that the calling of a constitutional convention was three times
submitted to the people before it was sanctioned. There was opposition
from the southern part of the territory where a plan was in
contemplation for union with Northern California in the formation of a
new state; there was opposition from the Whig party which was growing in
power and had a vigorous organ to represent it in the _Oregonian_, and
there was a feeling of conservatism which felt that things were not yet
ripe for statehood, expressed later so well by Matthew P. Deady, the
President of the Convention, in his closing address to that body: “I
have not regretted the delay that has occurred, by the country refusing
to authorize a convention before this time; but on the contrary, think
it has been for the best. As to mere numbers and wealth, we have
doubtless sufficient of both to maintain a state government; but a
people in my opinion, require age and maturity, as well as wealth and
numbers to make them competent to carry on a government successfully. As
in the growth of the child and the oak so with a people. Thrown together
as we have been, upon this coast, it requires time to knit together in
one harmonious whole our diversified elements of population.”[19]
The Constitutional Convention met in August of 1857, at Salem, and was
in session for four weeks. It consisted of sixty delegates. It was early
agreed to leave the question of slavery to be decided by the people
themselves, at the same time that they acted upon the constitution, and
thus the greatest danger of obstruction and delay was removed. The
discussions, as reported in the newspapers of the time, indicate
considerable party spirit, but, for the most part, they were harmonious
and marked by fairness and deliberation. Little difficulty was
experienced in framing the main features of the constitution, providing
for the organs of government. A general disposition favorable to economy
was manifested throughout. That it sometimes went to extremes would be
indicated by the dry humor of the suggestion that the chief executive of
the state be requested to board around, in the good old schoolmaster
fashion.
Many of the most important subjects passed with little or no discussion,
but enough questions to excite differences of opinion arose to occupy
the time. One of the earliest discussions was upon the boundary of the
state. The sentiment was nearly all in favor of a large state, yet a
proposal was made to bound it on the east by the Cascade Mountains,
which were held to be the natural boundary. This, it was thought, would
leave room for the creation of more states and a larger representation
in the United States Senate from the west. The speeches in opposition
were interesting. One of the delegates in advocating a large state
expressed himself in the following words: “I am in favor of extending
the area of this state as far east as we can go, go to the Missouri, if
possible. I would like to take in Utah, if we could do them any
good.”[20] Another said: “I like a large state; I was born and raised in
one—the Empire state. Although the people of Rhode Island and Delaware
may be very good people, yet I rejoice to know that I was not born in
either. I do not like little states; they may have votes in the senate,
but they have no political influence. Mr. Seward, black republican as he
is, when he speaks in the name of the great state of New York, speaks
with an authority and a weight that a Webster could not command speaking
from Rhode Island.” Another discussion pertained to the introduction of
a clause prohibiting the manufacture and sale of intoxicating liquors, a
proposal which was finally rejected. Perhaps the longest discussion
arose upon a clause rendering the stockholders of a corporation liable
for its debts and obligations. It drifted into a consideration of the
subject of corporations in general. The opinions expressed ranged all
the way from a desire to protect the farmer against “smart gentlemen
representing to them glittering schemes” to “that broader question,
whether the resources of the country shall be developed or not, whether
we shall have the means and facilities for creating a market here, at
home, for our surplus products, and whether the capital that shall come
into the country shall receive such protection as will cause it to be
productive.”
In most particulars the constitution resembled, both in form and
substance, those of other states of the Union. There were some
distinguishing features, however. The question of slavery had been
decided in the negative by vote of the people, and a clause excluding
slavery introduced. There was a feeling, quite common throughout the
west, against free negroes, and clauses were introduced to keep them
out, by a denial of the right of suffrage, of holding real estate, and
the maintenance of any suit in the courts. A somewhat similar policy was
pursued toward the Chinese. The assembly was given the right to restrain
and regulate immigration, although the conditions of suffrage were made
easy for the foreigner. The state was saved the experience of a wildcat
medium of exchange, by denial of the right to charter any institution to
issue such money. The state was prohibited from being a stockholder in a
corporation, and such enterprises could only be established under
general laws. The danger of extravagance in the development of the state
was prevented by denying the right to incur an indebtedness beyond
$50,000.
