exerted even a small part of the influence attributed to him this universal silence would be inexplicable. This complete absence of contemporary references in print to Whitman's presence in Washington has naturally led advocates of the story to push their investigations among the manuscript records and to make inquiries of old officials, but the results have been equally disappointing.[1]
- ↑ Nothing has ever been found that has been made public except the two letters and the synopsis of the bill in the War Department records, printed in Nixon, 315–39. Mrs. Victor, writing in the San Francisco Call, July 28, 1895, declares that when Spalding came east in 1870 with the materials which make up Executive Document 37, he "presented the Whitman story, as published in this document, to the editor of the New York Evangelist, Dr. J. G. Craighead, with the request that he should do all that he could to maintain Dr. Whitman's claim to be considered the saviour of Oregon. This the gentleman promised, and afterward went to Washington, where he spent two months in looking for evidence that this claim had any foundation. Failing in this, he wrote to Hon. Elwood Evans of Olympia, now of Tacoma, telling him that there was nothing discovered to corroborate the statement of Gray and Spalding, and asking him for light. A copy of this letter is among the papers in my possession." Again in 1883, Dr. Craighead wrote Myron Eells: "What you say about negotiations between influential persons is laughed at by the State Department as not possible and absurd on the very face of it. Mr. Hunter, then in the State Department and for nearly a
Senators who had charge of the bill was also obtained at that time." This must refer to Dr. White who was in Washington at this time and who had been a missionary to Oregon. Whitman did not arrive till after the bill passed the Senate. On p. 697, however, Dr. Reed makes Whitman's information in 1843 contribute to the passage of the bill. On other points in this letter cf. Mr. Tyler's remarks, p. 699. In recent years John Tyler, Jr., President Tyler's private secretary, has said that he remembered Whitman's visit to Washington, that he was "full of his project to carry emigrants to Oregon, that he waited on the President and received from him the heartiest concurrence in his plans." Mowry's Marcus Whitman, 172-73. The latter part of the letter of L. G. Tyler to Dr. Mowry refers to President Tyler, not to Whitman. It is probable that after forty years John Tyler, Jr.'s, recollection of Whitman was more or less affected by Barrows' narrative, enough at least to change Whitman's plan to facilitate and protect emigration into a plan to "carry emigrants." It is also nearly certain that in this lapse of years the dim figures of Dr. White and Dr. Whitman had coalesced in the memory of John Tyler, Jr. Cf. pp. 96–7.
In the Atlantic Monthly for Oct., 1880, in an art. entitled "Reminiscences of Washington" there is what appears to be an independent recollection of Whitman's visit to Washington, but it bears the familiar marks of Spalding's invention. It was written by Ben. Perley Poore. All that needs to be said is that Poore spent the years 1841–1848 in Europe and the Orient!
