268 EDWARD GAYLORD BOURNE. Mr. Floyd's ablest coadjutor in this debate was Mr. Francis Baylies of Massachusetts, an earlier Federalist, who had become a strong Jackson supporter. In Oregon histories Baylies of Massachusetts stands usually merely as a name with hardly more personality than Doctor Floyd and consequently in his case, too, I shall venture a few personal details. Francis Baylies was born in Deighton, Mass., in 1783, and was elected to Congress in 1821, where he served six years. The next four years he was a member of the Massa- chusetts legislature. As a Massachusetts Federalist who voted for Jackson in the House in 1825, he was naturally not a pleasant person to John Quincy Adams, who wrote him down in his Diary as a " rank Federalist" and as "one of the most talented and worthless men in New England." In the neutral field of scholarship Mr. Baylies's activities would have secured approval rather than censure from the pungent diarist, for he wrote the best history of Plymouth Colony that was prepared before the recovery of Bradford's "History of Plimouth Plantation" a work which still retains its value. He was also at one time a member of the Massa- chusetts Historical Society. As a resident of Taunton, not far from New Bedford, Mr. Baylies enlarged upon the ad- vantages to the whaling industry that would accrue from an American establishment upon the Pacific, a point of view effectively justified thirty years later in the develop- ment of San Francisco as a whaling port. In regard to the political aspects of the proposed occu- pation of Oregon Mr. Baylies's views exhibit a remarkable breadth of view and a penetrating foresight. It having been suggested that a too widely expanding Union would be liable to disruption, he argued that expansion would be a security against disunion. "By multiplying and extend- ing the States of the Union, you will create so many differ- ent interests that they will neutralize each other. On some
