Page:History of Oregon Newspapers.pdf/102

Rh was the first that lasted long enough to acquire a legal status as a newspaper.

The little Vox Populi, however, appeared four times during a session of the territorial legislature, the first issue dated December 16, 1851, and the last January 16, 1852, and it was, as long as it lasted, a better newspaper in point of technic than perhaps most of the others issued during Oregon territorial days. A glimpse of the little publication, three of the four issues of which have been preserved at the Oregon Historical Society (76) convinces one that "the association of gentlemen" or perhaps someone in their employ, knew something about newspapering.

It was an open secret that Asahel Bush, of the Oregon Statesman, still located at Oregon City (though Bush was soon to move to Salem when the territorial government moved), Judge O. C. Pratt, of the Oregon supreme bench, and perhaps Matthew P. Deady were the moving spirits behind Vox Populi. George H. Himes, however, attributes a good bit of the editorial work as well as the printing to Victor Trevitt of Salem, later of The Dalles. Trevitt, Mr. Himes says (77), was not on particularly close terms with Bush at the time; but their association on the Vox Populi, if indeed they were associated, may have been just another instance of the "strange bedfellows" brought about by politics.

Trevitt was a printer, a native of New Hampshire, who had learned the printing trade in Ohio (78) and as a youth of 18 had gone to the Mexican war with an uncle; while serving as a sergeant he lost an eye when a soldier he was arresting used a bayonet on him Coming west, he worked as a printer for Bush at Oregon City. At the time of the appearance of Vox Populi he was working for the Indian department at Salem. (79)

The Oregonian used to refer to Bush as the editor of Vox Populi. A communication signed "Pete" dated from "Hillsborough" January 12, 1852, referred to "Hon. O. C. Pratt, assistant editor of the Vox Populi, prompter-general of the Salem legislature, &c., &c., &c., accompanied by Ass. A. Hell Bush, editor of the Oregon Statesman and Vox Populi. . ."

The greater number of the legislators in that session were meeting at Salem, with only a bare handful, referred to contemptuously as "the coroner's inquest," meeting at Oregon City. Vox Populi was all for Salem as the capital (which, of course, it became after vicissitudes familiar to all readers of Oregon history). The great burden of the Vox Populi song was the alleged inefficiency and misconduct of Governor Gaines, Whig, and two of the three judges on the territorial bench, the third member of which was the Democratic Judge Pratt. In all this the Vox was, it seems, seeing "eye to eye" with Bush's Statesman.