Page:Oregon Historical Quarterly vol. 1.djvu/378

352 unique advantages claimed for the Oregon country. But the Oregon movement, like most migrations, has most light thrown on its origin and motive by an inquiry into the conditions that made the old home undesirable, and in some cases even unbearable.

Not a few came from Missouri, Kentucky and other border slave states because they were not in sympathy with the institution of slavery. Their aversion to slave owning placed them at a great disadvantage in those states. Their families were not recognized as socially the equals of the more influential portion of society. They were accustomed to labor, and slavery brought a stigma upon labor. In the cultivation of tobacco and hemp, the main articles of export, the owner of slave labor had a decided advantage. The employer of free labor found it exceedingly difficult to make ends meet. Snubbed in a social way, worsted in industrial competition, in individual cases they were even mobbed when they tried to express their anti-slavery sentiments at the polls. Some of the more nervous of the slave-owning population, too, were impelled to seek relief in the same movement from the constant dread of a negro insurrection.

The "fever and ague" was a dread visitant to very many engaged in turning over the virgin soil of the Mississippi Valley. In Oregon they would be free from this curse, so the "fever and ague," with not a few, brought on the "Oregon fever." The frequent recurrence of the awful scourge of the cholera in the towns of the middle west in the late forties and early fifties made many, in the hope of safety, more than willing to brave the dangers and hardships of the journey to Oregon. The warning signals of approaching old age no doubt were the deciding influence with some who set out as modern