of whom were residents of Oregon, were my associates, appointed before my arrival. The officials of the Territorial Government of Oregon in 1853 were as follows:
Joseph Lane, Governor; George L. Curry, Secretary; George H. Williams, Chief Justice; Matthew P. Deady, Associate Justice; Cyrus Olney, Associate Justice; Joel Palmer, Superintendent of Indian Affairs; Benjamin F. Harding, United States Attorney; James W. Nesmith, United States Marshal; John Adair, Collector of Customs at Astoria; Addison C. Gibbs, Collector of Customs at Umpqua; A. L. Lovejoy, Postal Agent.
General Lane, within a few days after he assumed the duties of Governor, resigned to become the democratic candidate for delegate in congress. George L. Curry then became the acting governor. General Lane was nominated on the eleventh day of April, 1853. The resolutions of the convention affirmed the platform adopted by the democratic national convention, held at Baltimore in June, 1852, favored a branch of the Pacific railroad from San Francisco to Puget Sound, favored the annexation of the Sandwich Islands, and approved the course of General Lane in congress, he having been the delegate from Oregon after the death of Mr. Thurston, which occurred in April, 1851. A. A. Skinner, who had been a judge under the provisional government, was requested in a letter addressed to him by a large number of the citizens of Jackson County to become a candidate for delegate in opposition to General Lane. He accepted the invitation by letter, in which he assumed to be the candidate of the people, and claimed that the democratic party, or the "Durham faction," as he called that party, misgoverned the territory, misrepresented the people in congress, and otherwise was a very bad party. General Lane, in his canvass, appealed to the democrats for support upon party grounds, and was not too modest in
