Page:Confederate Military History - 1899 - Volume 1.djvu/495

Rh that the aggressors on the South were in the minority. &quot; Why, sir,&quot; he exclaimed, referring to the last Congress under Buchanan s administration, &quot; in that Congress the Black Republicans had an overwhelming majority in the House against us, and a tie vote in the Senate, with a Republican casting vote.&quot; The debate, wandering over a wide field of theories touching here and there the measure under discussion, was terminated by laying the bill on the table.

The foreign affairs committee had for some days under consideration a plan for establishing at least a sympathetic connection between the Confederate States and the States of California and Oregon and all territories beyond the Rocky Mountains. A league, offensive and defensive, was embodied in a series of resolutions which had been previously presented by Mr. Foote. California this year was entirely in the control of the Republican party. Leland Stanford was elected governor in 1861, defeating the two Democratic candidates. The united Democratic vote in 1861 was over 63,000 and Stanford’s vote was 56,000, so that if Democrats had united Stanford would have been defeated. The party continued its divisions and was defeated again in 1862, when the legislature was strongly Republican. In Oregon similar divisions of the Democrats took place, and the old designations of &quot;Douglas Democrats&quot; and &quot; Breckinridge Democrats&quot; were used. The &quot;Douglas&quot; Democrats united with the Republicans in the Union party, and elected Governor A. C. Gibbs. The Democratic ticket polled 34,000 votes.

The counterfeiting of the Confederate treasury notes by parties in the United States (referred to in the President’s message) who sold them in quantities to United States soldiers and others for use among the ignorant and unsuspecting people of regions over-run by the Federal armies, had become such a serious evil as to provoke strong remonstrance against the practice as being contrary