Page:Oregon Historical Quarterly vol. 26.djvu/362

 not be brought to a final vote on third reading, although the chairman strongly urged it. It was, in consequence, lost. It may be added that the bill as reported to the Senate had fixed the eastern boundary of the proposed state at the summit of the Cascade Mountains. This stirred up the Oregonian, which in an editorial, March 24, 1855, called attention to this feature, denouncing as treachery this curtailment of area, but in a later issue the paper reported Lane's statement that Douglas had so changed the bill in committee of the Senate. On the other hand, the Statesman, reporting the bill as having passed the House of Representatives said that as passed it placed the eastern boundary at the Cascade Mountains, but upon a later date it corrected the editorial statement to say that the boundaries under the pending bill were to be fixed by the convention in Oregon.

The following editorial in the Oregonian of February 13, 1871, was written by Mr. H. W. Scott, who, doubtless, had authority for the facts stated therein:

"About the time that Oregon was admitted into the Union, Joseph Lane, who was then a power in Oregon politics, delivered a political speech at Lafayette, Oregon, in which he related that there was much opposition in Congress to the admission of Oregon with the boundaries proposed. Stephen A. Douglas, then chairman of the Senate committee on territories, insisted that the Cascade Mountains should be the eastern boundary of Oregon. Lane related that he was in the committee room when the matter was under consideration. Mr. Douglas walked up and down, discussing the question. Stopping before a large map, he drew his cane across it on the shaded line indicated as the Cascade Mountains, and exclaimed, 'There is your natural boundary! This is the line marked by nature as the eastern boundary of your state. Oregon should lie wholly west of the Cascade Mountains.' And, as Lane related, Douglas went on to show why it would not be desirable to include in