ruary 12, 1859; the bill was approved by the president on Monday, the 14th, on which day Lane and Smith presented their credentials to the senate, and were sworn in. On drawing for their terms, Lane with his usual good luck drew the term ending in 1861, while Smith's would expire the following month. On the 15th Grover took his seat in the house, to which he would be entitled only until the 3d of March.
The satisfaction which the friends of state government expected to derive from admission to the union was much dulled by delay and the circumstances attending it. Party leaders had taught the people to believe that when Oregon became a state the war debt would be paid.[1] The same leaders now declared that after all they had gained little or nothing by it, and were forced to solace themselves with pleasant messages from the western states, from which had gone forth the annual trains of men and means by which Oregon had been erected into an independent commonwealth.[2] She had at all events come into the union respectably, and had no enemies either north or south.
- ↑ See comments of Boston Journal, in Or. Argus, Sept. 24, 1859.
- ↑ Kansas City, Missouri, on the 4th of July, 1859, attached the new star representing Oregon to its flag amidst a display of enthusiasm and self-aggrandizement.
come in with her. With a less obnoxious delegation from Oregon, the votes of many republicans would have been different. As it turned out, however, the very men for whose interests Gen. Lane had labored so earnestly—I mean the ultra-southern leaders—refused to vote for the admission bill, although they had the whole delegation elect of their own kidney. And it would have been defeated but for the votes of fifteen of us republicans who thought it better to disinthrall Oregon from presidential sovereignty, and from the sphere of Dred Scott decisions; and even in spite of your obnoxious delegation, to admit the new state into the union, rather than remand it to the condition of a slave-holding territory, as our supreme court declares all our territories to be. Hence, if there is any question raised about which party admitted Oregon, you can truthfully say that she would not have been admitted but for republican aid and support; republicans, too, who voted for it not through the influence of Gen. Lane and Co., but in spite of the disfavor with which they regarded them.' Or. Argus, May 28, 1859; See U. S. H. Rept, 123, vol. i., 35th cong. 2d sess.
