OHS Research LIbrary, OrHi 3486, photo file 930-A LIbrary, OHS Research “Out of order” Pasting Together the Slavery Debate in the Oregon Constitution AMY E. PLATT with LAURA CRAY IT MUST HAVE BEEN oppressively hot in the Marion County Courthouse on the first day of the Oregon Constitutional Convention, especially with the doors shut. The courthouse, a two-story frame building, forty feet wide and sixty-eight feet long, on the corner of Church and State Streets in Salem, was not large enough for the sixty delegates, but still they pushed in almost every day for a month, gavel to gavel, from August 17 to September 18, 1857. Many of the men were lawyers, most were farmers, and a few were miners and newspapermen.1 They brought with them their regional issues, about land and transportation and postal routes, and their strong opinions about national issues, namely slavery and religion. Perhaps most impressively, they THE FIRST MARION COUNTY COURTHOUSE was built in 1854, on the block bounded embraced the tedium of procedure, spending the first day debating bureau- by Church and High and State and Court Streets in Salem. The legislature had settled on cratic minutia and the purpose of the convention itself. Delegate Thomas Salem as the seat of government by 1857, but as the state house had burned down in 1855 Dryer, the Whig editor of the Oregonian and until 1856 a loudmouthed with no money to replace it, the courthouse was the best option for the sixty Constitutional opponent of statehood, stood up early to propose the first, but not the last, Convention delegates. A new building replaced the old in 1873 and stood until 1954, when Faustian solution to a series of existential problems: it was demolished to make room for the present building, still within shouting distance of the state capitol. We have no organization. We have done nothing. We have met here in obedi- ence to a law convening a convention on this day, at this place, and before we do anything else it strikes me we must organize. It may be, for aught that has yet appeared here, that I am an interloper, as I am a privileged character. I Dryer’s call to organize before organizing, and to convene before conven- do not object to the appointment of officers at the proper time, but I am now ing, was rejected by the majority, after which Frederick Waymire wondered opposed to anything being done, except simply to begin by the recognition of the aloud how he had managed to find the proper place and the proper time of the right of men to sit in this convention. I move that the resolution lie upon the table, convention if he was not meant to be present. One of the most time-consuming and that we proceed to a temporary organization, prior to a permanent one.2 debates that morning concerned hiring a doorman. Procedure was important in government meetings. The delegates needed to know who could be on This essay is inspired by the authors’ recent work in researching the history of the the floor when and during what discussion, when they could speak and for Oregon State Constitution during development of Oregon Historical Society (OHS) how long, and who was going to police it. The Oregon convention process exhibits and digital collections. It is published here in commemoration of the open- followed a well-trod procedure, modeled after other states’ conventions; but ing of OHS’ new Experience Oregon exhibit on the state’s 160th birthday, February the burdens of legitimacy and legacy were new to the territorial delegates, 14, 2019. and they fretted over the more perplexing rules and possible outcomes. So 74 OHQ vol. 120, no. 1 © 2019 Oregon Historical Society Platt with Cray, “Out of order” 75 the men talked for some time about the doorman issue, and Dryer continued to was because most of the Oregon Constitution is cribbed from other state con- indulge his skepticism at some length before offering, in possible exasperation, stitutions. There was little need for improvement, according to the delegates.8 to manage the door himself. The first-day wearisomeness did not bode well Indiana’s got top billing, perhaps by virtue of Chester Terry’s foresight to for some. Delegate La Fayette Grover bring its constitution along stood to face the room. “I see the con- and pull it from his pocket vention is getting into a very bad habit,” during the first meeting.9 he said, “the habit of stringing out long Ohio, Iowa, and Wisconsin speeches upon subjects not before the constitutions were similarly convention.” He followed with, “although plagiarized, leaving only I am in favor of the doorkeeper.”3 a dozen or more of Ore- The first days of any group project gon’s 185 sections to write are always awkward, and so this was, from scratch.10 Delegates in finally