Marcus Whitman, M. D., Portland, On, 1883.), does not inform his readers that Wilkes ever saw Oregon at all, but only says of him (Reply, p. 86): "Commodore Wilkes, in 1841, had praised the harbor of San Francisco as 'one of the finest, if not the very best, harbor in the world!'"
REV. M. EELLS' TREATMENT OF THE ACTIONS OF TYLER'S ADMINISTRATION RELATING TO OREGON.
With equal ingenuity he suppresses all the abundant and indisputable contemporaneous documentary evidence that Tyler's Administration was inflexibly determined to accept of no line south of 49 degrees for the northern boundary of Oregon, and that neither Whitman nor anyone else, in March, or April, 1843, or at any other time during Tyler's term as President, had influenced him to any change of the policy he had about Oregon prior to March, 1843.
We have heretofore stated (p. 28 ante) that President Tyler's two first annual messages, December, 1841, and December 1842, contained strong paragraphs on Oregon and that Dr. Mowry does not even allude to them. The same is true of Rev. M. Eells.
We have also (pp. 28-29 ante) learned about Dr. Elijah White's connection with Oregon affairs, and the suppression by Dr. Mowry of everything about Dr. White, except the fact, that he arrived at Whitman's mission with a considerable party of settlers early in September, 1842.
How does the Rev. M. Eells, D. D., "seeking after the truth of history wherever it can be found" treat Dr. White and his work for and in Oregon?
On page 106 he devotes nearly 200 words to showing why his "witnesses" would not confound Dr. White with Dr. Whitman, but he carefully refrains everywhere in his writings in defense of the Whitman Saved Oregon Story from any mention of the following five things which would be very apt to cause people many years after the event to transfer to Dr. Whitman the deeds and words of Dr. White.
- That Dr. White as well as Dr. Whitman had been a missionary to the Oregon Indians.
- That in January and February, 1842, Dr. White unquestionably had interviewed President Tyler, Secretarys Webster, Upshur and Spencer, and Senators Linn and Benton.
- That he had then been directed by the Tyler Administration to raise a migration to Oregon.
- That he held public meetings in the spring of 1842 in various cities—Buffalo, Cincinnati, Louisville and St. Louis—to promote a migration to Oregon, and had some newspaper notice thereof.
