to have some resolutions attached, reclaimed the documents from him,[1] during which time McCarver clandestinely added his name as speaker of the house to the objectionable organic law.
White had no sooner started on his long-deferred journey than Barton Lee offered a resolution exposing the secret action of McCarver, disapproving it, and declaring that the house was under the humiliating necessity of signifying its displeasure to the United States government by causing the resolution to accompany the other documents. The discussion occasioned by this discovery and the explanation of McCarver ended in the house passing another resolution to despatch a messenger to Vancouver to bring back the documents in order to have McCarver's signature properly attested, and a second one that the speaker, having signed certain documents from a mistaken sense of duty, and not from contumacy or contempt, should be required to follow White to Vancouver and erase his name from the organic law and from two resolutions in favor of White. From this requirement he was, however, excused. While resolutions were in order, Applegate offered one declaring that it was not the intention of the house, in passing the above-named resolves, to recommend White to the United States government as a suitable person to fill any office in Oregon; with another that an attested copy should be forwarded to Washington. Meanwhile, the messenger who had been despatched to bring back the memorial and organic law had overtaken White's party and presented the order of the house. But unwilling to risk any changes being
- ↑ The resolutions were to the effect that the adoption of the organic law by the people of Oregon was an act of necessity rather than choice, intended to give them the protection which their government should have extended to them, and not an act of defiance or disregard of the laws of the United States; and that in establishing a territorial government, congress should legalize their acts so far as they Mere in accordance with the constitution of the United States. Also that White be requested to furnish a copy of the organic law to congress, said copy being indorsed with the above resolutions. 'Grover s Or. Archives, 106.
