Page:The Columbian - Washington Territory's First Newspaper.djvu/3

 close to $500 for "establishing a newspaper at some prominent point on Puget Sound, [the paper] to be called the Columbian . . . to be neutral in politics and religion, and devoted to the interests of northern Oregon." Simpson P. Moses, the over-zealous collector of customs on Puget Sound, and Lafayette Balch, founder of Steilacoom, each gave $100. George A. Barnes, Olympia merchant gave $75, and Mike Simmons, who was to receive only eighteen votes in his bid for territorial delegate to Congress from Washington Territory in 1854, gave $50, as did Edmund Sylvester, founder of Olympia. Smaller sums, ranging from $7.00 to $25 were pledged by the fifteen others, most of whom are associated with the early settlement of Olympia. The majority, too, had another thing in common—they were all Whigs, or had leanings toward the party.

Considering Dryer's active support of the Whigs, and the political complexion of The Columbian's financial backers, the insistence on neutrality for the paper at first appears strange. The answer apparently is twofold. First, Dryer's attitude during 1852 and a good part of 1853 seems to have been that the best course for the party was nonpartisanship. The people of Oregon, north or south of the Columbia River, should not be distracted by partisan politics. Second, by mid-I 853 when Dryer began pressing home the battle against the Democrats, he determined to sell The Columbian. A Democratic administration in Washington, D.C. prepared to send good Democrats out to govern newly-created Washing ton Territory and employee difficulties on the newspaper convinced him that at least in the case of the Olympia paper the best course to follow was neutrality. It almost wrecked The Columbian, for without politics enlivening its pages it came close to dying from sheer boredom.

In a sense then Wiley had been right, there was no "con trolling influence," or at least it remained negative. "The only battles we have to fight are for northern Oregon-a new territory," The Columbian declared time and time again from its first issue. No argument here-Dryer and the finan-