Page:Oregon Historical Quarterly volume 13.djvu/51

 POLITICAL PARTIES IN OREGON 43 the veto was based as being in harmony with all the precedents, teaching and policy of Lincoln's Administration and avowing that it would therefore sustain him to the utmost, the Statesman made the following somewhat fervid utterance : "The radicals in Congress have abandoned both the Union party and the President. . . . The Copperheads are ready to catch at anything to divide us. They are now hurrahing for Johnson but cannot tell why. . . . We will be fools and recreant traitors if we permit the Copper- heads to champion the President. We are his proper and rightful defenders. ... As a Union party we must endorse Johnson unanimously. We must do it now. Your President has not deserted you. He has not gone to the Copperheads. . . . Never fear. Seward stands by Johnson ; the people stand by Johnson," etc. The Oregonian replied in like vein in a long editorial in which it practically read the Statesman out of theUnion party :5 6 "The President seems disposed to sever his connection with the great Union party, and the Oregon Statesman goes with him. So do the Review and the States Rights Democrat. . . .57 The Statesman has found its long sought opportunity. . . . The combination against the Union party which it foreshadowed, has been effected. . . . The 'Johnson party' is born! . . . The Statesman is 'for Andrew Johnson against all his enemies.' We are for the whole loyal party and will not sever our connection with it to go with a single person, even though that person be the one who has all the federal offices at his disposal. The Democratic party in the coming canvass will go for Pres. Johnson. He will be their champion. And as the Statesman sustains him against the Union party, it may find its proper associations with the Review and the Democrat. But there will fee no division in the Union party. The little circle of 'mutual admiration' men who make the Statesman their organ may slough off if they will. The party will be far better off without them." These two quotations, the one from the Statesman and the other from the Oregonian, show clearly the opposite positions which the two leading Union papers of Oregon held and the resulting attitude which they manifested toward each other. 56 Oregonian, March 3, 1866. 57 Statesman, April 17, 1865.