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Let Voters Decide d D 127 The Constitutional Convention convened in the Marion County Courthouse in Salem on August 17, 1857.24 The courthouse was a wood-frame building, sixty-eight by forty feet, built in 1854 in the center of a block facing High Street between State and Court streets. Its sole distinctive feature was four Doric columns at the High Street entrance. Next door, on the southeast corner was the county jail.25 The delegates elected Judge Deady convention president, a choice alarming to anti-slavery members. Dryer reported that “no delegate opposed to the Salem Clique had been placed at the head of a committee and (he) declared that every committee had a pro-slavery majority.’’26 Judge Williams was named chairman of the judicial committee, where he anticipated the slavery issue would be assigned. It wasn’t. The Great Slavery Non-Debate Jesse Applegate, the independent anti-slavery delegate from what was then Umpqua County, introduced a resolution on August 18, 1857, to prohibit any discussion of slavery during the Constitutional Convention. He introduced it on the second day, while the convention was still getting organized. His resolution declared: [T]he discussion of the subject of slavery by this body is out of place and uncalled for, and only calculated to engender bitter feelings among the members of the body, destroy its harmony, retard its business and unnecessarily prolong its session.1 Applegate’s motive was to prevent a pro-slavery clause from slipping through the convention. He “feared a trick would be played, as in Kansas, and slavery be forced upon the people of Oregon without their consent,’’ wrote Timothy Davenport. Also troubling to Applegate, and others as well, was the sight of Deady, “the most influential pro-slavery man in the Territory,’’ at the head of the convention, with Democratic partisans in the majority.2 Applegate had abhorred the slave culture in Missouri, and once declared “whoever is against the extension of slavery is of my party; whoever is for it is against me. My platform has but one single plank.”3 Anti-slavery delegates 128 d D Breaking Chains didn’t want a clause prohibiting slavery to emerge from the convention either. They were concerned that such a clause “would have turned every pro-slavery voter into an opponent of the Constitution as a whole [and] insured (sic) its defeat at the polls and kept a free state out of the union.”4 d D Applegate’s resolution was at once debated, giving a strong flavor of the delegates’ attitudes toward slavery itself. So the subject Applegate didn’t want discussed, was, in fact, discussed, albeit obliquely. The excerpts below are taken from a convention transcript:5 James K. Kelly, Clackamas County, in opposition to the resolution: . . . it may, if adopted, prohibit us from discussing the mode in which the question shall be submitted to the people . . . Applegate: . . . nothing is mentioned as to the mode of submitting the question . . . Delazon Smith, Linn County, in opposition: . . . I would as soon sever my right hand as to vote for a constitution that would either inhibit or adopt slavery here . . . But I do not want to put a padlock upon my lips or upon the lips of any other gentleman. . . . The slavery question is the question in Oregon now. We may resolve and re-resolve upon this question, and yet every man in the country will form his opinion. Thomas J. Dryer, Multnomah and Washington Counties, in opposition: . . . the people sent us up here to discuss the question and to submit it to them for final decision . . . the question of slavery is the all-important question now agitating the public mind. . . . Judge George H. Williams, Marion County, in qualified support: . . . would favor the principle of the resolutions if not the resolutions themselves . . . David Logan, Multnomah County, in opposition: . . . some counties have elected delegates here with the express understanding they shall go for a free state constitution at all events. The county of Washington sent their whole delegation here upon that understanding, and Yamhill also, and other counties, perhaps. Would it not be unfair to the counties of Washington and Yamhill to say by our action that their delegates shall remain silent upon this floor . . . ? Erasmus D. Shattuck, Washington County, in opposition: . . . it should be known to our children whether they live under a free or slave state constitution. . . . But if the question must be debated, then I go for a free state, and I wish that...

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