Page:The History of Oregon Bancroft 1888.djvu/434

416 The democratic party, which had so long dominated Oregon, and to which whigs and know-nothings offered but a feeble opposition, had so conducted affairs during the Indian war of 1855–6 as to alienate some of its original supporters. It had, however, a strong hold on the people in the war debt, which it was believed Lane, through his influence with the administration, would be able to have discharged. So long as this appeared probable, or could be reasonably hoped for, much that was disagreeable or oppressive at home could be tolerated, and no steps were taken, at first, to follow the movement in the Atlantic States which was dividing the nation into two great parties, for and against slavery. Southern Oregon, which was never much in sympathy with the Willamette Valley, the seat of democratic rule, was the first to move toward the formation of a republican party. A meeting was held at the Lindley school-house, Eden precinct, in Jackson county, in May 1856, for the purpose of choosing candidates to be voted for at the June election.

The meeting declared against slavery in the new states. The democrats might have said the same, but at this juncture they did not; it remained for the first republican meeting first to promulgate the sentiment in the territory. It was a spontaneous expression of incipient republicanism in the far north-west, not even the Philadelphia convention having yet pronounced. The election came; none of the candidates of Eden district were chosen to the legislature, though one know-nothing from the county was elected, and the