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.]

On the 14th day of February, 1859, this Commonwealth was admitted into the Union of States, and to be at that time a companion sentinel upon the mountain tops of the Pacific with the State of California. These were the only States at that time west of the Missouri, and the intermediate region was an almost trackless wild. The act of Congress admitting Oregon into the great galaxy of States declared "That Oregon be and she is hereby received into the Union on an equal footing with the other States in all respects whatever." This formal recognition of her equality does not convey to the mind the full meaning perhaps intended. Our State was thus recognized as an equal of any of the original thirteen colonial States, and in an historic sense, she was then, and is now, their equal, if not superior, in the precious memories that cluster about the great Oregon Country, in diplomatic and international events.

The historian says that under the treaty of Ryswick, in 1697, Spain claimed from the Carolinas to the Mississippi, and on the basis of discovery by De Soto and others, westward to the Pacific. She extended her sovereignty from