Page:Oregon Historical Quarterly vol. 9.djvu/221

 Slavery Question in Oregon. 197 prevails. For, let it be borne in mind, that there was no time in the legal existence of the Territory when slavery was not under prohibition of law, first by the Provisional Government (Sec. 4, Art. I) and later by act of Congress organizing the territorial government, and continuing in force until the admission of Oregon as a State in the year 1859. Conse- quently, any one may see that our agitation did not grow out of objective conditions existing here, but was imposed upon the Oregonians from the outside. Or possibly it may be nearer the truth to say that it was a case of political seduc- tion, in which the seduced did not possess the virtue of re- sistance. In either case, it did not come from any statute or regulation by the general government, specially applicable to our ppople, but by extra-legal, political influence which came as an incident in the aggrandizement of slavery in the nation. All students of American history are acquainted with the estimation in which slavery was held in revolutionary times; that it was a deplorable fact, to be tolerated by the govern- ment, but to be restricted within its occupied boundaries, with the hope and expectation that under our form of government it would quietly disappear. Vain hope ! tolerating an evil and letting it alone is no way to end it. It soon grew out of the stage of toleration, repudiated the terms of reproach cast upon it, and contested with free institutions for supremacy in the government. There was continual conflict, for the antagonism between free and slave institutions, is irrepressible. This natural antagonism many people did not see, or affected not to see, and blamed the abolitionists with making all the disturbance. But the true state of the case is well set forth by Horace Greeley in his "American Conflict," on page 354, volume I. "Why can't you let slavery alone?" was imperiously or querulously demanded at the North throughout the long strug- gle preceding that bombardment (Fort Sumter), by men who shouk! have seen, but would not, that slavery never let the North alone, nor thought of so doing. "Buy Louisiana for us!" said the slaveholders. "With