Page:Oregon Historical Quarterly volume 11.djvu/356

 326 W. C. Woodward A factor at once economic, political and social is found in that institution whose influence had already become dominant in American politics — slavery. The small land holder in the Southwest felt its blighting effect. Indeed, its influence was not limited by Mason's and Dixon's Line. As a three-fold factor it touched the life of the Southerners, while it was in its political phase first, and economic second, that it gave its impress northward. To the man who hesitated to raise his family in the vitiating atmosphere of slavery; to him who chafed under the growing abasement of free labor and the iniquities incident to a social system based in servitude ; to him who felt the great impending political and sectional struggle, the Oregon trail appeared as the road leading out of bondage. A concrete example is found in the expression of one of the foremost of Oregon's early settlers, Lindsey Applegate, to the effect that he came to Oregon because a pro-slavery mob, sustained by an intolerant public sentiment, drove him and his friends from the voting place in his native state in 1842. 1 To these general motives may be added others which apply in a more restricted manner. No inconsiderable number were drawn by religious zeal, quickened by the prospect of a new field of effort in the evangelization of the native races of the preat Northwest. The impress of this class was marked in the new community for years. Some sought a new and wider sphere of political activity in the hope of personal advancement, where youth would not be a reproach or where a mantle of charity would be thrown over the past ; where all might start anew on a common basis. There was a class of men who had preceded the bona fide settlers to the West — to the mountain districts especially. They came in quest of those fur bearing animals, the struggle to obtain which has had so great a sig- nificance in the winning of the West. Fur traders primarily, these men early became colonizers. On the other hand, follow- ing the earlier emigrant trains came the gold seekers and those drawn by opportunities offered in business and specula- 1C0I. Geo. B. Currey, Address before the Oregon Pioneer Association, 1887. Proceedings, p. 35.