Page:Oregon Historical Quarterly vol. 4.djvu/106

96 him for the vice presidency, declared without hesitation for the Union; and the idol of the Oregon democracy, tainted with secession and disunion, spurned even by his former friends, made his way unaccompanied and unheralded to his southern Oregon home by a devious trail, fearing the mob justice of the justly enraged citizens of the leading valley towns. And yet it was not all one way in Oregon in those troublous days. In certain quarters the disunion sentiment was powerful and dangerous.

In the Historical Society's rooms in Portland hangs a banner first flung to the breeze on July 4, 1861, not forty miles from that city. It is fashioned of long strips of red and white ribbon, and in the center of its starry field is an eagle, made by the deft fingers of a pioneer woman. The old immigrant who donated it to the Historical Society has related how, when he heard the news of the fall of Sumpter, he immediately determined to celebrate the Fourth of July by flinging the Stars and Stripes to the breeze from his own home and with that end in view had procured the ribbon and caused his liberty loving wife to fashion it into his country's flag. This coming to the ears of certain hot-heads among his neighbors, he was called upon by a committee and asked if it was true that he intended hoisting the Old Flag on the anniversary of the nation's birth. To his affirmative reply came the sharp retort that it would never be allowed to stay, but would forthwith be torn down.

"No man will haul down that flag except over my dead body," was the stern reply of the sturdy old pioneer. The days ran by and the self-formed committee thought that the old pioneer had heeded their warning, when one day the news spread that a flagstaff, tall and straight, and as unbending as the old man's determination, lay before the pioneer house. Then the elders of the hot-heads began to counsel moderation, to tell of the old neighbor's