Page:Oregon Historical Quarterly vol. 4.djvu/102

92 for by the President brought to pass, and what he had striven for so long and so patriotically fulfilled in the closing hours of his administration. During the years of territorial government the slavery question that was tormenting the brain and conscience of the North and the heart and chivalry of the South, played but little part in the life of the far distant territory.

The political complexion of the territory was overwhelmingly Democratic, but it was democracy of the free soil order, which only asked of the negro to keep out of its sight and out of its mind. In line with this temper was the enforcement against two unfortunate blacks of the territorial enactment against free negroes, which being promptly held constitutional by the territorial supreme court, the two offenders were gently but firmly deported from the boundaries of the "white man's country." This same deep-lying sentiment found added expression in the forth coming State Constitution, wherein it was enacted "No free negro or mulatto not residing in this State at the time of the adoption of this Constitution shall come, reside, or be within this State, or hold any real estate, or make any contracts, or maintain any suit therein; and the legislative assembly shall provide by penal laws for the removal by public officers of all such negroes and mulattoes, and for their effectual exclusion from the State, and for the punishment of persons who shall bring them into the State or employ or harbor them." Added expression was given to this point of view in the vote on the subject of admission of free negroes, submitted to the people in connection with the vote on the adoption of the proposed constitution—here the vote in favor of their admission was 1,081, contrarywise 8,640.

A potent influence at Washington towards Oregon's admission as a state was the well-known democracy of the State, and at home the indebtedness to the colonists