tration and all the principles of the great Whig party." Dryer proved to be an excellent speaker, and an aggressive and fearless writer well suited for pioneer journalism. A new plant was secured by April, the old press being sent to the Puget Sound where it was used for the Columbian, the first paper north of the Columbia river.. With the acquisition of the new plant the Oregonian was well under way.
The Democratic party was fairly well organized by 1853 through the tireless agency of Asahel Bush—the Oregonian, though nominally non-partisan in 1851 saw that the Whigs must unite. This course was urged and brought from Bush in the Statesman of July 4, 1853, "The Sewer man, (Dryer), is in favor of organizing the Whig party. Greeley of the N. Y. Tribune says that the Whig party is dead in the states. But, like all animals of the reptile order it dies in the extremities last; and him of the Sewer the Oregonian is the last agonizing knot of the tail." Dryer pushed the organization of the Whig party week after week until he effected unity. He had one standard of measurement—political opinion. Everything savoring of Whiggery was good—anything tainted with Democracy was vile. The papers were full of politics and personal abuse based on political conduct— the Oregonian and the Statesman representing the most marked antagonism. The Oregonian did not openly ally itself with the Republican cause, but by 1856 it had taken up the issue against slavery. It had had as little sympathy with Abolitionism as the Statesman, but became aroused by the passage of the Kansas-Nebraska Bill. In 1854, '55 and '56 the Oregonian opposed statehood but late in 1856 Dryer turned squarely around and began advocating state organization. In his own words, "If we are to have the institution of slavery fastened upon us here, we desire the people resident in Oregon do it and not the will and power of a few politicians in Washington City. If the power of the regular Army is to be used to crush out
