Page:Oregon Historical Quarterly vol. 5.djvu/157

Rh Here again a question offers, why did a senator from Missouri urge the imposition of the laws of Iowa upon the people of Oregon? Why not those of Missouri, or Illinois, or Michigan, rather than those of a fledgling territory? Two explanations suggest themselves.

The first explanation is that Iowa was adjacent to the Territory in controversy. It was consequently simply a matter of course that Senator Linn should propose to extend over Oregon and the intervening region the govermnent and laws of the territory lying next to the lands in question. The second is that Lewis F. Linn, Benton's colleague, in the Senate, was a half brother of Henry Dodge, the first Governor of Wisconsin and Iowa. They saw much of each other during this period in Linn's career; for from 1841 to 1845 Dodge was the territorial delegate of Wisconsin in Congress. It is not, therefore, a violent presumption to believe that in the course of their intimate conversations, Dodge gave Linn much counsel and made suggestions that the latter made use of. It would not be strange if Dodge should urge upon Linn the wisdom of making use of the Iowa laws, made up as they were chiefly of statutes that he, Dodge, himself had helped to frame in the Council of Michigan, or had signed as Governor of Wisconsin. The Iowa laws reproduced the traditional institutions and methods of administration common to the free States carved out of the Northwest Territory. Hence, it would be polite for a Missourian, in those days when slavery was charging the air with suspicion of everything that came from south of Mason's line, if he wished to secure Northern sentiment in favor of his bill, to urge the adoption of the laws of a territory like Iowa.

Now, it is more than probable that the nature of the provisions of Linn's bill had by 1843 become known to the pioneers in Oregon. Learning that the laws of Iowa were those urged for their government by their staunchest friends in the halls of Congress, it would have been the natural and the diplomatic thing, if such a suggestion is not preposterous, for the committee that drew up the articles for the