LESTER BURRELL SHIPPEE
392
in connection with
Oregon were not primarily about Oregon; other any territory, as the discussions of 1848 and 1850 demonwould have and did serve the purpose as well; but strated, Oregon was held up on account of the effect action would have on other questions. So it was in the statehood question. Oregon interested most legislators on account of its bearing on the rapidly approaching crisis over the disputed nature of the
Union; for the Democrats as a whole its admission seemed to mean political strength and they worked for its admission on that ground. For those who thought that "popular sovereignty" was the solution not only of the controversy about Federal and States' Rights but of its by-product and its cause slavery and its extension Oregon was an illustration of the way the doctrine worked. Those who were fighting the extension of slavery saw in the admission of Oregon an obstacle in the path they meant to follow. Even in the West where Oregon found from the beginning its champions, it must be confessed that Oregon's significance for the West as such played a greater part than did Oregon as an entity. The westerners, those of the Mississippi valley, saw in the action of their brothers on the Atlantic seaboard a disposition to subordinate to their own interests the functions Each additional territory, then, was a
of the government. potential State,
and each State meant votes
in
both houses of
Congress.
Obviously
this conclusion that the
Oregon Question was
for
the most part a subordinate phase of some other national issue does not in any way affect one's opinions of the territory itself, history and its development. As a matter of fact Oregon gained immensely by being thus brought into prominence; no territory had been so liberally advertised for so long a period; no territory was more bountifully treated in the disposal of the its
public domain, so that emigration thereto was vastly stimulated and the disadvantage of its distance from the old settled porAnd in the tions of the Union to a large degree overcome.
end Oregon became a State much more easily than had been the case with most territories.
