was not thoroughly willing to move in the interest of business. In a letter written three weeks after starting publication in Oregon City,[1] he said:
"I get very little patronage in Oregon City." This patronage was to grow, despite weak competition from the Spectator. The paper, under the skilful editing of the militant young easterner, became the "bible of the Oregon Democracy" and the lusty opponent of the Whigs, Dryer, and the Oregonian in everything on which it was at all possible to take issue.
Bush came to head the very successful little group of politicians which became known a few years later as the "Salem clique," which directed things Democratic in Oregon—in those early days that virtually meant all things political—for years. When the capital was moved to Salem, the politically minded Statesman moved with in June, 1853. Two years later the legislature met at Corvallis, newly chosen capital. Bush followed along with the Statesman, explaining that since he was state printer was necessary to be at the seat of government. When the legislature itself passed resolution to take the territorial government back to Salem the Statesman was river steamer (not such tremendous job in again put aboard those days) and moved back to Saiem, where publication was resumed December 18, 1855. And there, with some vicissitudes in the 60's, has remained ever since.
THE "OREGON STYLE"
The journalistic life of Asahel Bush in Oregon was one of struggle throughout. We have seen how he battled to get control of the Statesman in the first place, and his ownership and editorship of the paper were marked by continual conflict. Those were days of strenuous politics. The Civil war was imminent, and its shadows were cast over every community in the land. Bush fought the Whigs from the start he battled the Know-nothings he fell out with Senator Joseph Lane; he was in the thick of the fight on the statehood question, though not consistently on the same side.
Bush was a hard fighter, sharp of tongue and pen, and his struggles with Editors Dryer of the Oregonian, Adams of the Argus, and others helped fashion the "Oregon style," to which H. S. Lyman and Leslie M. Scott have directed particular attention.
In this era (wrote Lyman)[2] was formed what became known as the Oregon style, a species of storm-and-stress composition, strong chiefly in invective, and availing
- ↑ Letter dated April 17, 1851.
- ↑ History of Oregon, IV., 289.
