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64 W. C. WOODWARD wife?" and "D n a nigger!" On two points they kept up an incessant clamor they lost no opportunity to denounce "niggers" and "taxes." 9 * The June election resulted in a decisive victory for the Democratic ticket and the first defeat which the Union party had suffered since its organization. Smith was elected con- gressman over Logan by a majority of 1209 and the Demo- crats secured 43 of the 69 seats in the legislature, each house of which had a Democratic majority. The Oregonian took the defeat philosophically 96 and after the first shock sought to ex- plain how it happened. It stated that ever since the Califor- nia election of the preceding fall when an 18,000 Union ma- jority in that state had been turned in to a 9,000 Democratic one, it had been very difficult for the Union party to maintain its ground in Oregon. The Dalles Mountaineer, Democratic, attributed Logan's defeat to the finance question and the heavy taxes that the people were now compelled to pay. It even went so far as to assert its belief that if a vote were to be taken in Oregon upon the question of paying the national debt, the latter would be repudiated. 9 ? But the Union-Repub- lican press maintained that their defeat was not attributable to defection in the, ranks of their party, but that it was entirely owing to accessions to the Democratic party within the past two years from the disbanded Confederate armies to the "in- flux of a rebel, guerilla population" which had been emigrating westward to escape the consequences of reconstruction. 98 The election figures at least partially supported the Union-Repub- licans in this contention. The latter had barely held their strength shown by the election of 1866. The vote for Logan, admittedly not a strong candidate, was 300 above that given Governor Woods two years previous. But the Democratic vote had increased by 1800 in the same period, and, what was 95 Daily Oregonian, June 5. 96 "All that we have to say at this time is soon said. We are beaten. We (the Union party) are too big to cry and we are too badly hurt to laugh." Daily Oregonian, June 2. 97 Quoted in Daily Oregonian, June 8. 98 Oregon Sentinel, June 13, Daily Oregonian, June 12.