194 T. W. Davenport. public or quasi-public nature, with no thought of or reference to historical lessons. The present conditions and proximate precedents are alone in evidence. Our voters go to the polls and decide questions of the here and now, casting a retrospec- tive glance, rarely reaching beyond a life-time; and I have observed that the so-called illiterates have as good reason for their choice as the college graduates. It seems to be, not so much a question of what is right and proper, as it is one of courage and freedom to perform it. But go ahead, and if you can do more than exhibit the virus which paralyzed the Oregon Democracy in their partisan servitude to the slave power, you will not have labored in vain." To a philosopher there is no more interesting and instruc- tive chapter of history than the one giving an account of the renaissance of African slavery in the United States, for prob- ably there is no other instance of such a complete and over- whelming reversal of opinion and consequent government as that exhibited by the American people during the first sixty years of the National Union. In the sluggish industrial pro- gress of ancient times such a rate of change would have been impossible, and, to us moderns, accustomed as we are to wonders, the transition seems astounding. Just to think of a people, organizing a government conceived in the spirit of the Declaration of Independence and dedicated to the establish- ment '^f justice as derived from that broad and all-including principle, passing in less than two generations to the condi- tions just preceding the Civil War ! It is one of the marvels in human affairs. It is not the intention here, however, to give anything more than a sufficient synopsis to understand the Oregon phase of the question, and why we on the Pacific Coast, nearly two thousand miles from the scene of actual conflict, should have felt enough interest to take a vote show- ing to what extent we had become involved in the general demoralization. In the way of denial or amelioration of this great retrogres- sion, some writers lay much stress upon the so-called compro- mises of the Constitution, as though there were anything in
