ington first if his main business was in Boston? The answer to that is that as his business in Washington was to urge government measures to make emigration to Oregon easier and safer, he could not delay because the people he wished to see might scatter to their homes. His main purpose in going to Boston would not be affected one way or the other by a delay of a week or two, but his opportunities in Washington to urge his plan for protecting and aiding emigration might be seriously diminished by a few days' delay after the adjournment of Congress.
That the generally accepted story of Marcus Whitman is entirely unhistorical has been demonstrated. There was no political crisis in Oregon affairs in 1842–43 either in Oregon to give occasion to Whitman's ride, or in Washington to render his arrival and information important. There is no reason to suppose that the course of events in Oregon or in Washington would not have gone on just as they did if Whitman had stayed in Waiilatpu.
The real history of Marcus Whitman is briefly as follows: Sent out as a missionary to the Oregon Indians in 1836, he established a prosperous station which proved a haven of rest for the weary emigrant and traveller. In 1842 he is ordered to give up the station, but at the very time when the orders come a large emigration party arrives much reduced by the hardships of the journey from Fort Hall. Their leader, Dr. White, announces that the United States are going to occupy the country and that many are preparing to come the following year.
If the mission station is abandoned it would be giving up Protestant mission work just at the time when the Catholics had begun to come in and when the country was going to be settled, and when the mission station would be of especial service to the emigrants. If it were still kept up, more help must be secured: clergymen for religious work and Christian laymen to attend to the increasing business of the mission station, the farms, the mill, the sheltering of the sick and orphans, etc. If emigration on a grand scale was to begin,
