Page:Oregon Historical Quarterly volume 17.djvu/197



ESTABLISHMENT OF PACIFIC COAST REPUBLIC 189

The Constitutional Convention which assembled at Salem on August 17, 1857, determined to present the questions of slavery and of the admission of free negroes into the state as separate issues to be decided by the people when the Constitution should be submitted to them. Thus was their favorite doctrine of Popular Sovereignty nobly vindicated.

The constitution was adopted by the people of Oregon by a decisive majority. 1 Only one- fourth of the voters supported slavery, but free negroes were refused admission into the state.

In the month following that decision of the people the Democrats were confronted by the "two-edged sword" of the Dred Scott decision. An expression of opinion could not be avoided, and yet was certain to cause strife. In the regular session of the legislature December 17, 1857, a resolution was introduced : " . . . whereas slavery, is tolerated by the Constitution of the United States, therefore Resolved that the chair appoint a committee of three to report what legislation is necessary to protect the rights of persons holding slaves in this territory."

Whether, as was claimed, 2 the resolution was introduced in order to cause dissension in the Democratic ranks, 3 that was the result. The vote on the resolution was indefinitely post- poned, but the dissension that it bred could not be quelled.

Bush, the local leader of the Oregon Democracy, in the Statesman of December 8, 1857, endeavored to harmonize the Dred Scott decision with the doctrine of popular sovereignty. "It is," he said, "the very gist of the Kansas-Nebraska principle that the people are called upon when they form a state govern- ment to act upon the subject of slavery." As to the right of a citizen to have his property protected under the constitution he showed that the Constitution recognizes and protects as property within the states whatever the state laws determine to be property. In this discussion, however, he classed state governments, and people moving in the formation of state

1 7i95 to 3215.

2 Oregonian, Dec. 26, 1857.

3 The sponsor was Wm. Allen, a National Democrat