Page:Oregon Historical Quarterly vol. 9.djvu/350

 322 T. W. Davenport. will feel in their inmost souls that the popular verdict is true and righteous altogether. This must have been a notable debate, as it made so pro- found an impression upon the audience that several of them remembered the heads of discourse and were able to reproduce them after the lapse of forty years. Especially could the disputants recall the statement of the question and the trend of the argument, which has been given in the language of the writer, as there was no verbatim report and nothing more accurate than human memory, but as those with whom I talked, at various times since, were in substantial agreement, I have thought the episode sufficiently attested to be worthy of a place in this history. One man said it was a vote-maker for the anti-slavery cause, and if so must have turned the scale in Jackson County, as the returns showed only twenty- one majority for freedom, while the free negro was excluded by a vote of sixteen to one. Will it, or will it not, be a stunning fact to our posterity, that in a poll of 837 voters only forty-six of them were willing that the negro should be free to make his domicile in this great State and pursue such avoca- tions a^ his God-given faculties inspired him to? And with- out asking whether the time will ever come when the negro shall be treated as a man and a brother entitled to equal rights, let it be set down as a fact that, in the year 1857, only forty-six white men in Jackson County, Oregon, had the humanity and courage to declare such a conviction. One disappointed Democrat said, ''Jacobs could outtalk our fellows." Another survivor remarked that Mr. Fondray and Mr. Wait made a poor showing. In truth, what other showing could be made? In ancient times, when slavery was the alt- ernative of death, to prisoners of war, there was a rational basis for that condition, but as a substitute for industrial freedom in the light of the nineteenth century, it was an. absurdity without a parallel. Very likely the proponents of slavery were outclassed, but in the nature of things they were at great disadvantage. In all the controversy from the be- ginning to the end of the agitation in the United States, no