to Winthrop, of Massachusetts, cautioning him against Thurston's misrepresentations. Then Thurston prepared an address to the people of Oregon, covering sixteen closely printed octavo pages, in which he recounts his services and artifices.
With no small cunning he declared that his reason for not asking congress to confirm to the owners lots purchased or obtained of McLoughlin after the 4th of March, 1849, was because he had confidence that the legislative assembly would do so; adding that the bill was purposely so worded in order that McLoughlin would have no opportunity of transferring the property to others who would hold it for him. Thus careful had he been to leave no possible means by which the man who had founded and fostered Oregon City could retain an interest in it. And having openly advocated educating the youth of Oregon with the property wrested from the venerable benefactor of their fathers and mothers, he submitted himself for reëlection,[1] while the victim of missionary and personal malice began the painful and useless struggle to free himself from the toils by which his enemies had surrounded him, and from which he never escaped during the few remaining years of his life.[2]
- ↑ Address to the Electors, 12.
- ↑ McLoughlin died September 3, 1857, aged 73 years. He was buried in the enclosure of the Catholic church at Oregon City; and on his tombstone, a plain slab, is engraved the legend: 'The Pioneer and Friend of Oregon; also The Founder of this City.' He laid his case before congress in a memorial, with all the evidence, but in vain. Lane, who was then in that body as a delegate from Oregon, and who was personally interested in defeating the memorial, succeeded in doing so by assertions as unfounded as those of Thurston. This blunt old soldier, the pride of the people, the brave killer of Indians, turned demagogue could deceive and cheat with the best of them. See Cong. Globe, 1853–4, 1080–82, and Letter of Dr McLoughlin, in Portland Oregonian, July 22, 1854. Toward the close of his life McLoughlin yielded to the tortures of disease and ingratitude, and betrayed, as he had never done before, the unhappiness his enemies had brought upon him. Shortly before his death he said to Grover, then a young man: 'I shall live but a little while longer; and this is the reason that I sent for you. I am an old man and just dying, and you are a young man and will live many years in this country. As for me, I might better have been shot'—and he brought it out harshly—'like a bull; I might better have been shot forty years ago!' After a silence, for I did not say anything, he concluded, 'than to have lived here, and tried to build up a family and an estate in this government. I became a citizen of the United States in good faith. I planted all I had here, and the govern-