This constitution, upon being submitted to the people, was adopted by a
majority, and application was made to congress for admission, under its
provisions. The constitution, though conservative in the main, provided
well for existing needs, and for a safe and steady growth. There was
nothing in it to encourage a hasty development or a speculative and
harmful condition of industrial life. There is every reason to
appreciate the good judgment of those who framed it and did much to mold
the character of the commonwealth, as conservative, as sound in its
social and industrial policy, and to be depended on for sober and
considerate action. Located, as the State of Oregon is, upon the Pacific
Coast, where much of the history of the next century must be made,
itself the product of an enlarged national life, it must, of necessity,
exercise a greater influence in the national policies of the future than
it has in those of the past. Some of the provisions of the constitution
have, of course, been made of no effect by the amendments to the
National Constitution. No sufficient cause has yet arisen to make
imperative its own amendment, but the growth of the state may render
necessary some changes in the near future.
When the question came before congress the bill was passed without great
delay in the senate and submitted to the house. It became the occasion
of discussion, but was finally passed and received the President’s
signature February 14, 1859. The principal objection made to its passage
was the denial of a requisite population. No census had been taken since
1855, and approximations had to be made. The delegate from the
territory, Joseph Lane, gave it as his opinion that there were from
ninety thousand to one hundred thousand people, and his authority was
finally accepted. An effort was made by some to join it with the Kansas
question, and refuse it admission because that state, with a larger
population, had been refused. Some opposed it because it prohibited
slavery, and some because it prohibited free negroes; some opposed one
specific clause of the constitution and some another, while some opposed
it on party grounds and would not vote for a measure introduced by the
democratic party. The final sentiment, and the one most generally
prevailing, was well expressed by the representative from Massachusetts.
“There are provisions in her constitution which, were I to vote upon
them, could never receive my sanction. But I do not consider myself as
responsible, in the vote which I give for her admission, for each and
every item in her constitution. I vote for her admission on general
principles. Her constitution is republican in form, and slavery is
excluded from her territory forever. I regret with sadness that the
people have deemed it expedient to adopt the article they have relative
to free negroes, but I must regard it as but temporary and inoperative.
I find no state west of New York ready to grant full rights and
privileges of citizenship to free blacks; therefore it would be
inconsistent to reject Oregon for this clause in her constitution.
Oregon, at no remote day must be admitted as a state. If we delay her
admission, no man can foresee what intervening circumstances may occur
to embarrass and embitter future proceedings.”
As we have followed, one after another, the steps in the genesis of
political authority and of a commonwealth government in Oregon, we have
seen the heroic efforts made by some who have stood out conspicuous as
leaders; we have seen the no less heroic efforts of many whose names
have received no mention, but whose part in the result has been as
great; we have seen the influence of forces which were powerfully
working with or against the efforts to achieve the result. We have seen
a locality well fitted for the home of man pass out from the condition
of a wilderness, through all the stages of development, to that high
state of civilization where every individual enjoys the privilege of
citizenship in a great nation, as well as all the liberties of local
freedom. And although we have been engaged upon a theme of local
history, in its unfolding we have beheld at the same time a gradual
enlargement of national life, and a steady progress toward greater
things.
JAMES ROOD ROBERTSON.
Chapter Footnotes
-----
Footnote 1:
Act of Parliament in appendix to Greenbow’s History of Oregon.
Footnote 2:
Matthew P. Deady.
Footnote 3:
Conversation with Dr. Wm. Geiger, pioneer of 1842.
Footnote 4:
Benton’s Thirty Years in the Senate.
Footnote 5:
Irving’s Astoria.
