Page:Oregon Historical Quarterly volume 13.djvu/29

POLITICAL PARTIES IN OREGON 21 paper changed. There was no more depreciation of Lincoln and laudation of McClellan. The Statesman resumed its unwaver- ing allegiance of 1861. As far as actual political events were concerned, the year 1863 was an uneventful one in Oregon. There were no political campaigns no elections. However, it was a critical year. The various fortunes of the conflict in the East were closely fol- lowed in distant Oregon. As the prospect for the success of the Union arms grew darker, secession sympathizers in Oregon be- came more rampant. The Dalles Mountaineer, a Douglas Democrat paper, announced near the end of the year that six Oregon newspapers had been suppressed as treasonable, : s in the following order: Albany Democrat, Jacksonville Gazette, Eu- gene Register, Albany Inquirer, Portland Advertiser and Cor- vallis Union. Their suppression was acquiesced in by the Mountaineer, but it expressed a doubt as to whether they had done half as much injury to the Union cause as the blind parti- san Republican papers which had steadily endeavored to instil the belief that to be a friend of the Union it was necessary to subscribe to the doctrines of such crazy fanatics as Wm. Lloyd Garrison and Wendell Phillips. It charged that the aim of "these miserable apologies for newspapers" had been to force every man either into the abolition or secession ranks, and that apparently it had been a matter of indifference with them which of the traitorous factions he joined. Evidence is thus fur- nished from another source of the Union Democratic sentiment against emancipation. A series of resolutions was introduced October 2, 1862, in the Confederate Congress and referred to the committee on foreign affairs, recognizing the practical neutrality of the States of California and Oregon and the Territories of Washington and Nevada. The resolutions suggested the advantages which would result to the people thereof upon an immediate assertion on their part of their independence of the United States and proposed the formation of a league, offensive and defensive, between the said states and Territories and the Confederate 15 Quoted in Statesman, Dec. i, 1863.