REVIEWS
A General History of Oregon, volume II, by Charles H. Carey, Metropolitan Press, Portland, 1936, 499 pages, $3.50.
By Leslie M. Scott
Mr. Carey's long and busy life, as lawyer, public citizen, history worker and author, culminates in this monumental book of two volumes, the second volume of which is recently published, representing the decade between the provisional and the state governments (1849–59), with prior and later overlappings.
For more than fifty years Mr. Carey has made Oregon history a subject of his active study. He contributed to the Evans History of the Pacific Northwest (1889); the Scott History of Portland (1890); has written frequent monographs, and has generously aided other authors. He wrote History of Oregon (1922) and The Oregon Constitution (1926). He has been president of the Oregon Historical Society since 1927.
Mr. Carey's latest work is a fine product of the able Oregon printers, the Binfords. His authorship and their handicraft make this book an especial object of Oregon satisfaction.
Volume II is distinctive in at least four respects: the Oregon boundary question, the Indian wars, territorial politics, and early schools and colleges. Particularly impressive is the chapter on the boundary. The author makes clear that American settlement was the final factor in winning from Great Britain the line of 49°, and that the American desire for Texas and California was a potent influence in causing withdrawal from claims of 54° 40′. He cites John Quincy Adams as the American chiefly responsible in diplomacy for establishment of the American claims, against Russia, Spain and Great Britain. Other effective American diplomats were Rush, Gallatin and Calhoun. The keenest British diplomat against them was Canning.
Political rivalries of the capital controversy and the slavery and secession issues, are treated with better historical perspective and brevity than in works previously written by other authors. These were heated questions in Oregon politics, which the seventy and eighty subsequent years have enabled Mr. Carey to appraise at truer historical values than other authors have attained. One surmises that Mr. Carey has halted his narrative at the Civil War to afford similar opportunity to historians who shall come later. An interesting sequel, discussed by Mr. Carey, was the eclipse in 1860 of the proslavery, secession leader, Joseph Lane. The book contains a good narrative of events leading to adoption of the state constitution in 1857 and the creation of the state in 1859. Although Democrats predominated, Oregon opposed slavery and supported the Union.
Gold discoveries in California (1848), in southern Oregon (1851), and in the Upper Columbia region (1860), brought comforts and means of transportation. This notable aspect of progress has the particular attention of the author. He treats of judiciary, newspapers and public schools and colleges with a fullness that is not found in histories hitherto published. Indian relations, wars, treaties and reservations he discusses with a maturity of judgment that makes the book an indispensable authority. General Wool closed the interior as an Indian reserve and opposed settlement there in 1855-57, but subsequent events reversed him, and caused ratification of the reservation treaties which he opposed. Growth of the power of the Klickitats in western Oregon, after the missionaries came, led to the Yakima War of 1855-56. Conflicts with Indians during the Civil War, together
