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On the Trail d D 29 the building, giving rise over time to the rumor it was “slave quarters.’’ The boarding house provided lodging for gold miners headed for California. A memo attributed to the Oregon Writers Project of the Works Progress Administration said the slaves’ quarters—if they were slaves’ quarters—were still standing as late as 1940.44 But no longer. Freedom Delayed Robin Holmes said he was promised freedom for himself and his family if he helped Nathaniel Ford develop his farm. Holmes upheld his part of the bargain—within a few years, the Ford farm became well established and, apparently, quite profitable. But Ford proved in no hurry to fulfill his part of the agreement. One reason may have been that Oregon’s new provisional government had changed its rules on slavery. When the Ford wagon train left Missouri, slavery in Oregon was prohibited. A small group of Oregon Country inhabitants, including settlers, missionaries, trappers, and others, had met at Champoeg—then called Champooick— south of Portland on May 2, 1843, and voted to establish a provisional government. The vote was close, fifty-two to fifty, with British-oriented opponents suspecting—correctly—that the majority was trying to pave the way for American rule.1 One account, written in 1911, said “opposition to the Hudson’s Bay Company was the ruling passion with the men who were projecting the new government.’’2 At a follow-up meeting on July 5, 1843, those in attendance adopted a set of laws, known as the Organic Laws of Oregon, in effect, a constitution for their fledgling government. The organic laws were based on the laws of the Iowa Territory and incorporated a provision of the 1787 Northwest Ordinance, enacted by Congress to regulate slavery in the Northwest Territory east of the Mississippi River. Article 6 of the Northwest Ordinance declared: “There shall be neither slavery nor involuntary servitude in the said territory otherwise than in the punishment of crimes whereof the party shall have been duly convicted.’’ This wording became Article 1, Section 4, of the organic laws, which also guaranteed “freedom of worship, trial by jury, habeas corpus and the sanctity of private contracts.’’3 30 d D Breaking Chains The right to vote was limited to “every free male descendant of a white man’’ over the age of twenty-one. African American males would be denied the vote in Oregon until enactment of the Fifteenth Amendment following the Civil War. Women gained the right to vote in Oregon in 1912. The settlers also elected representatives to a nine-member legislative committee and named other officers to govern “until such time as the United States of America extends jurisdiction over us.’’4 To these settlers, the organic laws applied to a region, extending to the Rocky Mountains.5 The prohibition on slavery conformed to the policy of the British, who shared jurisdiction over Oregon. Great Britain had abolished the slave trade in 1807 and banned slavery throughout the British Empire, including its Caribbean colonies, in 1833.6 Oregon’s ban on slavery existed in one form or another throughout its history—from the provisional government in 1843, to the territorial government in 1848, to statehood in 1859. However, there apparently was never any effort to enforce the provisional government’s ban. Indeed, it may not have been enforceable. Oregon was not yet a part of the United States, and the provisional law “was not connected to a national legal or legislative structure or enforcement machinery,’’ Darrell Millner, a professor of black studies at Portland State University, told the author. “Anyone who wanted to bring a slave to Oregon, and who could effectively keep that slave under their control, was not breaking any law of the United States.’’7 Yet whatever the legal defects of the provisional law, it was nevertheless a firm statement that the early settlers opposed slavery. The influence of those more tolerant of slavery had not yet surfaced, but it soon would. d D Ford, possibly aware of the decision made at Champoeg to ban slavery, and most certainly aware of the British prohibition against slavery, may have assumed that he would have to free his slaves upon his arrival. However, while the Ford wagon train was en route to Oregon, a new legislative committee modified the anti-slavery law at its June 1844 session in Oregon City. Peter Burnett, who had emerged as the leading member of the committee, advocated the change, which was...

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