Page:Oregon Historical Quarterly vol. 2.djvu/375

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Political History of Oregon.
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one hundred and fifty-seven to one thousand four hundred and seventy-nine in favor of B. Wliitten. At the presidential election held November 3, 1868, the democratic electors, S. F. Chad wick, John Burnett, and James H. Slater, received an average vote of eleven thousand one hundred and twenty-five to ten thousand nine hundred and sixty polled for A. B. Meacham, Wilson Bowlby, and Orange Jacobs, the republican electors. It will be remembered "that the republican candidates were Ulysses S. Grant and Schuyler Colfax, and the democratic candidates were Horatio Seymour and Frank P. Blair. At this election the second judicial district was composed of the counties of Benton, Coos, Curry, Douglas and Lane. The third judicial district of the counties of Linn, Marion, Polk and Yamhill, and the fifth judicial district of Baker, Grant, Umatilla, Union and Wasco. The population of the state, according to the ninth census, taken in the year 1870, was ninety thousand seven hundred and seventy-six. The legal voters were twenty-four thousand and forty-eight. The population of Multnomah at that time was eleven thousand five hundred and thirteen; of Marion nine thousand nine hundred and sixty-four, and Linn-eight thousand seven hundred and seventeen. There were then twenty-two counties.

Governor Woods in his message to the legislature in September, 1870, strongly urged state aid for the construction of railroads. Governor Grover, in his inaugural address, speaking of the Fifteenth Amendment, said: "Since your last meeting, by the promulgation of the so-called Fifteenth Amendment to the Constitution of the United States, Oregon has been deprived de facto of the first element of its constitution, guaranteed by her admission into the Union—the right to regulate suffrage. In the farewell address of Washington we have the following remarkable and prophetic admoni-