Page:Oregon Historical Quarterly volume 11.djvu/373

Political Parties in Oregon 343 people were conscious of it or not, they were fully in sympathy with the prohibition of slavery, each of their subsequent frames of government containing the same provision. But it was a protest not only against human servitude but against the Negro himself. The settlers in general had little sympathy with slavery but those who had been in direct contact with it in the Southwest had a greater aversion against free Negroes, 1 this attitude being crystalized in an act of the first legislative com- mittee prohibiting their presence in the new Territory. 2 Re- mote as Oregon was from the arena of contest, the early posi- tion of her people upon the great issue was to play a truly remarkable part in her history. The self-governing western men were chary of a too free delegation of authority to their representatives in political affairs and resented what they considered undue assumption of the same. The first general election was held May 2, 1844, as provided for in the Organic Law. The men elected to the Legislative Committee had, with the exception of two mem- bers, arrived in Oregon since the adoption of the instrument of government. 3 Recognizing defects in the latter, they pro- ceeded in their first session to make amendments to it gener- ally, assuming that the submission of the latter to the people was unnecessary. Though the changes made were doubtless on the whole salutary, the manner of making them created much dissatisfaction. The legislators, who had assumed the authority of constitution makers, were bitterly denounced for remodeling the Organic Law "without warrant" first obtained from the people and without submitting their work when done to their sanction or rejection." 4 When the legislative com- mittee of 1845 met it took the extreme position that it was not a constitutional body because the law under which it had been elected had not been submitted to the people and that it must appeal to the latter for authority to alter the fundamenal law. Accordingly, after drawing up a revised constitution, it ad- ilbid., p. 74. 2Bancroft, Vol. i, pp. 437-439. 3Bancroft, Vol. 1, p. 471. 4Applegate, "Views of Oregon History," Ms., p. 41.