Page:Oregon Historical Quarterly volume 13.djvu/53

 POLITICAL PARTIES IN OREGON 45 At the special session of the legislature above referred to three resolutions upon the subject were passed. The first an- nounced agreement with Pres. Johnson in his position that suffrage is a question that constitutionally belongs to the states, and not to Congress and that suffrage is a political and not a natural right. The second applauded the Negroes for loyal support of the, Union and declared it the duty of Congress to guide and assist them in attaining to the highest standard of which they were capable. The third declared that if the Negroes did not fare well in the South under the new conditions, Con- gress should take steps toward colonizing them in a new state of their own. The Oregonian, November 18, deprecated "set- ting the whole state in an uproar by discussing with vehement warmth" a question that "is not now and probably never can become a matter of paramount importance here." It asserted it to be a matter for each state to settle for itself and still did not commit itself on the general issue. Beginning in the year 1866, the Democratic papers of the state pushed the subject to the front in the effort to force a political issue in the approaching campaign on the subject of negro suf- frage or as they presented it, negro equality. The Oregonian, whose great anxiety was to avoid such an issue, was finally, May 5, goaded into the expressive, effective retort : "One cannot pick up any Democratic newspaper without finding these terrible words (Negro equality) staring at him from all parts of the page. . . . The world has furnished many remarkable instances of 'the ruling passion strong in death,' but the Democratic party has been per- mitted to become about the most remarkable example on record. Born of the slavery interest, nurtured by the profits of human bondage, hoisted to and kept in power by the slave trade and propagandist and now dying of an overdose of 'nigger' and self-administered treason, the Democratic party will have no consolation not derived from recollections of the 'nigger' and strongly objects to being buried in anything but a 'nigger' shroud, a 'nigger' coffin and a 'nigger' grave. It will expire with 'negro equality' last on its mortal tongue," Interest in and preparations for the election of 1866 began to