Page:Oregon Historical Quarterly vol. 9.djvu/341

 Slavery Question in Oregon. 313 had never made any in the county, and to ascertain what it all meant, the farmers took a day off to see the show as it revolved near them. Several of us attended the meeting at the school house, within the site of the present town of Sil- verton, and after hearing the debate, we did not wonder at the general stir among the people and the consequent solicitude of the Democratic candidates, who though above the average of representatives from the "cow counties." were not habitual and trained public speakers. Their lone opponent, on the other hand, was extraordinarily gifted for such contests. He was a forcible and attractive public speaker, a capital story-teller, skilled in logic, an accomplished rhetorician whose diction and copious vocabulary needed no amendment to fit it for the press. He was new to the territory, having arrived overland in the fall of 1852, and engaging in the confinement of school teaching, but few persons had heard of him. But from the time of this notable canvass everybody heard of (>rauge Jacobs and learned something of his histoiy— that he was a native of Michigan, a graduate of the Ann Arbor Law School, and had a State reputation as a temperance lecturer. In 1854 Democratic politics was overshadowing in Clarion County and permitted little else to grow. Indeed, if I were to pei-sonify it. I should liken it to a great, rollicsome, thought- less fellow, over-bearing through ignorance, but of naturally good heart, and had had his own way so long that he con- sidered himself a normal outgrowth of human nature. Something more than ordinary was needed to awaken the sleeping faculties of the Marion County people, and so some Methodist ministers, having heard ]Mr. Jacobs speak, solicited liim to run for the Legislature on the Maine-law platform. That he came within twelve votes of being elected in the banner county of democracy, is sufficient proof of the thor- oughness of its presentation. The monstrosities and absurdi- ties of the license system in a country governed by law and among a people striving for the improvement of society, were as exhaustively shown as they ever have been since, after fifty years' experience with alcoholic demoralization. Mr.