Page:Oregon Historical Quarterly volume 14.djvu/190



Mr. Scott was called to the editorship of the Oregonian just after the assassination of Lincoln. His article, "The Great Atrocity," was published April 17, 1865. Here was a tragedy in the greatest of all political contests in America. Broadly stated, the issue of the contest was between nationalism and state sovereignty, between ideas of Hamilton and Jefferson, between negro slavery and freedom, between North and South. During the whole period of his career, Mr. Scott was called upon to discuss this issue in its many collateral aspects, as the persistent one separating the two great parties. Almost his last article, April 14, 1910, related to the tragedy of Lincoln. His long-matured opinion he thus expressed:

""On this night, April 14, forty-five years ago, Abraham Lincoln was shot by an assassin. A crime as foolish as horrible. It changed (not for the better) the whole course of American political life, from that day to this, and it may be doubted whether we shall ever escape from the consequences of that horribly mad and criminal act.

"The irrational division of political parties today is a consequence of this crime; and no one can see far enough into the future to imagine when the course of our history, set awry by this act of an assassin, will resume rational or normal line of action."

The young Editor was confronted, after the Civil War, with large questions of Reconstruction. Opposed to slavery and disunion, he had to meet a hostile and bitter element. As a son of the Frontier West, he was born a nationalist and the nationalist idea grew with his manhood. Always in his editorial life that idea spurred him on. But there were many Democrats in Oregon before the War and more of them afterward. On the secession and slavery issues they lost to the Republicans, but in 1865-7 they won the State back. Issues of Reconstruction made acrimonious politics. A leading figure in the national policy was George H. Williams, Senator from Ore-