In the legendary accounts of Whitman's visit to Washington and his interviews with Webster and Tyler the essential features are his arrival just in time to frustrate the effort of Sir George Simpson, the Governor of the Hudson's Bay Company, to secure the cession of Oregon in exchange for the cod-fisheries,[1] and it was upon this achievement that the claim that he saved Oregon to the United States was originally based.[2] The incident is purely imaginary, and wherever it recurs it is the stamp or hall-mark, so to speak, of Spalding's invention.[3] The fisheries were not the subject of negotiation in 1842, nor were they proposed for the expected negotiation of 1843.[4] Consequently Webster could not have told Whitman what Spalding attributes to him. It is in the highest degree improbable that either Tyler or Webster told
- ↑ See Spalding's narrative, supra, p. 14, and his other statement that Whitman "reached the City of Washington not an hour too soon, confronting the British agents Ashburton, Fox, and Simpson, who, there is evidence to show, in a short time would have consummated their plans, and secured a part, if not all, of our territory west of the mountains to Great Britain."
- ↑ See the whole passage, infra, p. 101. Lord Ashburton left the United States early in Dec, 1842.
- ↑ For the recurrence of this note, see Spalding, Exec. Doc. 37, 22, 75; Eells in Miss. Herald, 1866, 371; Atkinson, ibid., 1869, 79; Gray, Oregon, 316; Gray's deposition, p. 32 above; Poore in Atlantic Monthly, Oct. 1880, 534; Eells, History of Indian Missions, 174; Nixon, How Marcus Whitman Saved Oregon, 128–9. Barrows in his Oregon, 224–238, shows that the interviews are unhistorical by a process which completely undermines the rest of his narrative. Leaving the question of candor or honesty aside, what can be said of the trustworthiness of a writer who says, p. 233, that there is no evidence that Sir George Simpson was in Washington in 1842–43 and yet incorporates the myth in his narrative on pp. 153, 158, 202, 203, 204, going so far on p. 203 as to reconstruct a conversation with Webster out of Sir George's Overland Journey Round the World? Barrows puts into Webster's mouth a remark about Whitman which was made by an anonymous friend of Webster's to an anonymous writer! Cf. Barrows, 225, with Exec. Doc. 37, 24, or Nixon, p. 133. Spalding does the same thing in his headline. The article is cited by Spalding from the Independent, Jan., 1870, but it is not there and has not been found, although a careful search has been made for it.
- ↑ "The only question of magnitude about which I did not negotiate with Lord Ashburton is the question respecting the fisheries." Webster to Mrs. Paige, Aug. 23, 1842, Private Corresp., II, 146. That the fisheries were not to be considered in 1843 is shown by Webster's letter to Minister Everett, Nov. 28, 1842, ibid., 153–54.
generation chief clerk, takes no stock whatever in the big claim for Dr. Whitman." Eells' Marcus Whitman, 22.
