Page:Oregon, her history, her great men, her literature.djvu/176

 The promoters were to take advantage of the disruption between the North and the South and organize a separate republic on the Pacific Coast. This meant that the United States of America was to be divided into three republics. "Pacific Republic," according to H. H. Bancroft, was to be an aristocracy somewhat similar to the ancient republic of Venice which, while providing for an elective executive, vested all its power in hereditary nobles, repudiating universal suffrage. Labor was to be performed by a class of people from any of the dark races— coolies, South Sea Islanders, mulattoes and negroes—invited to California and subsequently reduced to slavery. Had Oregon been sufficiently in sympathy with a movement of the character, she ■was not in position at this time to enter into the conspiracy because of the war claims she held against the federal government which would have been invalidated. Throughout the west also was the fear of an internecine war which might make this country an easy prey for a foreign nation. For these and other reasons the advocates of "Pacific Republic" awoke from their delusive dream, while the nation steadily frowned on the bold and unscrupulous scheme."

Compromise on U. S. Senator. A famous anrexciting session of the legislature was held in 1 860 during Governor White, .,. . . T, U. S. SENATOR JAMES W. NESMITH

aker s admmistration. 1 wo United States senators were to be chosen. The political horizon was already clouded by threats of the approaching (