194 DOROTHY HULL
and supported the admission of Oregon. As it was, the new state was admitted by a majority of 114 to 108. 1
The final passage of the bill did much to restore the lost prestige of Lane in Oregon, although there seems to be no good reason for giving him any credit for its passage. Rather the opposite. Reconciliation between Bush, the leader of the Regular Democrats, and Lane was impossible, but the National Democrats were ready to fly to the support of the latter. Their views were largely similar to his, and with him at their head they hoped once more to secure control of the party machinery. 2
In this they were successful, and in the democratic conven- tion of April 20, 1859, Bush was forced to see his enemies in control of the party from which he had practically read them out in earlier years : to see their tenets laid down as planks in the party platform, and their candidates nominated for office. It was a bitter blow. Bush was not, however, without means of defense, and the columns of the Statesman for the years 1859, 1860 and 1861 blaze with denunciations of Lane and his party.
As dissensions among the Democrats increased the Republi- cans were growing stronger, and straining every effort to form a party organization strong enough to defeat the Democrats at the polls. The Republican Convention which met in April, 1859, avowed the strongest devotion to the Union ; announced its opposition to the further extension of slavery; but denied the right of the government to interfere with the institution in the states where it already existed. A declaration was also made in favor of popular sovereignty, which, while not a good Republican principle, would certainly strengthen their position in Oregon, as it was a doctrine on which Oregonians had been bred and nurtured, and to which they clung, whether Demo- crats or Republicans. The Republicans, then, condemned the Dred Scott decision, but upheld popular sovereignty : the radical Democrats, who under the leadership of Lane had gained con-
i Franklin P. Rice, Eli Thaycr and the admission of Oregon in Proceedings of the 50th Anniversary of the admission of Oregon to the Union, Feb., 1909. a Quarterly, XII, 248.
