}
John H. Couch,
John E. Long,
R. Newell,
The first editor of this paper was W. G. T. Vault. A man more unfit for the position could scarcely have been found in the country. He professed to have been an editor of a paper in Arkansas, and blew and swelled like the toad in the fable, and whined like a puppy when he gave his valedictory, in the fifth number of the Spectator. He says: “We have among us a class of mongrels, neither American nor anti-American, a kind of foreign, hypocritical go-betweens,—as we would say in the States, fence men,—whose public declarations are, ‘All for the good of the public, and not a cent for self.’ The political sentiments of the conductors were at variance with his.” Mr. T. Vault was led to believe that Mr. Newell was his only friend, from the fact that he was absent from the meeting of the Board when his successor was appointed; and complains of Dr. Long and J. W. Nesmith. Newell and Long acted together. H. A. G. Lee, who succeeded T. Vault as editor, was far better qualified for the position, though he did not suit this same Board of Directors, as Newell was the maneuvering spirit. Lee was too strongly American in his sentiments, and too intelligent to be a dupe of the influence of which T. Vault complained.
Mr. Douglas declares the position of the English element in the tenth number of the Spectator. Mr. S. Parker answers him in the eleventh number; and Mr. Lee, in the fourteenth number, tenders his thanks to the Board for relieving him. The fifteenth, sixteenth, and seventeenth numbers, each “run itself,” as the expression is.
On the eighteenth number, G. L. Curry, Esq., took charge, to the twenty-sixth number, which completed the first volume of the paper. He continued his editorial position till the twenty-fourth number of the second volume, when he brought his duties to a close by publishing a set of resolutions calculated to injure J. Q. Thornton, who had gone on to Washington to have a history of the country published, and, as was supposed, to secure the best federal appointments for himself and his friends. One-half of the legislators believing that unfair and improper means had been used by Mr. Thornton and his friends, the other half not caring to vote against Mr. Thornton’s proceedings, being, perhaps, his real friends, the resolutions were lost by a tie vote. Mr. Curry, as editor of the Spectator, took sides against Mr. Thornton, and in favor of the objectionable resolutions, and published them under an editorial article, notwithstanding he had been requested, as he admits, not to publish them.
Judge A. E. Wait succeeded Mr. Curry in the editorial department of the paper, and, by a foolish, vacillating course, continued to hold his position so as to please the Hudson’s Bay Company and the Roman Catholic and Methodist influences in the country. The paper, by this means, became of little value to its patrons and the country, and soon getting involved in its financial affairs, it was sold and lost financially to the original proprietors.
CHAPTER LIV.
The Whitman massacres.—Narratives of, by J. B. A. Brouillet and J. Ross Browne.—Extract from the New York Evangelist.—Statements of Father Brouillet criticised.—Testimony of John Kimzey.—Dr. Whitman at Umatilla.—Returns home.