h of the
Columbia. While the nation was stirred up over a boundary dispute
involving a comparatively small district in the Northeast--settled by the
Ashburton Treaty in 1842--Oregon, with its extensive territory and
magnificent natural wealth was treated as unworthy of controversy. But
for the patriot missionary, Marcus Whitman, who in the winter of 1842-43
made a perilous journey from his mission post in Oregon to Washington, to
stir up the American Government to a sense of its duty, and of the
imminent danger of the seizure of Oregon by the British, that valuable
region would in all probability have passed under British dominion. "All
I ask," said Doctor Whitman to President Tyler, "is that you won't barter
away Oregon or allow English interference until I can lead a band of
stalwart American settlers across the plains; for this I will try to do."
The President promised; the settlers went, and Oregon was saved.[1] For a
time it seemed that war might result, but the two nations at length
compromised on a boundary line at forty-nine north latitude.

[1] It is sad to know that this patriot missionary and his admirable
wife were massacred in 1847, with a number of other persons, at
their mission station of Waiilatpwi by the very Indians they were
educating. There is reason to believe the massacre was indirectly
the result of Whitman's service to his country in rescuing Oregon
from the Hudson Bay Company. The treaty of 1846 greatly irritated
that powerful corporation, and this feeling inevitably spread to
the Indians who depended upon the company for supplies, and who
naturally sympathized with its policy of keeping the land for
fur-bearing animals and savage humanity. It is unnecessary to
suspect the company or the Roman Catholic missionaries attached to
the company of any plot against Whitman's life. It was sufficient
for the savages to know that the company hated Whitman, and that the
American Protestant missionaries sought to convert them not only to
Christianity, but also to industry.

During President Tyler's administration Rhode Island was the scene of a
commotion known as the "Dorr War." While the property qualification for
voters had been discarded in nearly every Northern State, Rhode Island
still adhered to the system of government provided in the King Charles
charter of 1663, which restricted the franchise to freeholders a