good thing that could be said of them was that they provoked free criticism of themselves, and were thus instrumental in emancipating the thought of the people.
A democratic convention for the nomination of a representative was called, to meet at Eugene in April, the call being declined by Marion, Clatsop, Curry, Washington, Polk, and Tillamook. George K. Sheil was nominated,[1] and the convention adjourned without choosing candidates for presidential electors, which was a part of the business. Two days later the republicans held a convention, at which delegates from seventeen counties were present. At this meeting
- ↑ The other candidates before the convention were J. K. Kelly, S. F. Chadwick, John Adair, and J. H. Reed. Or. Statesman, April 24, 1860.
1860 the Portland Daily Times issued one or two numbers, and suspended. It was revived in 1861, and supported the government. In the latter part of 1860 Henry L. Pittock, the present publisher of the Oregonian, purchased that paper, and started a daily, which appeared for the first time Feb. 4, 1861. In 1859 a journal called the Roseburg Express was published in Roseburg, on the press of the Chronicle of Yreka, L. E. V. Coon & Co. publishers, which ran for a year and failed. Corvallis had had, after the removal of the Statesman, the Occidental Messenger and Democratic Crisis, both of which were dead in 1859. T. H. B. Odeneal was publisher of the latter. In place of this a secession paper called The Union was being issued in 1860 by J. H. Slater. In 1859 W. G. T'Vault withdrew from the Jacksonville Sentinel, selling to W. B. Treanor & Co., who employed the ubiquitous O'Meara as editor until 1861, when he was succeeded by Dellinger and Hand. About the beginning of 1859 The Dalles Journal was established by A. J. Price, afterward controlled by Thomas Jordan, an army officer, whose interference with state politics was not regarded with favor. It passed into the hands of W. H. Newell in 1861, who started The Mountaineer. About the close of 1859, Delazon Smith caused the Oregon Democrat to be established at Albany for his own purposes. It was published by Shepard, made war on the Salem clique, and sustained Lane. Early in 1861 it was taken in charge by P. J. Malone, an able writer, and in 1865 became the State Rights Democrat, with O'Meara for editor. The Pacific Christian Advocate was removed from Salem to Portland about this time, its editor, Thomas H. Pearne taking great interest in politics. In fact, no paper could gain a footing without politics; and with the exception of the Oregonian, Argus, and People's Press, every paper in the state was democratic. At Roseburg the Oregon State Journal was started in June 1861 on the materials of the Roseburg Express, which had not been long in existence. In August 1861 O'Meara and Pomeroy began the publication of the Southern Oregon Gazette, a secession journal, which lived but a brief period. As an evidence of the increased facilities for printing, it might be here mentioned that T. J. McCormick, who was the publisher of the first literary magazine in Oregon, styled the Oregon Monthly Magazine, in 1852, and the Oregon Almanac, in the spring of 1859, published in good style a novel of 350 pages by Mrs Abigail Scott Duniway, called Captain Gray's Company. The Statesman was first published on a power press, May 17, 1859. After this printing improved rapidly, and newspapers multiplied. The first daily Statesman was published July 20, 1864.
