Page:The Columbian - Washington Territory's First Newspaper.djvu/7

 did agree to "remain in the office of The Columbian for the next three or four months for the purpose of collecting all outstanding debts." Mike Simmons, almost as illiterate as he was liked, evidently offered to pay Dryer for half the paper, but only if Dryer could find someone else to put up the other half. This fell through, and by November Dryer began negotiations with Wiley. Precisely what occurred is not known, but the announcement on December 3, I853, that a close friend of Dryer, Alfred Metcalf Berry, would join Wiley as co-owner of the paper indicates more promises than money changed hands. Berry's untimely death some seven months later prompted a letter to McElroy, who worked for Wiley, from J. C. Ainsworth to the effect that Berry had owed Dryer $1,000 for The Columbian. Dryer, Ainsworth wrote, "thinks that W[iley] and D[oyle] will try to swindle him out [of the $1,000]. I would merely suggest that as Wiley and Doyle are both Masons that you make them do what is right between Masons."

All of this, of course, went on behind the scenes, but no one could miss the fact that The Columbian had changed hands. "The Columbian has become the Washington Pioneer," Wiley announced in the columns of that paper on December 3, 1853, "a straightout radical Democratic Journal ... The paper has passed from death unto life, and its spirit purified from sin and whiggery." Somewhat more relaxed, Dryer noted the change, again without any mention of him self, in the December 10 issue of the Oregonian: "No doubt the [Washington Pioneer] will be a spirited sheet, and we trust an honorable political opponent." Two months later on February 4, I854, Wiley added a new partner-"Bible Back" Doyle-a new press, and a new name for his paper, The Pioneer and Democrat.

Wiley proved to be no more an "honorable political opponent" than Barrier the French consul, and for the next four years vocally led the territorial Democrats into vituperative