Page:Oregon Historical Quarterly vol. 20.pdf/388

 370

LESTER BURRELL SHIPPEE

during the Civil War, a land grant was finally made, it was no longer the road to Oregon but the road to California. Eventually, after the War, a line was extended north to the Columbia and Puget Sound, but it was many years before the first direct route, Whitney's route, was threaded with rails. Railroad or no railroad, however, Oregon's population until,

continued to increase although not with the rapidity with

which California's grew.

The Oregonians were beginning

to

think not only that it was time to shufflq off the territorial shell for the dignity of a State, but that a State would receive

much more

consideration from Congress;

ills

would be rem-

edied and rights acknowledged with greater readiness if a real Representative sat in one house of Congress and two Senators in the other.