reputation of their beloved institution, and could bear anything better than to hear it called sinful and morally wrong, and if any Oregon Democrat in good standing was ever guilty of such an offense, during the years when the agitation was rife here, without losing caste, the incident has passed into oblivion and his name is unknown.
The foregoing estimate of the temper and attitude of the Oregon Democracy at that time I have sometimes heretofore expressed, and by some of them it was thought to be an extreme view of the situation, but such was my impression at the time, and after a lapse of fifty years, and the heat, and perhaps prejudice, engendered by the contest have passed with them, I am confident that my statement is rather under than in excess of the truth. The Hon. George H. Williams, at that time one of the Supreme Court judges, by appointment of President Pierce, and of course inclined to be lenient in his judgment as to his party and political brethren, in an address read before the Legislative Assembly, February 14th, 1899, on the occasion of its exercises commemorating the fortieth anniversary of the statehood of Oregon, spoke from manuscript, in part as follows:
"Whether Oregon should be a free or slave State, had now become (1857) the paramount issue in our local politics. A paper had been started at Corvallis, called The Messenger, to advocate the establishment of slavery in Oregon. I was a Democrat, but in early life imbibed prejudices against slavery that to some extent diluted my Democracy. Many of the most influential Democrats, with General Lane at their head, were active for slavery, and there was little or nothing said or done among the Democrats on the other side of the question. I prepared and published in The Oregon Statesman an address to the people, filling one page of that paper, in which I enforced, with all the arguments at my command, the inexpediency of establishing slavery in Oregon. I am not aware that any public speech or address was made on that side of the question by any other Democrat in the Territory. Many Democrats in private conversation expressed their opposition to slavery, but they spoke 'with bated breath and whispering humbleness,' for the dominating spirit in the Democratic