Footnote 6:
Annals of Congress and Congressional Debates are authorities used upon
discussions in the legislature.
Footnote 7:
Hon. Francis Baylies.
Footnote 8:
Hon. Francis Baylies.
Footnote 9:
The Correspondence and Journals of Capt. Nathaniel J. Wyeth, edited by
F. G. Young.
Footnote 10:
Thirty Years in the Senate.
Footnote 11:
Oregon Archives, by Grover, are the authority used on the provisional
government.
Footnote 12:
Oregon Archives.
Footnote 13:
J. Quinn Thornton.
Footnote 14:
Conversation with A. Hinman, pioneer of 1844.
Footnote 15:
Messages of the Presidents, by Richardson, is authority for statements
of Presidents.
Footnote 16:
Blaine’s Twenty Years in Congress.
Footnote 17:
Brief Treatise on Constitutional and Party Questions by S. A. Douglas.
Reported by J. M. Cutts.
Footnote 18:
Congressional Globe is authority used for remaining discussions in
congress.
Footnote 19:
Journal of the Constitutional Convention.
Footnote 20:
Reported in the Oregonian, 1857.
------------------------------------------------------------------------
THE PROCESS OF SELECTION IN OREGON PIONEER SETTLEMENT.
In the days of the early Oregon pioneers the narrative of Lewis and
Clark’s explorations to the Pacific Coast had become little more than a
tradition to the frontier people of the West. The wild stories of
mountain trappers, told by camp fires, and colored by vivid
recollections of real privations among mountain defiles—these formed the
picture in the popular mind along the frontier of the difficulties to be
overcome in a journey across the Rockies. As long as these reiterated
stories took their measure of endurance from the wanderings of
missionaries and mountain trappers, the problem of their influence might
be a simple one; but when the question of taking women and children over
the dreary wastes of wide deserts and pathless steeps of mountain cliffs
was raised, other considerations were at once added; for how could these
trusts be transported over bridgeless and fordless streams? How insured
against hunger and thirst, and how kept out of reach of the danger of
attack by hostile tribes of Indians?
The object of this brief paper is to outline a conviction of the writer
that the difficulties in the way of a migration to Oregon—as these
difficulties were seen by the people of the frontier states—formed a
selecting test of the kind of people who alone could go to Oregon across
the mountains in those days—a real and practical natural selection of a
new people for a new community.
Without entering into the hackneyed question of the agency of Doctor
Whitman in securing Oregon for the United States, we may say Doctor
Whitman was no mythical character. He was a real man; a missionary of
the American Board. In 1842 he found the Indians around him so
dissatisfied, that he called a synodical meeting of the neighboring
missions, and submitted to them the question “Shall we give up the
mission of Waiilatpu?” The synod decided in the negative. The doctor
then said to his co-laborers, “Then you must vote me leave of absence,
for I must go home to confer with the board on the situation.” In fact
Doctor Whitman seems to have had a mild kind of monomania on the subject
of ox teams drawing plain Missouri wagons from Fort Independence to the
Columbia at Wallula. Anyway, his brethren of that synod all knew that he
carried that conviction with him to the states. They knew, too, that he
wanted an opportunity to publish it along the frontiers to the restless
multitude who were asking the question, “Was it safe to attempt to take
a family to Oregon in an ox wagon?” Doctor Whitman said he knew this
could be done; said he himself would guide a train of wagons to Wallula,
on the Columbia, and reach there before the fall storms should hinder
their progress.
