Page:Oregon Historical Quarterly volume 11.djvu/360

 330 W. C. Woodward Jesse Applegate that they would make the, best soldiers in the world. The latter, one of the leaders of the emigrant train of 1843, replied that "they were probably brave enough, but would never submit to discipline as soldiers. If the President himself had started across the Plains to command a company, the first time he would choose a bad camp or in any way offend them, they would turn him out and elect someone among them- selves who would suit them better." 1 The Westernism of the settlers was especially manifest in the political direction. The West had but recently come into its own as a power in national politics in the elevation of its popular hero Jackson to the executive chair. The first flush from the realization of that power had not passed. Every settler was a politician, and not in the mere sense of the word as used today when preceded by the word "practical." One fact which continually impresses one in studying this early period is the ease, fluency and pre- cision with which the average man could discuss the political issues of the time in their various phases. They were the em- bodiment of Aristotle's dictum that man is a political animal. The statement has been given that settlement was made not as largely from the extreme western frontier as has generally been presumed. This has political significance in the fact that the extreme individualistic tendencies of the nomadic, less responsible frontiersman, whose political theory if formulated, would have been to the effect that that government is best which governs least, was balanced by those who had become accustomed to stable political institutions and who had learned to value the same as the requisite of an endurable state of society. In a few words then, the Oregon settlers as a class, were plain, respectable, common people, in moderate circumstances, many of whom were fairly well educated but few of whom could be called cultivated. 2 They were independent, resolute, aggressive, national, with a natural gift for politics. They were scrupulously honest, fairly progressive, not usually given 1 Applegate, "Views of Oregon History," Ms. pp. 14, 15. 2Deady, "Oregon History," Ms. p. 71.