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 POLITICAL PARTIES IN OREGON 335 came so offensively treasonable in expression, that early in 1862 the Government began the suppression of the worst of them. The Albany Democrat, the first to be suppressed, re- ferred to Confederate leaders as "the glory of the land" and to the Union soldiers as "the enemy." The Corvallis Union called the Northern soldiers "white niggers," and continually referred to Lincoln as a usurper and perjured tyrant. It re- produced a long article from the London Times, arguing in favor of a separation of the Union. The Portland Advertiser, "the poor, sniveling, secession sheet," according to Parson Adams, reprinted approvingly an article from the London Herald ridiculing President Lincoln and lauding President Davis. 1 A much quoted expression from the Advertiser was this : "We have every reason to invoke the Divine interposi- tion to stay the hand of Lincoln, paralyze his efforts and thus put a stop to the unnatural, intestine war that he has inaugu- rated and carried on." There appeared in the Oregonian of October 19, 1861, a long letter from Jesse Applegate on the situation in Oregon. He stated that after having traveled extensively through the state during the summer and fall he was forced to the conclusion that there were many disunionists in "this young Oregon, which, scarcely out of the shell of Territorial pupilage, stinks with an element foul and corrupt, bordering, I may at least safely say, on actual treason, whose rankness 'smells to heaven'." He asserted that almost anywhere, toryism was dis- gustingly common ; that inquiry among a certain class would bring protestation that they were all Union men the kind that got their Union from the Corvallis printing office." He pointed out that the old school, party hidebound Democrats, would read only that to which they had been schooled and ac- customed. The Democratic party had so long been dominated by the pro-slavery element that they had learned to feed on what reeked with slavery and secession. Hence they naturally clung to the Corvallis Union, Albany Democrat and Portland Ad- i See Argus, March i, March 22.