Page:Oregon Historical Quarterly vol. 2.djvu/343

Rh at his farm at Derry, Polk County, Oregon. His death occurred there June 17, 1885.

The third legislative assembly had held its regular session, convening September 12, 1864, but the necessity that the Thirteenth Amendment should be ratified by three fourths of the states at as early a time as possible induced Secretary Seward to request Governor Gibbs to call a special session to ratify the same. This he did, and, pursuant to his proclamation, the legislature, then consisting of a house of thirty-eight members, and a senate of eighteen members, convened in its first special session on Decembers, 1865. I. R. Moores was speaker of the house, and John H. Mitchell president of the senate. On the same day Senator James M. Pyle, of Wasco, introduced Senate Joint Resolution No. 1, ratifying the Thirteenth Amendment, and on motion of T. R. Cornelius, Senator from Washington, Columbia, Clatsop, and Tillamook, it was made the special order for 10 o'clock Wednesday, December 6, 1865. The resolution passed the senate on that day by a vote of thirteen in its favor, three against, and two absent. The negative votes were cast by C. E. Chrisman, of Lane; C. M. Caldwell, of Josephine; and Bartlett Curl, of Linn; and those absent were D. W. Ballard, of Linn, and H. W. Eddy, of Clackamas. In the house the democratic minority opposed a vote on the resolution upon the ground that the legislature had not been chosen upon the issue, and Lafayette Lane on Friday, December 8, 1865, offered a resolution to adjourn sine die that day, the motion being tabled by a vote of twenty-eight; he, Thomas F. Beall of Jackson, Isaac Cox of Josephine, and James D. Fay of Jackson offered a long protest against the proclamation of the governor convening the special session and the further sitting of the house, the main ground of which protest was that the issue had not been voted on, but the real basis there-