ending with a shuffling of seating seven-member committees assignments and a parting joke from the hammered out the details president pro tem, Asa Lovejoy, who and presented their drafts OHS Research Library, org. lot 500, box 2, folder 3 org. lot 500, box Library, OHS Research announced he was “very satisfied with before the Committee of his seat” [emphasis added]. The record the Whole, where the drafts indicates “prolonged laughter,” followed were read three times at by adjournment, no doubt followed by three different sessions for huddled conferences of Whigs and Dem- debate and amendment ocrats over food and alcohol in Salem’s before passage or defeat.11 taverns and homes.4 One day down. The accounts of the The one position the delegates did convention in the States- THOMAS J. DRYER was the first editor of the not budget for was a recorder, despite man and the Oregonian DRYER WAS A PRINCIPLE PLAYER in mid-nineteenth- Oregonian, a Whig newspaper started in 1850. calls from many who wanted to hold are invaluable to our century Oregon politics and served as a Multnomah He was a skilled and acerbic writer who used their colleagues accountable for what- understanding of how the County delegate to Oregon’s Constitutional Convention. the newspaper to support the Whig platform As a Whig, he was against Oregon allowing slavery and ever they said, proper and improper.5 state’s constitution was and to provoke Oregon’s Democrats, especially said so, often with some vitriol, in the Oregonian and Asahel Bush who edited the Statesman. Dryer Perhaps self-preservation carried the created. Editors Asahel during the convention. His emphasis on the word free in served as editor until 1861, when he turned the argument in the guise of frugality. Dryer Bush and Thomas Dryer this announcement was a rebuke of his political opponents paper over to Henry Pittock. indicated his own suspicions during the outlined major debates in who were tolerant of slavery. debate on roll-call votes: “every man their original (or close to) and every party [should] carry its own parliamentary format, and sins,” he said.6 As a result, the best records of the day-to-day working of the they published constitutional articles as they were approved by delegates, convention are the transcripts collected and edited by newspaper reporters often followed by editorials and letters to the editor praising or condemning and published weekly. Salem’s Oregon Statesman, Oregon City’s Argus, and the outcomes. The accounts were both lively and dull, with readers’ reac- the Portland Oregonian were the primary documentarians. tions both visceral and pedantic. The debates in the ten (later eleven) small committee meetings, where the Newspapers are not the only written records that illuminate what hap- most substantive work took place, are mostly hidden from us, particularly when pened at the Constitutional Convention in late summer of 1857. The delegates articles and sections came out of those committees and were presented to the wrote to their political allies, and many of their letters remain. A Journal of Committee of the Whole (all sixty delegates) and approved without much com- the Proceedings, minimalist but useful, was published in the 1880s. And ment — which happened often.7 Without question, this lack of public quibbling draft documents, held by the Oregon Historical Society’s (OHS) Research 76 OHQ vol. 120, no. 1 Platt with Cray, “Out of order” 77 OHS Research Library, Mss 1227, folder 2a Library, OHS Research OHS Research Library, Mss 1227, folder 2a Library, OHS Research THESE TWO VIEWS of Article II, Sections 13 to 16, of the draft Oregon Constitution, both and overrode sections by cutting numbered sections and pasting them somewhere else. held at the Oregon Historical Society, document the manual editing process of drafting the The sections were renumbered so often that this practice made more sense than writing state’s guiding document. Earlier versions of the draft are made legible when viewed on a the entire document over (and over and over) again. light box (see facing page). Throughout the Constitutional Convention, delegates reordered 78 OHQ vol. 120, no. 1 Platt with Cray, “Out of order” 79 Library, reveal stenographic stumbles, cross-outs, a variety of handwriting, the Declaration of Independence, asserting the natural equality of mankind,” and marginalia. One of the most direct fixes involved a pair of scissors and which caused confusion for Iowans over the rights of blacks. “Some say,” he some paste. In 2001–2003, law professors Claudia Burton and Andrew said, leaving himself out of the matter, “that it means that negroes are equal Grade made a thorough review of the drafts and published their evaluations with whites.