Page:Oregon Historical Quarterly vol. 9.djvu/254

230 T. W. Davenport. this T>ian was neither a fool nor a moral derelict, but an intel- ligent and, in all matters non-political, a fraternal and highly sympathetic neighbor, whose ancestors were of New England and I'endered efficient service in the upbuilding of the Ameri- can commonwealth. He was as good as his forbears, and his only misfortune, that he was saturated to blindness by the spirit of party which The Oregon Statesman was then aggra- vating. Less than four years later, his party went to pieces on the question of slavery extension, for squatter sovereignty had proved to be a delusion and a snare to the propagandists, and they would have no more of it. Somewhat silenced by this event, he, with about two-fifths of his fellow partisans, stuck to the squatter sovereignty wing and met defeat along with their leader. Senator Douglas. Then came secession and the question of Union or disunion, when he had no alternative but to merge himself with the Republicans or go out with the South. Certainly, this was no dilemma, for every impulse and instinct of his nature had ever been for the whole country, one and indivisible. Thousands of Oregon Democrats were likewise impelled, but while they were ardent to support the administration of Lincoln, they could not bear the humiliation of accepting the name "Republican," to which they had so unfailingly attached the stigma "black," that they were under an automatic necessity of continuing them as one word. In this crisis, the Republicans of Oregon vindicated their title to patriotism by dropping the party name under which they had triumphed at the polls, and inviting their fellow citizens of whatever politics to unite with them under the simple and fitly describing appellation, the Union party. A few Re- publicans resented such surrender as a humiliation, and said, "the Democrats have been wrong and we have been right; let them come under our banner or remain out. ' ' But there was one conclusive, because rational, answer: "The Union is imperiled; all other questions are obsolete, and this is no time to be higgling about party names." The Republican State Central Committee, consisting of H.