Page:Oregon Historical Quarterly volume 11.djvu/384

354 W. C. Woodward ture of 1847 had introduced his resolutions denouncing the secret appointment of Thornton by Gov. Abernethy as agent of the Provisional Government at Washington, Curry secured them for publication in defiance of the Board of Directors and was forced out by the Abernethy following. In his lengthy adieu Curry says he refused to edit a one man paper edited in that man's own interest, as demanded ; hence his dismissal. He strongly deprecates the establishment of the censorship of the press in Oregon. 1 So much notice of the early editorial history and difficul- ties of the Spectator has been given for three or four reasons. It gives, through T'Vault, the first evidence of that linking of isolated Oregon with national politics which was to dominate her political future, to the minimizing of her natural local in- terests. It gives a striking picture of the political situation in Oregon during the period — of the party or sectional jealousies existing. It tells the story of the attempt to enforce the cen- sorship of the press in the new territory and indicates how futile such an attempt would be in a community of typical western Americans whose shibboleth was freedom and who had written "freedom of the press" as a guaranteed right in their fundamental law. It furnishes us the connecting link between two periods, the Provisional Government and the Territorial. The new paper, with all its problems, marks a transition from the old to the new — from the local and the isolated to the expansive and the national. ilbid., January 20, '48.