missionary colleague of Dr. Whitman's, contributed $500 to send a deputation to California to solicit aid from representatives of the National Government there.[1] Three notes were given by private individuals, amounting in all to $2,800, to provide means for the support of the war.[2] The Commissary General, if he had kept within the bounds prescribed for him by the financial legislation for the war, would have been compelled to confine himself to making requisitions on the loan commission and receiving the funds and other property they delivered to him. However, he and his agents not only bought goods outright, giving receipts and due bills when they had no cash in hand, but they even "pressed the wheat of certain farmers whose granaries were better filled than their neighbors'.[3]
The circumstances connected with the sending of a messenger to Washington bearing dispatches to the President and a memorial to Congress, exhibit some typical experi-
- ↑ Letter Book of Governor Abernethy, letter dated January 25, 1848.
- ↑ Letter of Jesse Applegate quoted by Brown in History of Provisional Government, pp. 330-1. The notes given were as follows:
(a) for $999.59, signed by Geo. Abernethy, Jesse Applegate and A. L. Lovejoy.
(b) for $1,000, signed by Daniel Waldo and Jesse Applegate.
(c) for $800, signed by Neil Gilliam and Joel Palmer.
When the United States Government assumed the payment of the Cayuse War expenses the notes were presented by their holders and were paid and then returned to their makers.
- ↑ Oregon Archives MS. A. J. Hembree (one of the Commissary General's agents) mentions having in February, 1848, pressed one hundred and eighty-seven and one-half bushels of wheat belonging to Jesse Applegate; also eleven bushels from Samuel Campbell, fifteen bushels from Andrew Smith, fifteen from Pleasant Armstrong, seventeen from Ed. Stone, six and one-half from A. Beers, and one hundred and thirty-five from Ben Williams.
The following letter from the Oregon Archives MS., throws so much light on the inside history of the methods of financiering of the Cayuse War and the conditions under which it was done that it should be quoted in full:
Dear Sir: I have just had an interview with Mr. Fulkerson, [one of the commissary general's collecting agents] who informs me that you have become distrustful of the policy of the wheat loan, and have instructed him to cease operations in that matter whenever he had raised an amount sufficient to secure to me payment for the beef cattle he purchased of me for the use of the army. As I do not wish that you should assume a responsibility on my account that you deem unsafe, I have taken this opportunity to inform you that unless the plan of taking up wheat notes is made a general practice, I do not wish any notes taken up for my exclusive benefit.Polk, County, Oregon, 27th April, 1848.
I am myself in favor of raising a revenue by direct taxation, as I consider that method as the only fair and equitable plan of distributing the burden of this unlucky war among the people who are equally interested in its maintenance.
