degree that is intolerable to the historian trained in modern scientific methods of research. If his two early pamphlets be compared with contemporary writings on the great West, they will be found quite as reliable and quite as readable. If Kelley's early style be found defective, what is to be said of the flamboyant sentences of Benton, that other sponsor of the West? It must be confessed, however, that in his effort to be convincing, Kelley sometimes defeated his own end by references to obscure sources of information. His pamphlet, Discoveries, Purchases of Lands, &c. On the Northwest Coast, published in 1839, was criticised by a friendly Boston editor, who said, "We do not altogether rely upon Mr. Kelley's account of the old Spanish voyages. … He tells us of 'Mss in the Marine Archives at Madrid.' We believe no such archives are in existence."[1] To this Kelley answered "that he had the authority of Mr. Slacum … for the quotation," and that he had "also other reasons for believing it correct,"[2] but neither statement is particularly convincing, and it is significant that when the substance of the pamphlet was presented to congress in Bulfinch's memorial of 1840, the reference was omitted.[3]
However accurate or inaccurate Kelley's accounts of the early navigators may have been, it is certain that through his pamphlets and his articles in various periodicals he contributed to the general information about Oregon, and aroused popular interest in the question of the American claim to that territory. We have already seen that Senator Linn was indebted to him for materials on the subject, but it is a question how much effect the information thus presented had upon the action of congress. For the settlement of the Oregon question was not delayed so much for want of information as from political and diplomatic considerations, concerning which Kelley had little information or interest.
- ↑ Mr. Kelley's pamphlet, The Oregonian and Indians' Advocate, I. 180. "Our object the elevation of the Indian race—our means a Christian settlement in Oregon. Published under the direction of the Committee of the Oregon Provisional Emigration Society." Lack of confidence in the statements in this pamphlet is also expressed in Bancroft, Hist. of the Northwest Coast, I, 105n.
- ↑ Ibid., I, 22.
- ↑ 26 cong. I sess. H. doc. 43.
