and when they had closed his eyes forever, treasured up every word that could be of interest to his bereaved wife and friends.[1] Thus while preparing boldly to vindicate his acts and do battle with his adversaries, he was forced to surrender the sword which was too sharp for its scabbard, and not even his mortal remains were permitted to reach Oregon for two years.[2]
The reverence we entertain for one on whom the gods have laid their hands, caused a revulsion of feeling and an outburst of sympathy. Had he lived to make war in his own defence, perhaps McLoughlin would have been sooner righted; but the people, who as a majority blamed him for the disgraceful eleventh section of the land law, could not touch the dead lion with disdainful feet, and his party who honored his talents[3] and felt under obligations for his industry, protected his memory from even the implied censure
- ↑ Mrs E. M. Wilson, daughter of Rev. James P. Millar of Albany, New York, who soon followed his daughter to Oregon, gives some notes of Thurston's last days. 'He was positive enough,' she says, 'to make a vivid impression on my memory. Strikingly good-looking, direct in his speech, with a supreme will, used to overcoming obstacles… "Just wait 'til I get there," he would say, "I will show those fellows!"' Or. Sketches, MS., 16.
- ↑ The legislature in 1853 voted to remove his dust from foreign soil, and it was deposited in the cemetery at Salem; and in 1856 a monument was erected over it by the same authority. It is a plain shaft of Italian marble, 12 feet high. On its eastern face is inscribed: 'Thurston: erected by the People of Oregon,' and a fac-simile of the seal of the territory; on the north side, name, age, and death; on the south: 'Here rests Oregon's first delegate; a man of genius and learning; a lawyer and statesman, his Christian virtues equalled by his wide philanthropy, his public acts are his best eulogium.' Salem Or. Statesman, May 20, 1856; Odell's Biog. of Thurston, MS., 37; S. F. D. Alta, April 25, 1851.
- ↑ Thurston made his first high mark in congress by his speech on the admission of California. See Cong. Globe, 1849–50, app. 345. His remarks on the appropriations for Indian affairs were so instructive and interesting that his amendments were unanimously agreed to. A great many members shook him heartily by the hand after he had closed; and he was assured that if he had asked for $50,000 after such a speech he would have received it. Or. Spectator, Aug. 22, 1850. With that tendency to see something peculiar in a man who has identified himself with the west, the N. Y. Sun of March 26, 1850, remarked: 'Coming from the extreme west'—he was not two years from Maine—'where, it is taken for granted, the people are in a more primitive condition than elsewhere under this government, and looking, as Mr Thurston does, like a fair specimen of the frontier man, little was expected of him in an oratorical way. But he has proved to be one of the most effective speakers in the hall, which has created no little surprise.' A Massachusetts paper also commented in a similar strain: 'Mr Thurston is a young man, an eloquent and effective debater, and a bold and active man, such as are found only in the west.'
