Page:Oregon Historical Quarterly vol. 3.djvu/367

Rh if not on the Pacific Coast. Prior to this time he had become well known as a teacher, and as a forcible political writer and speaker. He wrote in the Oregonian over the signature of "Junius," and was the author of a locally famous political satire entitled "Brakespear: or Treason, Stratagems, and Spoils." This was published in the Oregonian of February 14 and 21, and March 6 and 13, 1852, and afterwards printed in pamphlet form, and illustrated with a number of rude cartoons the first attempt of the kind in the territory which added spice to the text.

The leading democrats of that day, among them Judge Matthew P. Deady, Judge O. C. Pratt, Asahel Bush, editor of the Oregon Statesman, John Orvis Waterman, editor of the Oregon Weekly Times, Col. William M. King, and Gen. Joseph Lane, were mercilessly caricatured. All were veiled under fictitious names, but the peculiarities and characteristics of each one were so aptly described that the disguises did not hide their identity.

Mr. Adams was born in Painesville, Ohio, on February 5, 1821, both parents emigrating from Vermont to Ohio when it was a wilderness. On his father's side he is connected with the Adams' family of Massachusetts, and his mother, whose name was Allen, descended from Ethan Allen of Ticonderoga fame. He went to school at the academy in Milan, Ohio, for a time, and obtained through his own efforts a classical education at Bethany College, Virgina. He came to Oregon in 1848, and the first thing he did, after locating a claim in Yamhill County, was to join with his neighbors in building a schoolhouse, wherein he taught the children of the settlers during the following winter.

As a master of cutting invective he was rarely equalled and never surpassed. His proficiency in this direction, together with similiar qualifications on the part of two of his territorial contemporaries, gave rise to what was lo-