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46 W. C. WOODWARD be manifested very early. In November of the preceding year, in an editorial, "The Slate Made Up," the Oregonian made a bitter attack on the Statesman and "the little knot of chronic office-seekers who hover about the state capital," for trying to dictate the ticket to be nominated by the Union party. It ac- cused the Statesman, Nesmith, Harding and a few others, of making it up from among their own ilk, asserting that there was but one of the old Republican party among the "Clique's elect." In another attack, December 2, under the caption, "The Salem Program," the Oregonian charged the Statesman and its following with arranging to organize a third party a conserv- ative Union party, shutting out the radical Copperhead Demo- crats on one side and the radical Republicans on the other. From this time each paper labored to show that it represented the real Union party in Oregon. In 1865 the Democrats began to claim the next election on the strength of the emigrant vote, a good indication of the ex- tent and political nature of which had been given in the presi- dential election of the preceding year. Immediately at the close of the war it seemed to be generally understood that there would be a general emigration of Southern refugees to the Northwest, and the papers took up the discussion as to the legal and political status of such as voters. The legislature of 1864 passed an act prohibiting any one voting in Oregon who had been directly engaged in the rebellion, saving his rights under Lincoln's amnesty proclamation. This law was modified at the special session of 1865 in a way which the Statesman declared made it "just such a harmless affair as any guerilla from Price's army would desire." 5 ^ It asserted that there were five or six hundred rebels in Oregon who had never taken either the amnesty oath of Pres. Lincoln or Pres. Johnson and objected strongly to allowing such a vote. It demanded that the Confederate rebellion be treated as something more odious than a Democratic holiday. In the language of An- drew Johnson "treason should be made odious." 59 Statesman, Jan. i, 1866.