History vs. the Whitman Saved Oregon Story/Marcus Whitman: A Discussion of Prof. Bourne's Paper

by William Isaac Marshall

AMERICAN HISTORICAL ASSOCIATION.

---

MARCUS WHITMAN:

A DISCUSSION OF PROF. BOURNE'S PAPER.

BY

WILLIAM I. MARSHALL.

---

(From the Annual Report of the American Historical Association for 1900, Vol. I, pages 219–236.)

---

WASHINGTON:

GOVERNMENT PRINTING OFFICE.

1901.

Page:History vs. the Whitman saved Oregon story.djvu/105 Page:History vs. the Whitman saved Oregon story.djvu/106 Page:History vs. the Whitman saved Oregon story.djvu/107 Page:History vs. the Whitman saved Oregon story.djvu/108 Page:History vs. the Whitman saved Oregon story.djvu/109 Page:History vs. the Whitman saved Oregon story.djvu/110 Page:History vs. the Whitman saved Oregon story.djvu/111 have since been distressed to learn that if a bar was at that time put up it has since been let down." Three months after writing this letter he was scribe of the seventh annual meeting of the mission, May 16 to June 8, 1842, when the seventh or eighth reconciliation was had, which occupied all the time of the meeting for eight days; and less than four months later he was again scribe of that special meeting, September 26 and 27, 1842, which, after two days of indecision as to what action to take on the order of the American board, discontinuing three of the four stations, finally authorized Whitman to go to the States, not on any political errand, but, as the only document he took with him from the three men who remained associated with him in the mission distinctly declared, "to confer with the committee of the A. B. C. F. M. in regard to the interest of this mission;" and when in his letter of May 28, 1866, he first indorsed the saving Oregon tale, and wrote that Whitman called that special meeting of September 26-27, 1842, to consider a long-formed purpose to go to the States to save Oregon, and that they discussed it for two days, and that "according to the understanding of the members of the mission, the single object of Dr. Whitman in attempting to cross the continent in the winter of 1842-43 was to make a desperate effort to save this country to the United States," he stated what was absolutely and unqualifiedly untrue.

Ben: Perley Poore, soon after the article appeared in the Atlantic, in reply to my letter of inquiry, wrote that he had no personal knowledge of the matter, but had depended on Spalding's and Atkinson's statements.

As to the school histories: It is now not quite two years since I decided that the most practical and valuable piece of historical work that one of my limited ability could accomplish would be to drive this story from our schoolbooks, and to keep it from gaining admission where not already in, and, as may be seen from the following letters, that task is practically accomplished with the leading ones, as soon as they can be revised, and other authors will within the next six months no doubt follow the example. McLaughlin's, Channing's, Fiske's, Eggleston's, Ellis's and Barnes's school histories have never mentioned the tale, and Dr. Eggleston, in a courteous reply to my letter calling attention to a few little errors on other matters, and congratulating him that he had not been misled by the Whitman legend, after thanking me for my corrections, wrote:

Having been a professional student of American history from original sources for twenty years, I did not need to be warned against such a fake as the Whitman saved Oregon fable, which I am every now and then entreated to insert.

Principal W. F. Gordy wrote me early in the summer of 1899:

I am entirely satisfied of the correctness of your position, and that you are doing a great work for the truth of history. * * * The next edition of my school history will not contain the name of Marcus Whitman.

And the edition whose preface is dated September, 1899, does not.

Mrs. A. H. Burton wrote me on October 20, 1900, as follows:

I shall hereafter exercise more care in my methods from having observed the inexhaustible patience exercised by you in sifting out the truth. I have ordered the elimination of the name of Whitman from my history.

Though Prof. John Fiske had never mentioned Whitman in his books, I knew that he had in an address at Astoria, in 1892, and therefore sent him the same manuscripts as Principal Gordy, and on July 26, 1900, he wrote me as follows:

I have read the greater part of your manuscripts with care, and it seems to me that you have completely proved your case. You have entirely demolished the Whitman delusion, and by so doing have made yourself a public benefactor. I am sorry to say that I was taken in by Barrows and Gray, and supposed what they said about Whitman to be true. In 1892 I was invited to deliver the centennial oration at Astoria in commemoration of the discovery of the Columbia River. My acquaintance with the history of Oregon was then but slight. I was familiar with the history of American discovery along our northwest coast, having studied that subject in the original sources, so that part of my oration was all right; but when I came to the events of fifty years ago, having no first-hand acquaintance with the sources, I trusted to Barrows and Gray, and accordingly gave my audience a dose of Whitman. Among my audience was Judge Deady, who afterwards informed me that all that I said about Whitman was wrong. There were others who contradicted the Judge and maintained that I was right. I now see, however, that the Judge was right. I feel personally grateful to you for the light you have thrown upon the subject, and I am very glad that I never printed anything about the Whitman business. That, however, I should not have been likely to do without further examination of sources. You have done your work so thoroughly that it will not need to be done again.

Page:History vs. the Whitman saved Oregon story.djvu/114 Page:History vs. the Whitman saved Oregon story.djvu/115 Page:History vs. the Whitman saved Oregon story.djvu/116 Page:History vs. the Whitman saved Oregon story.djvu/117 Page:History vs. the Whitman saved Oregon story.djvu/118 Page:History vs. the Whitman saved Oregon story.djvu/119 236 AMERICAN HISTORICAL ASSOCIATION.

Elwood Evans, the historian of Oregon, any knowledge of anything but missionan' business as impelling Whitman to make that ride.

Whitman's own letters of justification written after his return, in which he endeavored to defend himself from the censure of the secretary of the American board for his expensive disobedience to the order of the board of February, 18tfc2, and in which he not only claimed all to which he was |

really entitled, but a vast deal more, are fully discussed in my " Fremont and Whitman book," and it only needs now to be said that in no one of them did he claim to have interviewed the President or the Secretary of State, or to have influenced in any way any negotiations about Oregon, or to have held any j

public meetings or addressed any such meetings held by I

others and designed to promote migration to Oregon, or to have printed anything in newspapei-s or in a pamphlet about j

Oregon, or that his ride was intended for any such purpose, i

but only that the two great objects of his ride were to save the mission from the destruction which he himself writes in |

these letters must have overtaken it if he had not made the i

ride, and to lead out a migration, or, to use his precise words, "It was to open a practical route and safe passage and a favorable report from immigrants."

An 8-page letter of Rev. H. H. Spalding to the secretary of the American board, dated as late as October, 1857 (from

which nothing has yet been printed), though it has much to say of Dr. Whitman as a martyr and is bitterly denunciatory j

of the Catholics, and accuses them of inciting the Whitman massacre and severely arraigns the A. B. C. F. M. for not recognizing the value of Whitman^s labors, and for refusing to "admit a line of this testimony" (i. e., "testimony" which Spalding had secured of persons who averred that the "Cath- olics were the promoting cause of that bloody tragedy" W. I. M.), "or any part of my communications in your publica- tions" does not in all its eight foolscap pages — say 2,(K)0 to 2,500 words — even intimate that Whitman had had anything to do with saving Oregon, or was entitled to any credit as a patriot, which is sufficient proof that as late as October, 1857, the "Whitman Saved Oregon" fiction had not begun to take shape even in Spalding's disordered mind.

Digitized by VjOOQ IC