BY
REV. FRANK W. GUNSAULUS, D.D.,
Pastor of Plymouth Church, and President of Armour Institute, Chicago.

Among the efforts at description which will associate themselves with either our ignorance or our intelligence as to our own country, the following words by our greatest orator, will always have their place:

Perhaps no words uttered in the United States Senate were ever more certainly wide of their mark than these of Daniel Webster. In their presence, the name of Marcus Whitman is a bright streak of light penetrating a vague cloud-land. Washington, with finer prevision, had said: "I shall not be contented until I have explored the Western country." Even the Father of his Country did not understand the vast realm to which he referred, nor had his mind any boundaries sufficiently great to inclose that portion of the country which Marcus Whitman preserved to the United States.

An interesting series of splendid happenings has united the ages of history in heroic deeds, and this volume is a fitting testimonial of the immense significance of one heroic deed in one heroic life. The conservatism, which is always respectable and respected, had its utterance in the copious eloquence of Daniel Webster; the radicalism, which always goes to the root of every question, had its expression in the answer which Whitman made to the great New Englander.

Even Daniel Webster, at a moment like this, seems less grand of proportion than does the plain and poor missionary, with "a half pint of seed wheat" in his hand, and words upon his lips which are an enduring part of our history. Only a really illumined man, at that hour, could fitly answer Senator McDuffie, when he said: "Do you think your honest farmers in Pennsylvania, New York, or even Ohio and Missouri, would abandon their farms and go upon any such enterprise as this?" Whitman made answer by breaking the barrier of the Rockies with his own courage and faith.

It may well be hoped that such a memorial as this may be adopted in home and public library as a chapter in Americanism and its advance, worthy to minister to the imagination and idealism of our whole people. The heroism of the days to come, which we need, must grow out of the heroism of the days that have been. The impulse to do and dare noble things to-morrow, will grow strong from contemplating the memory of such yesterdays.

This volume has suggested such a picture as will sometime be made as a tribute to genius and the embodiment of highest art by some great painter. The picture will represent the room in which the old heroic missionary, having traveled over mountains and through deserts until his clothing of fur was well-nigh worn from him, and his frame bowed by anxiety and exposure, at that instant when the great Secretary and orator said to him: "There cannot be made a wagon road over the mountains; Sir George Simpson says so," whereat the intrepid pioneer replied: "There is a wagon road, for I have made it."

What could be a more fitting memorial for such a man as this than a Christian college called Whitman College? He was more to the ulterior Northwest than John Harvard has ever been to the Northeast of our common country. Nothing but such an institution may represent all the ideas and inspirations which were the wealth of such a man's brain and heart and his gift to the Republic. He was an avant courier of the truths on which alone republics and democracies may endure.

Whitman not only conducted the expedition of men and wagons to Oregon, after President Tyler had made his promise that the bargain, which Daniel Webster proposed, should not be made, but he led an expedition of ideas and sentiments which have made the names Oregon, Washington and Idaho synonymous with human progress, good government and civilization. When the soldier-statesman of the Civil War, Col. Baker, mentioned the name and memory of Marcus Whitman to Abraham Lincoln, he did it with the utmost reverence for one of the founders of that civilization which, in the far Northwest, has spread its influence over so vast a territory to make the mines of California the resources of freedom, and to bind the forests and plains with the destiny of the Union.

When Thomas Starr King was most eloquent in his efforts to keep California true to liberty and union, in that struggle of debate before the Civil War opened, he worked upon the basis, made larger and sounder by the fearless ambassador of Christian civilization. In an hour when the mind of progress grows tired of the perpetual presence of Napoleon, again clad in all his theatrical glamour before the eyes of youth, we may well be grateful for this sketch of a sober far-seeing man of loyal devotion to the great public ends; whose unselfishness made him seem, even then, a startling figure at the nation's capital; whose noble bearing, great faith, supreme courage, and vision of the future, mark him as a genuine and typical American.

These hopes and inspirations are all enshrined in the educational enterprise known as Whitman College. Every student of history must be glad to recognize the fact that the history of which this book is the chronicle, is also a prophecy, and that whatever may be the fate of men's names or men's schemes in the flight of time, this college will be a beacon, shining with the light of Marcus Whitman's heroism and devotion.