Of Whitman it was a leading characteristic. He did the right thing just at the right time. His faith was equal to his courage and when his duty was made clear to his mind, there was no impediment that he would not attempt to overcome. Now we are to study the results of his heroic ride, and will see how dangerous would have been any delay. We have noted Webster's letter to the English Minister, dated in 1840, in which he said, "The ownership of the whole country (referring to Oregon) will likely follow the greater settlement and larger amount of population," and this we may say was the common sentiment of our early statesmen, and not peculiar to Mr. Webster. But Whitman had started a new train of thought and given a new direction to the policy of the administration. The President believed in the truthful report of the hero with his frozen limbs, who had ridden four thousand miles in midwinter without pay or hope of reward, to plead for Oregon. Immediately upon the close of the conference the record shows that Secretary Webster wrote to Minister Everett and said: "The Government of the United States has never offered any line south of forty-nine and never will, and England must not expect anything south of the forty-ninth degree." That is a wonderful change. Upon receipt of the news that Dr. Whitman, in June, "Had started to Oregon with a great caravan numbering nearly one thousand souls," another letter was sent to the English Minister, still more pointed and impressive. The President and his Secretary at once began to arrange terms for a treaty with England regarding the boundary line, and negotiations were speedily begun. It did not look to be a hopeful task when the Ashburton-Webster Treaty, just signed in 1842, had been a bone of contention for forty-eight years. Still more did it look discouraging from the fact that diplomats the year before had resolved to leave the Oregon boundary out of the case, as it was said, "Otherwise it would likely defeat the whole treaty." But suddenly new blood had been injected into American veins in and about Washington. They saw a great fertile country, thirty times as large as Massachusetts, which was rightfully theirs and yet claimed by a power many thousand miles separated from it. The national blood was aroused. A great political party, not satisfied with Secretary Webster's modest "latitude of forty-nine degrees" emblazoned on its banners, "Oregon and fifty-four forty or fight." The spirit of '76 and 1812 seemed to have suddenly been aroused throughout the Nation. People did not stop to ask, who has done it, or how it all happened; but no intelligent or thoughtful student of history can doubt how it all happened, or who was its author. It was also easy to see that it was to be no forty-eight year campaign before the question must be adjudicated.