FEDERAL RELATIONS OF OREGON
375
and Seward would take an active part favoring the bill. Seward pointed out that already there were indications that if the bill did not become law Oregon would come in as CaliBut the Senate showed little disposifornia had, uninvited. tion to act, and even Douglas would move to table the measure, although he said he was willing to sit it out as long as there was any hope (it was then eleven o'clock on the morning 1
of Sunday, March 4th). Douglas said there was evidently a combination of Senators of the extreme North and the South bill. The vote to table, (27 to 11) however, did not reveal any ground for sustaining this accusation. 5 Of the eleven who voted against tabling, five were from New Eng-
to defeat the
two from Ohio, and one each from New York, Texas, Michigan and California. Thus the Thirty-third Congress came to an end with Oregon
land,
swaddling clothes.
in its territorial
still
In spite of occasional
echoes of the slavery contest over Kansas, that issue did not appear in any degree worthy of note in the Oregon discuswait until it was had a population equal to the ratio for one congressman; they were suspicious that the assurances of Joseph Lane were tempered by his hopes. This was, indeed, the case. Even in 1859, when the State was
Many
sion.
Senators were inclined to
affirmatively shown
that the territory
short by many thousands of the number Lane confidently stated in 1854. The Thirty-fourth Congress found Oregon before it with a
admitted, the population
new
bill
for statehood. 6
the measure
came up
fell
Late
in the
in the first session (June,
House and again met with
1856)
opposi-
on the population question. In all the preliminary discussion of the bill there were references to the pending legis-
tion
Galusha Grow of Pennsylvania, a Repub-
lation
on Kansas.
lican,
said very bluntly,
when controverting
the proposition
depended on Congress whether or not the people of Oregon should form a constitution, that there was no power
that
it
to prevent the people of a territory, although that organization .:
.
6 Globe,
XXXII,
1443.
The debate occurred
.IB.'
%
- ',Vd
ol^
23 and 24 June.; Ibid., 1443-58.
