Page:History of Oregon volume 1.djvu/806

CHAPTER XXVI.

OREGON'S ENVOYS—ERECTION OF A TERRITORIAL GOVERNMENT.

1848.

Journey of Thornton—Adventures of Meek—The Pious Lawyer and the Profane Trapper—Interviews with the President—Memorials to Congress— The Ordinance of 1787—Bills before Congress—The Slavery Question—Warm Discussions—Final Passage of the Bill Creating the Territory of Oregon—Appointment of Officials—Anxiety of President Polk—Return of Joe Meek with a Live Governor—Lane and Meek at San Francisco Bay—Arrival in Oregon—Lane's Proclamation—Decline of Mission Influence.

Let us now follow the two Oregon messengers to the national capital, and see what they did there. Thornton, in the United States sloop of war Portsmouth, Captain Montgomery, arrived at Boston the 5th and at Washington the 11th of May.^[1] Though no one in Oregon but Abernethy and his counsellors knew exactly his errand, Thornton has represented it as most comprehensive, embracing a petition for no less than twenty-one favors from congress, among which was the old formula of the United States jurisdiction. He also asked for grants of land; for confirmation of the colonial land law and the other legislative acts and decisions of the courts, which had been asked for by the memorial of the legislature of 1845; for money to pay the debt of the provisional government; for troops to protect the settlements, and the immigrants on the road; and for steam pilotage

1. Thornton's Or. and Cal., ii. 248. In another place Thornton says he arrived in Boston on the 2d. Or. Pioneer Assoc., Trans., 1874, 85.