complete exposition of the new status of the two nations relative to the Oregon territory.
A treaty proposed by Britain; accepted and signed. Finally, at the psychological moment as it proved, Lord Aberdeen submitted a proposal in the form of a treaty draft. It made the forty-ninth parallel the boundary to the sea, but gave the British the whole of Vancouver's Island, with the freedom of the ports in that region and also the freedom of navigating the Columbia. President Polk asked the Senate's advice on this treaty and was urged to accept it. The treaty was concluded June 15, 1846.[1]
- ↑ For almost half a century the public has heard much, at times, about the influence Dr. Marcus Whitman exerted upon the course of the Oregon negotiations. So vigorous has been the discussion of this question that a voluminous literature of the subject is now in existence in the form of books, pamphlets, and newspaper or magazine articles. Space limitations forbid the presentation here of even a small proportion of the titles. Perhaps the most thorogoing statement of the Whitman-saved-Oregon theory is found in Myron Eells's "Marcus Whitman, Pathfinder and Patriot." The most searching criticism of the claim that Whitman saved Oregon is in Edward G. Bourne's "Essays in Historical Criticism," under the title "The Whitman Legend." Much documentary material on the subject is found in William I. Marshall's "Acquisition of Oregon."
The present writer, while regarding Whitman as a noble Christian pioneer and missionary and while anxious to give him credit for every service he performed for Oregon, cannot subscribe to the theory that Whitman saved Oregon, or that he had any substantial influence beyond that of other important missionaries or pioneers upon the course of the history which eventuated in the boundary treaty of 1846.
