Page:Oregon Historical Quarterly vol. 9.djvu/338

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310
T. W. Davenport.

him by on the other side. He was a radical; and radicals, as every one knows, are never wholly trusted: an intellectual gladiator whose help was always welcome to somebody at some time. Now here, to administer discomfiture to a slavery propagandist who lacked the virtue of discretion; now there to cheer the condemned pioneers of the woman suffrage movement; anon as earnest and trenchant champion to demolish the defenses of King Alcohol; or in default of foes, taking part in the exercises of educational associations, where his peculiar talents again found scope and appreciation, for they were tempered by remarkably genial expression. Still, he was more feared than loved; his temperament was too igneous, his intellect too exacting, his ego too prominent, for continuously pleasant companionship. During the regime of suppression, the arena for debate was comparatively deserted, and so the Major lacked the fullness of opportunity, but he deserves recognition by those he has served. His home was nearly on the boundary between the counties of Marion and Clackamas, where he had selected a section of the most valuable land to be found in the State.

On the Waldo Hills, in the east part of Marion County, lived the Rev. Thomas H. Small, an emigrant of 1853, coming from east Tennessee. He was born in Kentucky and had lived from birth there and in Tennessee; was a true southerner in his love of the South and its people, but he had grown out of harmony with their peculiar institution. One of his brothers, living in Alabama, and others of his near relatives were slaveholders, and while, for their sake and that of the social peace, he could refrain from preaching and talking against slavery, his moral and religious convictions were too deep and his pride of personal character too strong to get along agreeably in a community which construed silence into an offense. He was too earnest to smile and shilly-shally in presence of conduct that was contrary to Christian duty, even for the sake of peace. While a delegate to the Presbyterian Synod which met at Pittsburg, he spoke of the difficulty of