According to eastern journals, the president had in readiness a full register of officials in case the Oregon bill passed the senate.[1] But there were those in Oregon who thought the colony too far advanced in self-government to be treated like a new territory, and that they were entitled to select their own officers. A convention at Lafayette was proposed for the purpose of memorializing the president as to appointing Oregon men to offices in the territory; but local jealousies defeated the scheme. However, the convention appointed a committee, consisting of Burnett, George L. Curry, then editor of the Spectator, and L. A. Rice, to draught a memorial to congress upon the wants of Oregon, to be submitted to the people for their signatures. The memorialists complained of neglect. They declared that they did not leave their homes to traverse, with wives and children, uninhabited wastes to reach their present abode from ignoble motives; they had been animated by a desire not only to benefit themselves and their children, but to aid their common country in sustaining her rights on the Pacific, and to bring to a satisfactory close the long and harassing controversy with a foreign rival;
- ↑ Judge Semple of Illinois was mentioned by some as the future governor. Rowan of Kentucky was said to be the president's choice; and Richard M. Johnson was recommended by the Tribune of Aug. 20, 1846.
Woods. A home agitation for election and disunion purposes is all that is intended by thrusting this firebrand question into your bill, and at the next session, when it is thrust in again, we will scourge it out, and pass your bill as it ought to be. I promise you this in the name of the south as well as of the north; and the event will not deceive me. In the mean time the president will give you all the protection which existing laws and detachments of the army and navy can enable him to extend to you; and until congress has time to act, your friends must rely upon you to govern yourselves as you have heretofore done, under the provisions of your own voluntary compact, and with the justice, harmony, and moderation which is due to your own character and to the honor of the American name.' The letter concluded with the assurance that the writer was the same friend to Oregon that he had been for 30 years, that he was when he opposed the joint occupation treaty in 1818, and that he was when he wrote his articles on the grand destiny of that country, which he hoped to live long enough to witness Or. Spectator, Sept. 8, 1847; Cony. Globe, 1845–6, 921–2; Or. Argus, March 28, 1857; St Louis Republican, April 1847; Oregon Archives, MS., 61; Niles' Reg., lxxii. 148. His letter is preserved in the archives of the state of Oregon. Tuthill, in his Hist. Cal., 254, remarks that it was said of Douglas that he had a special mission to give California a government. The same might be said of Benton concerning Oregon from 1842–8.
