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he comes forward as her champion, I presume, he entirely ignores, and virtually disputes her position as to the actuating force that sent Dr. Whitman across the continent on that memorable winter's ride. Nevertheless her "speculations "were a more ingenious theory than that advanced by Mr. Evans. Mrs. Victor thinks that the object of Dr. Whitman was to get an office, and at the same time get his hand into Uncle Sam's pocket. Mr. Evans thinks that he went back on purely missionary business. Mrs. Victor believes that there was a meeting of the missionary board in September, 1842. Mr. Evans denies this, and in so doing calls in question the veracity of every member of that board now living. Without pointing out any other of the differences between these two historical scullers I would suggest, as they both row in the same boat, they would make more headway were they to keep stroke and both pull in the same direction.
As Mr. Evans has seen fit to propound a few questions to me as tests of my knowledge of United States history, I will take the liberty of asking if he does not know that when negotiations for settling the Oregon boundary were opened in London our Plenipotentiary took his instructions from our Government? Does he not know that those instructions were not perfected or acted upon until after the time that Dr. Whitman is said to have had his interviews with Daniel Webster and President Tyler? It seems to me quite probable that Mr. Webster may have signed these papers and have given them to the President, and that after hearing Dr. Whitman those instructions may have been withheld and others prepared. In short, whatever effect Dr. Whitman's representations of the value of this country had on the President and Secretary, that effect was not produced too late to have its full weight in shaping the subsequent negotiations concerning the Oregon boundary. Thus we see that Dr. Whitman did not arrive too late, as is claimed by those who deny that he was in time to be, in any degree, the savior of Oregon. Our Government was seeking information at the hands of traders, trappers and travelers concerning this country, but Dr. Whitman was the first farmer who had ever visited Washington from the present "Inland Empire." Would a deaf ear have been turned after an audience had once been accorded him?
"The Oregon Mission of the A. B. C. F. M., accrediting Marcus Whitman as delegate to Washington City, to make a desperate effort to save the then Oregon to the United States of America," is what Mr. Evans characterizes as the "immense afterthought"of
