Page:The History of Oregon Bancroft 1888.djvu/376

358 principles upon the alleged participation in the Whitman massacre of the catholic priesthood.

Anything like cant entering into American politics has always proven a failure; and the democratic party were not too refined to give utterance to an honest disgust of the bigotry which attempted it in Oregon. The election resulted in the complete triumph of democracy, Lane's majority being twenty-one hundred and forty-nine. There were but four whigs elected to the assembly, two in each house. A democratic prosecuting attorney was elected in each judicial district. The party had indeed secured everything it aimed at, excepting the vote for a state constitution, and that measure promised to be soon secured, as the majority against it had lessened more than half since the last election.

In spite of and perhaps on account of the dominance of democratic influence in Oregon, there was a conviction growing in the minds of thinking people not governed by partisan feeling, which was in time to revolutionize politics, and bring confusion upon the men who lorded it so valiantly in these times. This was, that the struggle for the extension of slave territory which the southern states were making, aided and abetted by the national democratic party, would be renewed when the state constitution came to be formed, and that they must be ready to meet the emergency.

In view of the danger that by some political jugglery the door would be left open for the admission of slavery, a convention of free-soilers was called to meet at Albany on the 27th of June, 1855. Little more was done at this time than to pass resolutions