positions they could fill more successfully than he could himself. This spirit of "in honor preferring one another" he began on the way to Oregon by resigning the captaincy, to which he had been elected. so that the company could be divided and the "cow column" of loose cattle move forward separate from the family wagons and the patient work oxen have a better chance to feed. This was for the general food on he way. There, perhaps, never was a community interest established as a governing power in which better fitted men were given the places than during the period of the Provisional Government of Oregon, continuing so until it was superseded.
In two particulars P. H. Burnett was not sustained by those coming later: First, the law to discourage negroes from coming or being brought to Oregon. Second, the law forbidding the manufacture and sale of ardent spirits. It is to the honor of the citizenship of Oregon that no man has ever been molested on account of his race.
In drafting this law forbidding negroes and mulattoes coming to or settling in Oregon the lion. P. H. Burnett was representing a class rarely considered in legislation the motherhood of. the southwestern frontier. I remember distinctly Captain Morrison saying, "In Oregon there will be no slaves and we'll all start even," on hearing Mrs. Morrison say that the only living creature of which she ever felt fear was a fugitive slave. Mrs. Morrison at the time she said that was the most complete embodiment of the gentleness of womanhood and the courage of manhood I have ever seen in one personality. P. H. Burnett in his law, which yet remains, though never used, represented the just fears of girlhood and womanhood of slaves fleeing for life and liberty. His being a true representative of the Oregon pioneers was clearly demonstrated by their votes even as late as 1862 when General Lane retired from his high estate as a public man and representative of Oregon. At the election of 1862 only one man known to sympathize with slavery and secession was elected.
The Applegate brothers, next to Burnett, claim attention for effectiveness in Americanizing Oregon. The Hon. Jesse
