To be sure the first settlers of Oregon had no such anticipations as these, but they were not slow to perceive the advantages everywhere around them; sawmills were erected in advance of the great bulk of the immigration, so that immigrants were not required to go through the experience of the first settlers of Ohio and Indiana, housing one or two generations in log cabins.
No description of soil or surface or scenery can give an adequate presentation of this country, as upon the climate depends nearly everything which makes it, pre-eminently, a never failing supplier of man's wants. In this latitude, countries east of the Rocky Mountains have long cold winters and short hot summers, while west of the Cascades no such extremes are ever known.
The Kuro-shiwo of Japan, a broad, deep, and warm current of ocean water flows along our western shore, tempering the mountain air and covering the valleys with perpetual verdure. At this writing, the twenty-fifth of January, the fields have been once whitened with snow, cattle are pasturing upon unfrosted grass, and wild daisies are in bloom. Occasionally a cold wave from the north pushes seaward the tropical warmth, when for a few days the inhabitants get a mitigated sample of the arctic regions, but such incursions are few and far between,—say once in ten years, and not to be compared with the winter climate of Idaho, Montana, or the Eastern States. So seldom and short are the periods, when the ground is frozen, that agriculture is continuous through the whole year. In every winter month plowing is done and grain sown.
In what country, between the parallels forty-two and forty-nine north latitude, would cattle live through the winter upon grass, which was the dependence of those who crossed the great plains to this coast in the days of the pioneer? Arriving in these western valleys during the months of September and October, their teams worn and impoverished, were turned out upon the prairies and by midwinter were fat enough for beef.
Such was the country and the climate of the west coast to which the immigrants came, a land flowing with milk (no honey), beautiful and grand beyond description, rich beyond expectation, healthful beyond comparison; its streams abounding with fish, and its mountains with game; a country where there has been no failure of crops, and where blizzards, hurricanes, and cyclones are unknown.
Now a few words as to the character of the people who settled it, and in this examination I shall try to steer clear of the poetry and romance which are beginning to dehumanize them. It is not necessary for the purpose of this paper to show that the pioneers were more moral or more intelligent than those they left in the enjoyment of the peace and comforts of well regulated society, but it is important to know that they were a fair average in all respects as human beings, and as this question can not be determined by a personal examination, we must resort to the environment they voluntarily chose, or, in other words, to the objects and conditions which impelled them to the undertaking. The indolent and cowardly are not attracted by dangers, and hence we infer that volunteers make better soldiers than conscripts, and this inference is borne out by experience. Enterprises of great danger, forlorn hopes, are not chosen by those who love ease and quiet pleasure, but by the courageous and venturesome; those who take pleasure in overcoming resistance, surmounting obstacles, and braving dangers. The former are inclined to remain upon the old homestead, under the protection of law and the restraining influence of conservative public opinion; the latter push for the frontier, with apparent relish for the kind of life found only on the fretful edge of civilization. Some have assumed, therefore, that the borders are chiefly peopled by the reckless and immoral, those who would not be subject to proper restraint in the older communities; such an assumption, however, is wide of the mark. Under our flag there are no penal colonies; people go where they choose to go, and the currents of population are determined by self-selection. Places of trial and danger are taken by those who are not dismayed by such incidents, and unless we are willing to admit that there is a necessary connection between courage and criminality—that the enterprising and resolute are as a consequence tinctured with immoral tendencies—we shall believe what is more reasonable and in full accord with our experience, that the manly virtues are quite compatible with the moral attributes. I lived on the frontier, the Platte Purchase in Missouri, right among the people who contributed in men and money to the invasion of Kansas a few years afterwards, and I must say that I never lived in a more hospitable and law-abiding community. The forceful faculties were more prominent than in New England, but for personal honor, honesty, and brotherly feeling it would compare favorably with any portion of the United States. I had left that country when the Kansas troubles began, and was somewhat puzzled to reconcile the doings of the Border Ruffians with the character of the people as I knew them, but when I considered that a large majority of them were from the South, and, being born to the institution of slavery, were inheritors of all that such a state of society implies, I ceased to wonder.
Notwithstanding the great advance in biological science, the human being is very much of an enigma, and, however well disposed he may be from natural endowment, we can not guess what he may do until his previous environment has been examined. Suppose John Brown had been born and raised in the South, and had read his Bible through Southern spectacles, and had heard the Word expounded by devout defenders of the patriarchal institution, would he not have been found praying and fighting with Stonewall Jackson when the time came for war?
A large proportion of the pioneers were from Missouri, and at the time of the adoption of our constitution, which submitted the question of slavery to a popular vote, much solicitude was felt by anti-slavery men as to the result. Argument and inquiry were on the wing, and there was eminent opportunity, not only to learn the opinions and wishes of men but how those opinions and wishes came to be formed. Some of the ablest and best advocates of a free state were from the South and some of those who voted to fasten the relic of barbarism upon this free soil were from the North. One solid, earnest, but uneducated free state man, born and raised in Kentucky, and a resident of Missouri for several years just before coming to the Oregon Territory, was asked as to the evolution of his opinion and answered "that when living in his native State, a doubt as to the rightfulness of slavery had never crossed his mind; that he regarded abolitionists the same as horse thieves, and would have meted out to them the same punishment; that when he got to northern Missouri, where there were but few slaves, he was struck with the difference he felt and saw, as respects social conditions; people were more on an equality; that conservative deference paid to slaveholders was conspicuous by its absence, and when he got to Oregon, the spirit of abolitionism was in the air." He thought that if the good people of Kentucky could experience what he had they would clear slavery from that state in a year. I was intimately acquainted with that man for thirty years, and I am confident that I never saw one more honest and truthful, or one more ready to assist in reforms or more willing to be informed. Ignorance was his sin, as it was of the majority of those subject to the malign influence of slavery, and yet in his native State he was a possible border ruffian. What an honest, earnest man believes to be right he will defend, and for his convictions there is always a higher law to which he will appeal, notwithstanding the limitations of statutes and constitutions.
Though a Webster might lose himself in adoration of the Federal Union and an Everett offer up his mother a living sacrifice to preserve it, it is to the credit of human nature that human rights, human interests, human convictions and affections stand nearer and dearer to the people than any mere machinery of human government. The abolitionists believed the Constitution of the United States was a covenant with Death and a league with Hell, and they protested with all their soul and strength; to those Southerners reared to believe in the divinity of slavery, the Constitution was a worthless rag, for it did not protect them in their supposed rights. To the men of earnest convictions on both sides we owe our present disenthrallment.
The foregoing apparent digression has been indulged for the reason that the Oregon people were severely criticised and denounced in connection with our Indian wars, spoilation claims, and the votes cast in favor of slavery upon the adoption of our free constitution; and also for the reason that the aspect of character has a sociological bearing.