Page:History of Oregon Newspapers.pdf/94

Rh terizes Bush in so many words as, so far as Oregon is concerned, "the ablest editor of his day, 1851-1863." He does this in the course of an article in the 80th anniversary number of the Statesman (68) in which he says, further:

"The influence of Bush was more potent than that of any other man in holding Oregon to the Union, in connection with that of his partner in the Statesman, Senator James W. Nesmith. Bush could outdo any adversary in sarcasm and invective and was the spokesman of the "Salem clique" as the ruling power in Oregon politics. He had remarkable breadth of vision and gift of foresight; was endowed with outstanding courage; used his influence for the obvious ad vantage of Oregon in national affairs. His breach with Breckenridge secession Democrats split his party wide open but upheld Oregon as a Union state."

Bush is supposed to have been the moving force in the so-called Salem clique, which, historians agree, controlled Democratic politics through several years before the Civil war. The list, with some slight variation from time to time, includes Bush, L. F. Grover, Ben Harding, R. P. Boise, all of Marion county; J. W. Nesmith and Fred Waymire, of Polk county; M. P. Deady, of Yamhill county; S. F. Chadwick, of Douglas county; J. W. Drew, of Umpqua county, George L. Curry, of Clackamas county; William Tichenor of Coos county, and Delazon Smith, of Linn county. Most of these men were highly prominent in Oregon public affairs as governor, senator, judge, or in some other important position.

It was the issue of slavery that finally broke up the clique and split the Democratic party itself. Bush put the Statesman squarely behind Stephen A. Douglas and the Union wing of the party, while the southern wing of the party was headed by Breckenridge and Lane. Bush stood with Douglas for the Union when secession threatened, and combined with the Republicans in the Oregon state legislature to elect Nesmith and the newly arrived E. D. Baker in place of Lane and Delazon Smith, who had been Oregon's first United States senators.

The Statesman's drift away from Democracy, started with the Lane-Bush split, was never halted. How the Statesman became a consistently Republican paper is a story that belongs in the statehood period.

It appears to this writer that the Statesman was less of a force in other important phases of journalism than in politics. Business, economics, general culture received less proportionate attention, it seems, in this paper than in other newspapers of early Oregon. The Statesman, however, was not without influence in those other fields.

The Statesman was, of course, a much better-appearing paper