ESTABLISHMENT OF PACIFIC COAST REPUBLIC 199
are said to have been given to Jefferson Davis that the Pacific Coast States would be disloyal to the Union. 1 It seems strange that such an experienced politician as Lane should have failed to read the lesson written in the election of 1860. Latham of California was the wiser, for he admitted in a speech in the Senate that California would undoubtedly remain true to the Union. 2 Yet there seems to have been greater danger from the disunion party in California than in Oregon. 3
Although the Radical Democratic party still had a strong following in Oregon, the fact that the Republicans had carried the state in 1860 made it fairly certain that no disunion scheme could have weight in Oregon. A leading politician writing to Senator Nesmith early in 1861 said : "You will see a good deal of blowing about a Pacific Republic for this coast. It does n't amount to anything now. If the Union should go into more than two pieces then it would most likely become a fact, and rather a small one. 4 Certainly there had been little chance of such a movement succeeding. While many people in Oregon believed in the sacred right of secession, but few were sufficiently interested to take up arms in defense of the right.
As the War went on, the various disunion papers edited in Oregon, one by one laid themselves open to prosecution and were suppressed. While in parts of the state men at first went to the elections armed, lest the pro-slavery party should attempt to re-enact the scenes of the Kansas-Nebraska strife, as they threatened to do, 5 the sense of danger gradually passed away, and a sense of security returned.
1 Elaine, Twenty Years in Congress, I, 308.
2 Congressional Globe, 2d session, 36th Congress, Ft. I, 684.
1 See San Francisco Weekly Bulletin Oct. 18, 1862, for schemes of California disunionists. When the plan for a Pacific Republic was abandoned they planned the seizure of the Mexican province of Sonora, which the French also coveted. At the commencement of the war, California secessionists had formed a league of Knights of the Golden Circle, taking oath to support a Pacific Coast Republic, and had planned the seizure of the Custom House .and the Mint in San Francisco, the Navy Yard at Mare Island, and the depot at Benicia. Fortunately their plans failed because the person chosen to lead the attack upon the public buildings named refused to accept the responsibility; and before another leader could be agreed upon, Gen. Edwin V. Sumner, U. S. A., assumed command at the Presidio in San Francisco, thus relieving Col. Albert Sidney Johnston, who went into tht Southern States via Mexico at once
4 Deady to Nesmith, Feb. 28, 1861.
$ Conversation with Mr. George H. Hirnc*.
