FEDERAL RELATIONS OF OREGON
389
The
fight for admission was over and Oregon's Senators and Representatives immediately entered upon their duties in Congress. Lane drew for the class the term of which expired in 1861, while Smith found himself in the class which would end his term in a few days, on the third of March, 1859. Before the close of the session there was one further echo of the Kansas-Oregon population controversy. Hale (New Hampshire), in moving as an amendment to the appropriation bill a clause removing the restrictive proviso from the Kansas act called upon the Senators from Oregon to state whether they would do unto others as they had been done by according to the argument which had been much used in urging the passage of the Oregon bill the public faith was pledged to admit a territory when the population reached Would they vote to let Kansas in ? Both Lane and 60,000. Smith refused to commit themselves, showing that they could work in harmony with their Democratic brethren of the Senate, and both asserted that Oregon's population far exceeded that of Kansas in fact, Smith declared it was a third greater,
.
misleading statements of the Republican party. in the Union, and all questions of population were was Oregon realm of theoretical speculation. Nevertheless to the relegated despite the
the returns of the census of 1860 are interesting, for it appeared that Oregon had a population of 52,465 while that of Kansas
was 107,206. With statehood Oregon felt herself in a position to remedy some of the evils which had beset her no longer was it necessary to tolerate a governor and other administrative officers
who were not elected by Oregonians the long-standing grievance against the Federal Government over Indian war expenses might stand a chance of redress. There were hopes that the postal service, against the inadequacy of which they
They bitterly, would be improved. such public lands as fell to the State could be much more satisfactorily managed than had been the case before. In short the people of Oregon felt that their time of tutelage had
had complained long and felt that
lasted long enough, yes, far too long,
and recognition of
their
