Page:Oregon Historical Quarterly vol. 6.djvu/357

351 THE WINNING OF THE OREGON COUNTRY. 351 in said territory otherwise than for the punishment of crimes whereof the party shall have been duly convicted," is exactly reproduced in the thirteenth amendment of the Federal Constitution, which emancipated the slave, and which was formally adopted February 1, 1868, r- nearly twenty years later. The same general lines are used in this act as now appears in the State constitution in the main, and it is a model of brief, clear, and intelligent legislation. Strange as it may now seem, this provisional government was supported by the citizens of both coun- tries, and offices under it could be filled by British subjects, who could in their oath of office swear to support the same and the organic law so far as was consistent with their duties as subjects of Great Britain. This organic act was modeled after the articles of compact contained in the ordinance for the government of the territory northwest of the Ohio River, passed July 13, 1787, which articles were extended to the new territory by the act of Congress approved August 14, 1848, which established the territorial government. It must be that some pioneer who helped to frame the act for the provisional government was an adr mirer of the Ordinance of 1787, and had carried with him into this wild and distant land a printed copy of the same. The treaty was signed as before stated, June 15, .1846, the proclamation thereof made by the President August 5, 1846, and yet the act of Congress creating a territorial government for this immense empire was not passed until August 14, 1848, a delay of more than two years. It is thus seen that although the two greatest nations of the earth, then and now, had decided in a formal way that the territory belonged to the United States, the gen- eral government took no direct control over It until this act, and the distinction is ours, that we were neither a state nor a territory for this time. Section 1 of this Federal statute declared that "from and after the passage of this