Let us now turn to the restless people of the frontier who wanted to go
to Oregon, and inquire what their mental picture of the great barriers
of the journey was. At this time, 1842, these restless people might be
found from Eastern Tennessee to Western Missouri. In their view the
Rocky Mountain barrier was not a single line of mountains, but a complex
system of ranges, like the one that separated Eastern Virginia and the
Carolinas from the valley of the Ohio, with whose character they were
familiar. They clearly apprehended the difficulties of such mountain
travel, without roads or bridges, without shops for repairs, or towns
for repurchase of supplies run short. They saw plainly the necessity of
starting with wagons loaded for the whole journey, and of getting
through before winter. They knew, too, that having passed the Rocky
Mountain barrier, a vast desert plain hundreds of miles across extended
from the western slope of the Rockies, only to bring them to another
mountain barrier—the Cascade Range, which, if not higher, was at least
steeper in its approaches. And, inasmuch as this second barrier would be
reached late in the season, oxen and horses would be so weak and worn by
their long journey as to add fearfully to dangers which they of all
people knew how to appreciate. Let it be remembered, too, that all this
fearful risk was to be borne by women and children. We have called the
routes of travel bridgeless (and often fordless), look as to how much
this implies: Suppose our train to have reached what was at their route
a fordless stream. The ferry was soon prepared by selecting one of the
best of their wagon boxes, caulking its chinks and joints as best they
could, and using this as a boat. A rope fastened to it was passed over
the river, and this extemporized ferry was ready for its work.
In naming over the principal forms of danger that went to make up the
outlook of the road to Oregon in the early forties, one must be
named—one more dreaded than all the rest—the continued exposure to
Indian attack. For, if after a long toilsome climbing over rocky
declivities a pleasanter part of the way is reached, and the weary
toilers are led to hope for easier travel, just here, at any turn in the
road, the dreadful savage might suddenly make his appearance. Such was
the dark picture the journey overland to Oregon presented to the men and
women of the frontier, who yet restlessly waited for their own chance to
try it. Now, in spite of all these dangers of the way, the wagon trains
were organized; were loaded with their precious burden of life and hope;
did cross these mountain ranges and the long stretches of desert between
them; did reach and people Oregon. There remains the inquiry: What
manner of people were they who dared to do this? For surely it was the
coming of the women and children of these pioneer wagon trains that won
Oregon for the Stars and Stripes.
First of all, then, these pioneers were all frontier people. In 1842 the
only people who cared about the question of a migration to Oregon were
frontier people of these Western States; people already familiar with
the modes and the dangers of travel beyond the safeguards of
civilization. And this fact gives us our first test in the
classification of our pioneers—they were all frontier people. This
limitation was not intended, was not the result of any choice or purpose
of those concerned. As an applied test it developed itself from the very
nature of the case; for nobody but frontiersmen thought of going, or
cared to go.
Another important limitation developed itself in well-defined outlines
from the beginning of the movement and lasted throughout the real
pioneer period. It was the practical exclusion of capital from the
forces that originated its companies, purchased their supplies, or paid
for the help they needed on the journey. No people knew better than the
border Americans the power of money; but here again its absence was not
planned, was not desired. Its absence resulted from the nature of the
case; and the forces that moved those trains of farm wagons moved
without the stimulus of sustaining capital. The simple fact was that
capital saw in the migration of these pioneers no return of any
appreciable per centum of the funds to be expended. And thus it came to
pass that the wealthy were effectually excluded from the ranks of our
Oregon pioneers.
Frontier life has in it ordinarily less of poverty than any other
condition of society; a fact, doubtless due to the continual effort
necessary there to keep at all abreast of the incessant struggle against
the savagery of its surroundings. The long frontier line west of the
Mississippi in the early forties was aglow with a restless people
pressing westward, and but recently come there. The usual causes of
extreme poverty had not settled there; and so it came that few indeed
along this border line could be classed as dependent poor. And, perhaps,
none too poor to own a team and a good serviceable farm wagon, with
means sufficient to provision it with good wholesome food and clothing
for a journey to Oregon. But, if such there happened to be, we can
easily imagine the dismay it must have caused to have the name of such a
man proposed as a member of one of these companies. The fact, doubtless,
was that the unfitness of such a proposal prevented its occurrence.
