Page:The History of Oregon Bancroft 1888.djvu/137

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THE DONATION LAND BILL.

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previous chapter that a bill creating the office of surveyor-general in Oregon, and to grant donation rights to settlers, and for other purposes, was before congress in both houses in January 1848, and that it failed through lack of time, having to await the territorial bill which passed at the last moment. Having been crowded out, and other affairs pressing at the next session, the only trace of it in the proceedings of congress is a resolution by Collamer, of Vermont, on the 25th of January 1849, that it should be made the special order of the house for the first Tuesday of February, when, however, it appears to have been forgotten; and it was not until the 22d of April 1850 that Mr Fitch, chairman of the committee on territories, again reported a bill on this subject. That the bill brought up at this session was but a copy of the previous one is according to usage; but that Thurston had been at work with the committee some peculiar features of the bill show.^[1]

There was tact and diplomacy in Thurston's character, which he displayed in his short congressional

in Oregon before the palmy days of British sway, and of British residents naming counties at all. While Thurston was in Washington, the postmaster-general changed the name of the postoffice at Vancouver to Columbia City. Or. Statesman, May 28, 1851.

↑ Thornton alleges that he presented Thurston before leaving Oregon with a copy of his bill, Or. Hist., MS., 13, and further that 'the donation law we now have, except the 11th section and one or two unimportant amendments, is an exact copy of the bill I prepared.' Or. Pioneer Asso. Trans. 1874, 94. Yet when Thurston lost his luggage on the Isthmus he lost all his papers, and could not have made an 'exact copy' from memory. In another place he says that before leaving Washington he drew up a land bill which he sent to Collamer in Vermont, and would have us believe that this was the identical bill which finally passed. Not knowing further of the bill than what was stated by Thornton himself, I would only remark upon the evidence that Collamer's term expired before 1850, though that might not have prevented him from introducing any suggestions of Thornton's into the bill reported in January 1849. But now comes Thornton of his own accord, and admits he has claimed too much. He did, he says, prepare a territorial and also a land bill, but on 'further reflation, and after consulting others, I deemed it not well to have these new bills offered, it having been suggested that the bills already pending in both houses of congress could be amended by incorporating into them whatever there was in my bills not already provided for in the bills which in virtue of their being already on the calendar would be reached before any bills subsequently introduced.' From a letter dated August 8, 1882, which is intended as an addendum to the Or. Hist., MS., of Thornton.

[2] Thornton alleges that he presented Thurston before leaving Oregon with a copy of his bill, Or. Hist., MS., 13, and further that 'the donation law we now have, except the 11th section and one or two unimportant amendments, is an exact copy of the bill I prepared.' Or. Pioneer Asso. Trans. 1874, 94. Yet when Thurston lost his luggage on the Isthmus he lost all his papers, and could not have made an 'exact copy' from memory. In another place he says that before leaving Washington he drew up a land bill which he sent to Collamer in Vermont, and would have us believe that this was the identical bill which finally passed. Not knowing further of the bill than what was stated by Thornton himself, I would only remark upon the evidence that Collamer's term expired before 1850, though that might not have prevented him from introducing any suggestions of Thornton's into the bill reported in January 1849. But now comes Thornton of his own accord, and admits he has claimed too much. He did, he says, prepare a territorial and also a land bill, but on 'further reflation, and after consulting others, I deemed it not well to have these new bills offered, it having been suggested that the bills already pending in both houses of congress could be amended by incorporating into them whatever there was in my bills not already provided for in the bills which in virtue of their being already on the calendar would be reached before any bills subsequently introduced.' From a letter dated August 8, 1882, which is intended as an addendum to the Or. Hist., MS., of Thornton.

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