616 POLITICS AND PROGRESS.

Somewhat ashamed of it all, Secretary Buchanan wrote Shively, on his departure for Oregon, express- ino- the sympathy of the president, and his regret at the failure of the Oregon bill. 23 He assured the peo- ple of Oregon that the president would reiterate his recommendations to congress in regard to Oregon, and assured him there could be no doubt of a near relief.

He referred to the act establishing post routes and offices, and the act of the 19th of May, 1846, provid- ing for a regiment of mounted riflemen, to protect travellers 24 on the road to Oregon. Strong assurance was given that the United States would never aban- don or prove unmindful of the welfare of Oregon, but that everything possible should be done for the welfare of that country. 25 Thomas H. Benton also wrote a letter of condolence. 26

23 ' It failed in the senate, not, as I am firmly convinced, from any want of disposition on the part of the majority to provide a government for that interesting portion of the republic, but because other urgent and important business connected with the Mexican war did not allow the necessary time^ before the close of their short discussion, to discuss and perfect its details.' Or. Spectator, Extra, Sept. 8, 1847.

u It was asking a good deal of the Oregon people to appreciate that act, since the regiment was no sooner raised than it was sent to Mexico. Steele's Rifle Regt., MS., 1.

• b Cong. Globe, App. 1847-8, 40.

26 He said: 'The house of representatives, as early as the middle of Jan- uary, passed a bill to give you a territorial government, and in that bill had sanctioned and legalized your provisional organic act, one of the clauses of which forever prohibited the existence of slavery in Oregon. An amendment from the senate's committee, to which this bill was referred, proposed to abro- gate that prohibition; and in the delays and vexations to which that amend- ment gave rise, the whole bill was laid upon the table and lost for the session. This will be a great disappointment to you, and a real calamity; already 5 years without law or legal institution for the protection of life, liberty, and property, and now doomed to wait a year longer. This is a strange and anomalous con- dition, almost incredible to contemplate, and most critical to endure, a colony of freemen 4,000 miles from the metropolitan government, and without law or government to preserve them. But do not be alarmed or desperate. You will not be outlawed for not admitting slavery. Your fundamental act against that institution, copied from the ordinance of 1787, the work of the great men of the south in the great day of the south, prohibiting slavery in a territory far less northern than yours, will not be abrogated, nor is that the intention of the prime mover of the amendment. Upon the record ot the judiciary committee of the senate is the author of that amendment; but not so the fact. It is only midwife to it. Its author, Mr Calhoun, is the same mind that "generated the firebrand " resolutions, of which I send you a copy, and of which the amendment is the legitimate derivation. Oregon is not the object. The most rabid propagandist of slavery cannot expect to plant it on the shores of the Pacific, in the latitude of Wisconsin and the Lake ot tne