THE SLAVERY QUESTION 759

ment. The colony on the Pacific seaboard was now as then in need of federal aid, and was justly entitled to it. 7 Again he called attention to the want of a territorial organization, recommending that a regi- ment of mounted men be raised for the relief of Ore- gon, that Indian agents be appointed to reside among the different tribes, and an appropriation made to en- able them to treat for the restoration and preservation of peace. This he said should be done in time to allow troops to reach the territory that year.

Before entering upon congressional proceedings following Meek's arrival, I shall refer briefly to what had been done since the treaty of 1846, settling the boundary question. It was not because congress had been unmindful of Oregon that the colonists had been compelled to wait so long for the jurisdiction of the United States. The Oregon boundary was hardly determined before the even more momentous ques- tion was asked, How much, if any, of this new domain shall be slave territory? In these days no topic so engendered bitter contest on the floor of con- gress as that of slavery. It was enough to secure its failure in the senate that Douglas' bill 8 for establish- ing a territorial government in Oregon, of which men- tion has already been made as having passed the lower

» Cong. Globe, 1847-8, 788-9; S. F. CaUfornian, May 3, 17, 1848; Home Missionary, 22, 63; Amer. Quart. Meg., i. 541-2. _

b Cong Globe, 1845-6, 24. Thornton has audaciously claimed to have been the author of this bill which was before congress with hardly any alteration from Dec. 1846 until its passage, with a few additions m Aug. 1848. He particularly alleges that he 'incorporated a provision prohibiting slavery in Oregon This I took,' he says, 'from the ordinance of 1/8/; and 1 was induced to make it a part of the bill, not only because of my own convictions on the subject of human rights, but also for the reason that the people o Oregon had, under the provisional government, sternly pronounced a rigid interdiction of slavery.' Or. Pioneer. Assoc., Trans., 1874, 87. Benton said in the senate Dec. 8, 1845, that the colonists had presented their form ol government, 'subject to the ratification of the United States government, and it was well understood by the friends of Oregon, and its enemies also for that matter, that the ordinance of 1787 was the base on which the structure of a government for that territory was to be erected, Therefore for lliorn- ton to claim that he framed this part of Douglas' bill, or had anything to do with the framing of it, is brazen assumption. But this is not all. He declares that he ' felt a vehement desire to so multiply, in Oregon, the springs of knowl- edge,' that he 'framed the 20th section of the act of congress of August 14,