To the Promised Land: A History of Oregon Government and Politics

Preface and Acknowledgments

xi Preface Politics in the Pursuit and Exercise of Power “Somebody should write a book.” As it turned out, I was that somebody. For nearly thirty years I taught high school in the Beaverton School District. One challenge I repeatedly faced when preparing curriculum for my Oregon government classes was the dearth of published materials on the subject. It didn’t take long to realize that I’d have to do my own research and writing. These experiences reinforced my belief that someone needed to write a general history of government and politics in Oregon appropriate for high school and lowerdivisioncollegestudentsandtheirteachers,aswellasforthoseOregonians having an abiding interest in our state’s history. To the Promised Land: A History of Government and Politics in Oregon is the result. This book is unique. To the Promised Land is a history of the Oregon Legislature, our governors and their administrations, our United States Senators and Representatives, and our political campaigns—over a span of nearly 200 years. In some respects it is a textbook, while in others it is a gigantic drama of people and leaders, played out in a state where issues and large personalities stand out vividly. Coupled with my teaching background is my personal experience in state government: I served two terms in the Oregon House of Representatives, 197579 . In addition, I have been a Democratic precinct committeeman and been active in numerous political campaigns over a span of fifty years. In short, I have been an insider, a campaigner, an elected officeholder, volunteer, and advisor who has experienced state and local government firsthand. Why, the reader may ask, did I choose the title To the Promised Land? There are two reasons: First is the obvious biblical meaning, the Promised Land being either heaven, the land of Canaan promised to Abraham and his descendants, or simply a place believed to hold final happiness. Second, Americans wanted to come to Oregon because of the promise of free land. xii preface In the late 1820s, New Hampshire-born and college-educated Hall Jackson Kelley embarked on a crusade. Kelley believed that God intended him to organize and lead a movement of Americans across the continent to settle the remote Oregon Country. The New Englander barraged Congress and newspaper editors with letters and petitions pressing for the colonization of Oregon by Americans. In 1829, Kelley organized an association of like-thinkers: the American Society for Encouraging the Settlement of the Oregon Territory. Historian Malcolm Clark, Jr., put Kelley in perspective when he wrote: “Kelley proposed to bring salvation to the savages, and at a profit. There would be opportunities in the Promised Land for merchants as well as missionaries . A settler might, at his option, work either in the Lord’s vineyard or his own.”1 Joining Kelley and other enthusiasts for the American settlement of Oregon were two Missouri senators: Thomas Hart Benton and, later, Dr. Lewis Linn. Hall Kelley made it to Fort Vancouver—the Hudson’s Bay Company’s outpost on the Columbia River—in October 1834, after a perilous two-year crossing that included traversing the length of Baja and Alta California. In March 1835, Kelley sailed to the Sandwich (Hawaiian) Islands. He never returned to Oregon. Although Kelley realized his dream of going to Oregon, he failed in almost every other aspect of his vision. Suspicious and all too ready to blame others for his failings, he drifted into an unhappy life, overcome by his growing paranoia. Although Kelley lived long enough to witness (from afar) the largest human migration in North American history—the cross-continent journey of 330,000 Americans (including thousands of recent European immigrants) to the Pacific Coast and Far West—he did not achieve his dream of personally leading these emigrant crossings or serving as an important American leader in Oregon. Rather, Hall Kelley’s place in Western history is this: he was one of the first champions of the idea that Oregon was a place where Americans should go to live, where the dream of heaven on earth was to be found. Indeed, the Protestant and Catholic missionaries and the capitalists, merchants, tradesmen, and craftsmen, along with the great body of farm-folk who settled here in the mid-19th century did so because most of them believed the ideas that Hall Kelley was selling. Senator Lewis Linn began introducing bills in Congress in 1838 to bring the Oregon Country, still jointly occupied by Great Britain and the United States, into the exclusive...