of labor. He made a visit to the Atlantic States in the spring of 1843, being called hither by the business of the mission. He was a diligent and self-denying laborer in the the work to which he consecrated his time and energies. In the last letter received from him, he described at considerable length his plans and hopes in regard to the Indians, showing his interest not only to the Kayuses, but in more distant tribes."[1]
Fifty-two years later, in the most careful appraisal of human achievement in America that has ever been made, the voting for the Hall of Fame at New York University, Marcus Whitman received nineteen out of a possible ninety-eight votes to be ranked as one of the fifty greatest Americans. In the class of missionaries and explorers he stood fourth, being surpassed by Adoniram Judson with thirty-five, Daniel Boone with thirty-four, and Elisha Kent Kane with twenty-one votes, and followed by Fremont and George Rogers Clark with seventeen, Houston with fourteen, and Meriwether Lewis with thirteen votes. Turning to the voters we find Whitman ranked first in his class by the college Presidents, receiving ten votes from twenty-five voters.
In the total vote this simple missionary whose career was described by those who presumably knew the most about it in less than twenty lines, ranked equally with Count Rumford, William Lloyd Garrison, Wendell Phillips, and James Munroe, and surpassed Chief Justice Taney, Senator Benton, Salmon P. Chase and Winfield Scott.[2]
History will be sought in vain for a more extraordinary growth of fame after death. In Rome there is nothing more impressive than to see the magnificent column of Trajan surmounted by a statue of the Apostle Peter and to reflect on the historic changes that made suitable in the eyes of the Romans of a later day that transformation of the emperor's monument into a pedestal for the figure of a simple missionary of whom he probably never heard. But centuries passed
