Page:Essays in Historical Criticism.djvu/66

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met together in order to discuss this very question the month previous to his leaving for the east." No intimation is given of the evidence in the files of the Missionary Herald advanced by Mrs. Victor and Mr. Evans, and no effort is made to reply to their attack on Spalding's evidence except to quote Cushing Eells' letter to Secretary Treat of May 28, 1866, and the confirmatory testimony of Spalding and Gray, and then to draw the comforting conclusion: "This evidence . . . must prove conclusive to every candid mind, and settle this question, which indeed has only been raised within a few years."^[1] Other examples of the superficial and disingenuous method of this writer might be given, but it is unnecessary. In the final chapter, "Oregon Saved to the United States," some of the most extravagant statements ever made about Whitman are quoted with approval.^[2]

The other biography of this year is much better known. Its title is: How Marcus Whitman Saved Oregon; a True Romance of Patriotic Heroism, Christian Devotion, and Final Martyrdom.— By Oliver W. Nixon, M. D., LL. D.^[3]

↑ Pages 66-68.
↑ For example, this from The Advance of March 14, 1895: "Is there in history the record of a man who by himself saved for his country so vast and so valuable a territory as did Whitman by his prophetic heroism of 1842-3? His ride across the continent in the winter of 1842, a winter memorable for its severity, is without a parallel in history. It stands as the sublime achievement of a prophet and a hero, who saw and suffered that his country might gain. The United States paid $10,000,000 for Alaska. It bought Louisiana for millions more. It paid a Mexican War, blood, and money, for the acquisition of Texas and New Mexico. But what did it pay for Washington and Oregon and Idaho, a territory into which New England and the middle States might be put, with Maryland, Virginia, West Virginia and three Connecticuts? It paid not one cent. That vast region cost the Nation nothing. It cost only the sufferings and perils of Marcus Whitman, who risked his life and endured all hardships that the territory of his adoption might belong to the country of his birth."
↑ Star Publishing Co., Chicago, 1895. Dr. Nixon has been the literary editor of The Chicago Inter-Ocean for twenty years or more, and in the columns of this journal he has been the standing champion of the Whitman story, rushing to its defence against criticism with an impetuosity that has rendered him apparently incapable of stating his opponents' position correctly or of verifying his own assertions in rebuttal. Cf. references, p. 54, infra.

[1] Pages 66-68.

[2] For example, this from The Advance of March 14, 1895: "Is there in history the record of a man who by himself saved for his country so vast and so valuable a territory as did Whitman by his prophetic heroism of 1842-3? His ride across the continent in the winter of 1842, a winter memorable for its severity, is without a parallel in history. It stands as the sublime achievement of a prophet and a hero, who saw and suffered that his country might gain. The United States paid $10,000,000 for Alaska. It bought Louisiana for millions more. It paid a Mexican War, blood, and money, for the acquisition of Texas and New Mexico. But what did it pay for Washington and Oregon and Idaho, a territory into which New England and the middle States might be put, with Maryland, Virginia, West Virginia and three Connecticuts? It paid not one cent. That vast region cost the Nation nothing. It cost only the sufferings and perils of Marcus Whitman, who risked his life and endured all hardships that the territory of his adoption might belong to the country of his birth."

[3] Star Publishing Co., Chicago, 1895. Dr. Nixon has been the literary editor of The Chicago Inter-Ocean for twenty years or more, and in the columns of this journal he has been the standing champion of the Whitman story, rushing to its defence against criticism with an impetuosity that has rendered him apparently incapable of stating his opponents' position correctly or of verifying his own assertions in rebuttal. Cf. references, p. 54, infra.

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