Page:Oregon Historical Quarterly vol. 20.pdf/399

FEDERAL RELATIONS OF OREGON 381 Nevertheless the Senate still found objections to the Oregon bill. Some of the Republicans thought that debarring free negroes nearly nullified the rejection of slavery, although Douglas pointed out that if the clause should be stricken out Oregon could insert it again the day after her admission. Some felt that the same spirit which debarred negroes caused the prohibition of land owning by negroes, mulattoes and Chinese. Moreover, according to Wade, an Ohio Republican, the Chinese feature brought out a new question and might cause international complications by placing the Chinaman on a level with the negro. Some Republicans and many Southern Democrats opposed admission on the old ground of too small population. Brown of Mississippi very frankly said that he should vote against the bill for if the Republicans wished to exclude a free State it was not for him to interest himself particularly in getting it in. If the admission, said he, would be put on the ground that Kansas had come in as a slave State (the constitution had not yet been rejected under the terms of the congressional act of 1858) and a balancing free State was desired, then he would vote for it; as for the talk about debarring free negroes, it appeared to him that Massachusetts, New York and other Northern States desired to see an increase in free negroes but wanted to send them all to Oregon.

On the nineteenth day of May a test vote was taken on a motion to postpone the bill until the following December. The motion was lost and the passage of the bill followed, by a vote of 35 to 17. An analysis of the vote shows the following results:

For Admission

Against Admission 8

Democrats

22

Republicans Native Americans

12

6

1

3

Free State

21

6

Slave State

14

11

~

XXXVI,

2203-9.