate, the national conventions for the nomination of presidential candidates had assembled. The Whigs had nominated Mr. Clay, who was regarded as opposed to annexation. The friends to annexation in the Democratic party had been able to put Mr. Van Buren aside, and had nominated James K. Polk, of Tennessee, an outspoken advocate of immediate annexation, and had made the "re-occupation of Oregon and the re-annexation of Texas" the chief plank in the party platform.
Here now were all the elements of a new plan for annexation, which promised more success. They were, the doctrine unwittingly advanced by Mr. Archer, and as unwittingly approved by many of the Senators, that Texas could be connected with the United States only by means of an act of Congress admitting her as a Commonwealth into the Union, the plank of the platform making annexation the chief issue of the campaign for the election of a new President and a new House of Representatives, and the connection of the Oregon question with that of annexation, in order to get votes in the North for both projects at once.
On June 11th, President Tyler took the first step in the combination of these elements. He sent a copy of the rejected Treaty, and all the papers connected with it, to the House of Representatives, together with a message, in which he reviewed the subject and justified his position in regard to it, and declared, finally, that while he had regarded a treaty as the most suitable means for accomplishing annexation, he wouldco-operate with Congress in the use of any other means compatible with the Constitution and likely to accomplish the result.
Before, however, following the history of the annexation of Texas further, we must present briefly the main points in the development of the Oregon question.
OREGON
OREGON
Extent of Oregon and Claims to it—The Nootka Convention—Louisiana and Oregon—Astoria—The Joint Occupation Agreement of 1818—Spain's Claims on Oregon Ceded to the United States—Renewal of the Convention of 1818—The British Policy in Reference to Oregon—The Ignorance of Oregon in the United States—Dr. Marcus Whitman—Dr. Whitman's Mission to the United States Government—Dr. Whitman's Colony—The Democratic Party on the Oregon Question.
At the close of the eighteenth century, Oregon was universally recognized as the territory lying along the North Pacific Ocean from the forty-second parallel of latitude to that of fifty-four degrees and forty minutes, and reaching inward to the Rocky Mountains. At that time it was claimed by Spain both by discovery and first settlement.
In the year 1790, Great Britain advanced claims upon it. A diplomatic discussion arose between the two Powers, which ended temporarily in an agreement called the Nootka Convention, by which no territorial or sovereign rights or powers were recognized by Spain to Great Britain, but only certain easements, so to speak, in and upon this territory, such as the right to navigate the waters and to fish in them, to trade with the natives, and to make such temporarysettlements as might be necessary for the reasonable enjoyment of these rights.
In the year 1796, war was waged between Spain and Great Britain, and, according to the British principles of that day, every agreement between the two Powers was abrogated in consequence thereof; so that Spain, while retaining her sovereignty over Oregon, was now relieved of the encumbrance of the British rights.
This was the status of Oregon when Spain ceded Louisiana to France in 1800, and when France ceded the same territory to the United States in 1803; and the matter of first concern to the United States was the question whether Louisiana contained Oregon or any part of it. It is probable that President Jefferson thought it did, since the Lewis and Clark expedition, sent out by him to examine the new purchase, crossed the Rockies, discovered the sources of the Columbia River, followed this stream to the Pacific, and made report thereof to the President. But if he did, he was certainly mistaken. It is true that Louisiana had no western boundary positively fixed by any agreement between the Powers, but the general principles of international law, to which recourse must always be had in the absence of specific agreements, made the water shed of the Mississippi the western boundary, and the Treaty of Utrecht, of 1713, to which France and Great Britain were parties, made the forty-ninth parallel of latitude the northern boundary, westward from the Lake of the Woods.
The founding of Astoria, in 1811, on the south bank of the Columbia River, about nine miles from its mouth, is also evidence that the Government of the United States thought it had a claim upon Oregon as a part of Louisiana, since the undertakingproceeded upon an understanding between Mr. John Jacob Astor and the Government.
The British Government now did a thing which seemed to acknowledge a claim of some sort by the United States upon Oregon, so far as Great Britain could do so. Having taken forcible possession of Astoria in the War of 1812, it restored the place, at the close of the War, to the possession of the United States; and in a convention, concluded on October 18th, 1818, the two Powers agreed upon the forty-ninth parallel of north latitude as the boundary between their territories, from the Lake of the Woods to the Rocky Mountains, and upon joint occupation, as it was termed, in all territories and waters claimed by either party in North America west of the Rocky Mountains, without prejudice to any claims which either party might have to any part of the said territory, or to any claims which any other Power might have to it, or to any part of it. This agreement was to run for ten years.
An event happened the following year which made the Washington Government doubt the wisdom of basing its claims upon the Louisiana cession. It was the Treaty with Spain ceding the Floridas. As we have seen in one of the earlier chapters of this work, this Treaty contained a provision ceding to the United States all the rights and sovereignty of Spain in and over the territory lying west of the Rocky Mountains and north of the forty-second parallel of north latitude. Here was a much better claim, both as to quantity of territory and quality of right, than could be founded on the Louisiana cession. If the United States had possessed this claim in 1803, it is doubtful if we should ever have heard of the notion that Oregon was a part of Louisiana.
In 1828, the agreement of 1818 was indefinitely continued, but might be terminated by a twelvemonth's notice by either party, at any time. The United States, was, however, in a better position than before, on account of having now the Spanish claims to all territory above the forty-second parallel on the Pacific.
The element of greatest importance in the settlement of the question was, of course, colonization within the territory, and neither party had really undertaken that. The hunters and trappers and agents of the Hudson's Bay Company had temporary abodes within the territory, especially north of the Columbia, and there was one settlement on the south bank under the protection of the United States, and that was all.
For some fourteen years longer, now, this indefinite status continued. In the negotiations between Mr. Webster and Lord Ashburton, in 1841 and 1842, Mr. Webster sounded Lord Ashburton on the Oregon question, and found that the Queen's agent had received no power to deal with the matter, but drew the conclusion that the British policy in regard to Oregon was to prolong the existingmodus vivendi,give the Hudson's Bay Company time to settle the country north of the Columbia, and then agree to a division on the line of that river.
It was well for the United States that the Oregon question did not enter into those negotiations, for down to that moment the Government at Washington knew almost nothing about the character of Oregon north of the Columbia. The officers of the Hudson's Bay Company had continually represented it as a worthless waste, fit only for hunting and trapping ground, and almost worn out even for those purposes. It is more than probable that theGovernment at Washington credited these statements, and it is quite possible that, in 1842, it would have compromised with England on the line of the Columbia. The delay in the settlement of the question now gave the Government the opportunity to learn something more about Oregon from one who knew the region better than any other living man, and whose interests did not lie with those of the Hudson's Bay Company and Great Britain.
The actor who now came upon the scene was Dr. Marcus Whitman, a man of great intelligence, courage, energy, and high purpose. He had been sent out by the American Board of Missions, in the year 1835, as one of the exploring delegates among the Indians in Oregon. Dr. Whitman soon made up his mind in regard to his life work. He returned to the East in the summer of 1836, married, and went back to Oregon, accompanied by his bride and by the Rev. H. H. Spaulding and wife. This was the beginning of the settlement of Northern Oregon.