Page:Oregon Historical Quarterly volume 12.djvu/355

 POLITICAL PARTIES IN OREGON 347 publican members of the ticket receiving the lowest and highest vote, respectively. The Union candidates carried every county in the state with the exception of Josephine, which gave Miller a majority of 10 over Gibbs for governor. The Union legis- lative tickets were elected almost entire. As an illustration of how even the political extremists put away personal and politi- cal prejudices of the past and joined hands in support of the Union in 1862, the private correspondence between Jesse Ap- plegate and Judge Deady presents striking evidence. Deady, so recently a radical, pro-slavery Democrat and a delegate to the Charleston Convention, voted for McBride and the state Union ticket. Applegate, uncompromising and radical Repub- lican, relented 1 and voted the whole Union ticket. 2 The paean of victory sung by the Oregonian, June 7, is suggestive of the high tension of the campaign and is all the more significant, in that the language of the paper had been noticeably tempered after Dryer laid down the editorial pen. The fierce exultation of victory gave as full expression to the elemental passions as would have been displayed by the ancestral tribesmen of the writer in the forests of Germany.3 The somewhat tortuous history of the many edged Viva Voce ballot law was further indicated in this election. After the election of 1858, the Argus in denouncing the evils of the old British and Oregon Democratic method of voting, declared that owing to the length of the ticket, the polls were kept open in Oregon City until 12 o'clock at night and were then closed without recording the votes of numbers who had been wait- ing for hours for an opportunity to vote. The crowding, squeezing and jamming around the polls was declared to be excessive all day long.* For a radical change of view, note the 1 Supra, p. 305. 2 Applegate to Deady, June 8, 1862: "You are right, I did relent and voted the Union ticket straight. I did it upon neighbor Estes' principle. He said 'I do not like some of the Union candidates in fact I hate some of them, but I hate the secessionists worse.' " 3 "Rejoice ye sons of freedom. Let the Heavens resound. . . Let the imps of secession hide their deformed heads in everlasting shame and disgrace. . . Run and hide, ye diminutive emmets of disunion. . . ^The day of your judgment has come. . . In a word, you are 'dead and d d.' " 4 Argus, June 12, 1858.