Finally, on August 24, 1861, the name of Simeon Francis appeared in the masthead. He served as editor for about a year, resigning to become a paymaster in the army with the rank of major.
One of the early editorials in the Daily Oregonian under the editorship of Francis was one dealing with a subject much in the consciousness of Pacific Coast people in the early days of the Civil war—the proposed "Pacific Republic." The article, one of those combination news-editorials so common in those days, began:
While Senator Nesmith was in San Francisco on his way to Washington, he was waited upon by a committee, who stated to him that there was an organization of citizens in California, who had digested and matured a plan for establishing a Pacific Republic. The following were the leading features of the scheme:
[Texas and westward, including Chihuahua, Tamaulipas, Sonora, California, and Oregon were to be included in the new republic. The organization was complete, in San Francisco under the auspices of the Knights of the Golden Circle, an order powerful in Texas and Arizona; and after the secession of the South they were to march on the states in Mexico to be acquired or conquered, then offer California and Oregon a partnership in the new republic.]
Nesmith told this to Gen. J. A. McDougal, who used it in a public speech at Sacramento. The general is a decided friend of the Union "as is."
This scheme occasioned considerable concern in the Northwest, and opposition to it was one reason why the father of George H. Himes, a youth then at the beginning of his long career as printer and publisher, persuaded his son not to enlist in the Union army after the firing on Sumter. The two met in the road when the son was on his way to town (Olympia) to see about enlisting. The elder man pointed out that friends of the Union were going to be useful, in all probability, right in their own front yards here at home. The Pacific republic scheme did not develop, but it was a threat.
Francis appears to have made a satisfactory editor for the new paper. His long experience in Illinois and his good general knowledge of newspapering made him highly useful to the new daily. He was succeeded in 1862 by Amory Holbrook, a leading lawyer characterized by Harvey Scott as "an able man but an irregular worker." George H. Himes, who came to the Oregonian from Olympia as a printer while Holbrook was still editor, gives a graphic portrait of him.
"Holbrook had a law office not far from the Oregonian," said