The poor—the dependent poor—were not in the movement to Oregon. These
organized wagon companies, however well meaning, however generous they
might be as individuals, had no place in their organizations for the
dependent poor man. Yet one more of these causes of unfitness for such a
journey as the one we have been trying to picture, was that of chronic
feeble health. To start on such a difficult and dangerous expedition as
this unquestionably was during the proper pioneer family movement, from
1842 to 1852, would have seemed to all concerned too much like suicide
of the sick or the chronically feeble.
The expedition to Oregon, as they looked upon it, called for a power of
endurance that might be found only in the soundest. So by common consent
poor health ruled its possessor from the ranks of the pioneers. One can
readily see what must have been the result of this exclusion upon the
health condition of Oregon during the early period of its history, if
not through more remote chapters of its development.
We have thus forced upon us the conviction that the pioneer migration
across the plains to Oregon consisted almost wholly of frontier people.
That from their organized trains the rich excluded themselves; the
dependent poor were kept aloof, and those subject to chronic sickness or
feeble health at once accepted their inevitable exclusion. Now, with
these ineligible groups cancelled, we may well ask: Who were left to go
to Oregon.
Well, the proposed migration thus shorn of elements that did not fit the
heart of the movement, there remained scattered along the frontier
several thousands of the very material for pioneering. Men in the prime
of life with small families who were themselves accustomed to the
management of teams; were familiar with the dangers of desert travel and
mountain climbing; were accustomed to Indian alarms, many of them to
Indian fighting; and all of them accustomed from childhood to the use of
the rifle—these were restlessly waiting the time for movement. Doctor
Whitman was informed of this. And it was to take the message of
readiness to these that he decided on a winter journey. He may have done
other important things. He may have failed to do some things over
zealously ascribed to him. This herald work he did. He announced to his
synod in Oregon that he regarded this service as the work needing to be
done. He did this work, and the Missouri ox-wagons followed. For the
restless waiters on destiny along the frontier saw that their time had
come.
THOMAS CONDON.
------------------------------------------------------------------------
NATHANIEL J. WYETH.
His Adventures in the far West recalled in association with the family
home near Boston. “In Historic Mansions and Highways Around Boston,”
by Samuel Adams Drake, published by Little, Brown & Co., there is a
sketch of the family home of Nathaniel J. Wyeth, the early explorer
of Oregon. “Emerging from Mount Auburn,” the author writes, “we take
counsel of the swinging sign pointing to the lane leading to Fresh
Pond, which is found to be the natural source of numerous
underground streams, which are found wherever the earth is
penetrated to any depth between it and Charleston.” The writer
continues:
Time out of mind the shores of the pond belonged to the Wyeths, and one
of this family deserves our notice in passing. Nathaniel J. Wyeth was
bred and born near at hand. Of an enterprising and courageous
disposition, he conceived the idea of organizing a party with which to
cross the continent and engage in trade with the Indian tribes of
Oregon. He enlisted one and twenty adventurous spirits, who made him
their leader, and with whom he set out from Boston on the first of
March, 1832, first encamping his party on one of the harbor islands, in
order to inure them to field life. The organizers provided themselves
with a novel means of transportation—no other than a number of boats,
built at the village smithy, and mounted on wheels. With these boats
they expected to pass the rivers they might encounter, while at other
times they were to serve as wagons. The idea was not without ingenuity,
but was founded on a false estimate of the character of the streams, and
of the mountain roads they were sure to meet with.
Wyeth and his followers pursued their route via Baltimore and the
railway, which then left them at the base of the Alleghanies, onward to
Pittsburg, at which point they took steamboat to Saint Louis, arriving
there on the eighteenth of April. Hitherto they had met with only a few
disagreeable adventures. They were now to face the real difficulties of
their undertaking. They soon discovered that their complicated wagons
were useless, and they were forced to part with them. The warlike
tribes, whose hunting-grounds they were to traverse, began to give them
uneasiness; and, to crown their misfortunes, they now ascertained how
ignorantly they had calculated upon the trade with the savages.