Slavery Question in Oregon. 323 Southern statesman ever proposed a discussion with the abolitionists as to the ethical basis of chattel slavery. Most students of history are familiar with the scathing rebuke ad- ministered by John Randolph of Roanoke to a Northern rep- resentative in Congress who had shown his recreancy to free- dom. "I envy not the head or the heart of that man from the North, who rises here to defend slavery upon principle. ' ' Possibly this Phoenix debate may be considered a small affair as affecting the general result, but I have given it a promi- nent place for the reason that, so far as any one knows, it was the only public debate involving the basic principles of human society, ever held in the Territory, and for the further reason that it has escaped the notice of our Oregon historians. The disseminators of free-soil sentiment in Jackson County had been doing effective work among a population so thor- oughly engrossed by the excitement of gold mining that it was a difficult task to attract their attention to even as important a matter as the character of their own institutions, and hence those advocates are worthy of remembrance by future genera- tions. Samuel Colver, senior, was one of the Ohio pioneers before 1800, assisted General Lewis Cass in the survey of the public lands, an uncompromising foe of slavery and a man of rare force and influence in that State, where he resided for more than fifty years. He and his wife (octogenarians) emigrated to Oregon in the spring of 1857 to reach their two sons, Samuel and Hiram, both talented and educated and equally earnest with their sire in propagating anti-slavery doctrines and proclaiming the horologue of freedom. There too was Uncle David Stearns, a radical of the radicals, an Esop in form and manner, adroit, pungent and thought-pro- voking; one of a class of men who are generally considered handicaps by the moderates in the same service, but who are as necessary to progress as pioneers to state-building. One con- trast may be observed between them and the so-called safe and sane persons who constitute the bulk of reform movements; they are the undismayed propagators of the faith which the followers dilute and ameliorate — as it were, sugar coni to
