Mrs. McKinlay died) at Savona's Ferry, on Thompson River, British Columbia, are wont to inquire as to the identity of a large oil portrait hanging in the parlor, which bears on the back the following legend: "Stanley, Oregon, 1848. Mrs. McKinlay with compliments of the artist." This portrait represents Peter Skene Ogden as he is remembered by the survivors of the Whitman massacre.

Traveling eastward from Savona's by the Canadian Pacific Railway and when close to the continental divide of the Rocky Mountains looking to the north up the beautiful Yoho valley a massive peak appears that has been designated by the Canadian government as Mount Ogden (not, however, in honor of our hero). Its melting glaciers form a stream flowing to the south and westward as one of the sources of the mighty Columbia, upon so many of the waters of which Peter Skene Ogden, the fur trader and explorer, spent so many strenuous but happy days. And as these waters rush onward to the ocean they are joined and swelled by other glacial streams from that beautiful mountain of Oregon which will ever stand as a snow white sentinel over his final resting place in the Mountain View Cemetery at Oregon City.

THE LATE GEORGE H. WILLIAMS

By T. W. Davenport.

In the Oregon Journal of April the 4th of this year, the same day on which the above named person departed this life, a staff editor of that paper gave quite a lengthy account of the public services of the deceased statesman, with an earnest desire, no doubt, to be entirely accurate in every particular. But, as often happens, there was an error or two which should be corrected, and I have waited four months for some one more intimately acquainted with Judge Williams than myself to make the correction.

I have felt so kindly to the Judge on account of the inestimable public services he performed at a time when the Nation was passing thru its most critical period, that I would not give voice or pen to lower the tone of what I might consider extravagant eulogy; but in this case, as the writer has credited him with services he never performed (I should say, charged him with acts of which he was not guilty), I am moved to the task of setting the matter straight before it is quoted as veritable history. The Judge was a member of the Convention which framed the Oregon Constitution, and the Journal writer made the statement that he (the Judge) made speeches in the convention in opposition to slavery and after the convention had finished its labors and before the vote was taken upon the organic law, he canvassed the Territory in advocacy of a free state. Now, neither of these statesments is true, and any one well acquainted with Judge Williams would set them down at once as being inconsistent with his known character.

It was well understood by the people of the Oregon Territory that the question of slavery therein would be decided by a popular vote, and that the functions of the constituent assembly in relation thereto would be fully performed when it had adopted a form of submitting it to the people. So it will be

seen that speeches in the convention for or against slavery, as an institution, or as to its adoption or rejection by the people of Oregon, would have been wholly out of place and insultingly impertinent. And, as a matter of fact, no pro- or anti-slavery speeches were made in the convention by anybody.

Early in the session Jesse Applegate, a noted anti-slavery man, introduced a resolution to prohibit the discussion of the slavery question in the convention, and this resolution was very promptly and properly voted down.

This was a tactical blunder, and rather a strange move for the "Sage of Yoncalla" to make; and there is no accounting for it except upon the assumption that he feared a trick would be played, as in Kansas, and slavery be forced upon the people of Oregon without their consent. It may be inferred that he was alarmed by the selection of Matthew P. Deady, the most influential pro-slavery man in the Territory, to be president of the convention, and the further fact that democratic partisans were largely in the majority and reticent as to their intentions concerning slavery.

I never had any other opinion at that time, and have learned of nothing since contrawise, than that the Oregon democrats intended to conform to Stephen A. Douglas's Squatter Sovereignty doctrine and give the people of Oregon a square submission of the slavery question. Only one other tactical mistake was made during the session of the convention, concerning slavery. John R. McBride had promised his constituents that he would exert himself to place a clause in the constitution prohibiting slavery, and this was very summarily disposed of-voted down by the help of anti-slavery whigs who had promised him support. Likely Mr. McBride fulfilled his promise to his constituents in opposition to his better judgment, for to have grafted such a clause in the body of the instrument would have turned every pro-slavery voter into an opponent of the constitution as a whole-would have certainly insured its defeat at the polls and kept a free state out of the Union when the political strength of a free common

wealth was badly needed to withstand the forces of rebellion. So it may be seen that any diversion from the well understood, popular course, would have been disastrous to the cause of both union and liberty, and under the conditions then existing speeches in the convention relating to slavery would not have been tolerated a moment, and any one attempting such would have been rated as "non compos mentis." Evidently Judge Williams never attempted such a flagrant departure from common sense and the prevailing deference to the wishes of the Oregon electorate.1

After the constitution was placed before the people it would not have been out of place or inconsistent with the Douglas doctrine for the Judge to have gone out canvassing for a free state. But he did not do it. His sole service for free institutions in Oregon was his eloquent and unanswerable free state letter printed in the Oregon Statesman on the 28th of July, a short time before the meeting of the constitutional convention.

Doubtless Judge Williams preferred free institutions among which he was born, reared and schooled; but, like most persons in the Northern states, having a strong desire for political promotion, never permitted his anti-slavery sentiments and preferences to interfere with his political aspirations. He accepted a federal judgeship in Iowa by appointment of President Pierce, a position he conld not have reached unless he was known to be a National Democrat,—that is, an apologist for slavery or opposed to agitating the question; for at that time the democratic party was completely dominated by the slave power, and a man could not get the lowest position in the government, not even a chain carrier in a surveyor's gang, unless he was known to be, in the slang of the day, "sound on the goose."

In his speech at the celebration of the 40th year of Oregon statehood, he described his attitude respecting chattel slavery, by saying that having been brought up in the North he had

1 Contemporary reports of the proceedings of the Constitutional Convention in the Oregon Statesman and in the Oregonian bear out Mr. Davenport's contention.-EDITOR QUARTERLY.

imbibed prejudices against the institution,-a curious expression, indeed, and one which must be interpreted to mean a very mild and inoffensive phase of anti-slavery feeling. For we must remember that he was by natural endowment a deliberate, cautious, conservative, time-serving, law-abiding individual, whose altruistic sentiments were not sufficiently strong to carry him out of his party to which he clung, despite its becoming an abject tool of the slave power, until its dissolution in the year 1861. He was by temperament and feeling unfitted to be an agitator, educator or a radical in the cause of human progression. He was not even a protester against the errors and perverse tendencies of his party, though he had the intellectual ability and oratorical force, if he had been of more heroic mould, to have exerted a modifying influence favorable to republican institutions.

Hence, he was not a strong and guiding partisan, the undeviating one whose services as an advocate were frequently employed to promote a partisan victory.

He must have believed slavery to be a great evil, moral, social and political; but he never publicly declared such a belief, thus ranking behind Webster, who did.

Still, this can be said in mitigation of Judge Williams' subserviency, his party would not brook the freedom of speech that was tolerated by the whigs. But is it not discouraging to common humanity to see the great and powerful of the earth submitting themselves, like Sampsons, bound to neutral service which they knew to be detrimental to the public welfare? With what sadness of heart I look back to the time when the great New Englander, essaying to stem the tide of anti-slavery sentiment then voiced by Phillips, Sumner and other conscience whigs, make this declaration in the famous cradle of Liberty: "Fellow Citizens, I am a whig, a Fanueil Hall whig, a liberty-loving, Union-loving whig, and if you kill the whig party where shall I go?" At that time Lincoln

I This word is used to indicate a kind of caution and adaptation to circum. stances or conditions which is akin to sagacity.