How Salem Became the Capital of the Oregon Territory

End of the Oregon Trail Interpretive Center
History 101

Stealing the Capital

When the Oregon Territory was declared by act of Congress on August 13, 1848, and signed into law by President Polk the following day, the process of governing Oregon was taken out of the hands of the American settlers and given to political appointees. The first Territorial Governor was General Joseph Lane, appointed by Democrat James K. Polk. While Lane was en route to Oregon, the Democrats lost the White House in the election of 1848.

Oregon City was a Whig town. In two close elections, George Abernethy was chosen to lead the Provisional Government. The former steward of the Methodist mission, Abernethy won office thanks to the reliable votes of his fellow Methodist settlers. When Governor Lane arrived, he spurned the downtown business district, where the Provisional Legislature met, and prevailed upon fellow Democrat William Holmes for the use of his home as an executive office. When Lane sent word of his arrival to Governor Abernethy and invited him to pay his respects, Abernethy declined. Pointing out that Lane had not yet presented his credentials, Governor Abernethy invited Lane to pay him a visit, instead. The standards of protocol forced Lane to accede.

The day after his arrival on March 2, 1849, Lane fulfilled the Territorial Act by standing on the balcony of William Holmes' Rose Farm and declaring Oregon to be a Territory of the United States. The first session of the Territorial Legislature convened on June 16, 1849, at the Statehouse, a structure newly built by John Morrison at the corner of Sixth and Main. The 1850 session, held in February, also met at the Statehouse.

In January of 1850, Lane received word that Whig President Zachary Taylor had appointed John Gaines as Governor and Edward Hamilton as Secretary of the Territory. They were proceeding to Oregon by ship and would arrive that summer. Lane, already tired of being a Democrat in a town run by Whigs, would have resigned earlier, but he had become personally involved with efforts to capture five Indians suspected of the 1847 murders at the Whitman Mission. Following their conviction, Lane resigned on June 18, 1850, and lit out for California. Secretary of the Territory Kintzing Pritchette served as interim governor, pending Gaines' arrival on August 14.

Following the inauguration of a Whig governor, the frustration of Oregon's Democrats became intense. Though they held a majority in the legislature, they met in a Whig town and had to work not only with a Whig chief executive, but a judiciary dominated by Whig appointees, as well. As elected officials contending with appointed officials, the Democrats felt they had the power of popular sovereignty behind them. Under the leadership of Matthew Deady, they met secretly in December, 1850, to discuss their strategy in the February session of the Territorial Legislature. They resolved to introduce an "omnibus" bill to move the capital to Salem, build a penitentiary in Portland, and establish a college in Marysville (which was soon to be renamed Corvallis). To help drum up public support for their position, Oregon City printer Asahel Bush began publishing the Oregon Statesman in March of 1851. He moved the newspaper to Salem in 1852.

When news of the omnibus bill leaked out before the legislature convened, Governor Gaines publicly took the position that Section 6 of the Organic Laws -- the constitution of the Provisional Government, which had been reviewed and approved by Governor Lane back in 1849 -- forbade bills which contained more than one item. The Democrats' omnibus bill was, by definition, unconstitutional. US Attorney Amory Holbrook, a fellow Whig appointee, came out in support of Gaines.

The group of dissident Democrats pushing for the relocation of the capital became known as the Salem Clique. Events came to a head when they convened a legislative session in Linn City. As the Democrats held a majority in the legislature, the Salem Clique was able to obtain a quorum and pass the omnibus bill. Governor Gaines and the Whig minority tried to meet at the Statehouse in Oregon City but finally gave up their efforts to achieve a quorum on December 17, 1851. Early the following year, the Democrats moved the legislature to Salem.

The Whigs attempted to find a judicial resolution to the political schism, and in Amos M. Short v. Francis Ermatinger the Oregon Supreme Court upheld the governor's position that Oregon City was the capital. The vote was two to one, with Democrat Orville C. Pratt opposing the position of Chief Justice Thomas Nelson and Justice William Strong, both Whig appointees. Nelson and Strong held court in Oregon City, while Pratt issued his dissenting opinion from Salem. The Democratic legislature ordered Asahel Bush to print 3000 copies of Pratt's opinion and distribute them throughout the Territory.

Following the unsuccessful attempt to convene a minority session of the legislature in December, 1851, Governor Gaines appealed to President Millard Fillmore, a fellow Whig, for federal assistance in bringing the Democrats into line. In January, 1852, the leader of the Salem Clique, Matthew Deady, countered with a similar appeal to the US Congress, which, like the Territorial Legislature, was controlled by Democrats. Deady asserted that Salem had been legally designated as the new Territorial capital by a majority of the legislature, and the judiciary was "fulminating" against the legislature while the governor was a proven failure as a chief executive.

Meanwhile, the Territorial Treasurer -- a Whig -- was refusing to authorize payment for the salaries and expenses of the officials meeting in Salem. The US Attorney General sided with the Whigs and refused to take action against Territorial officials for withholding payments to members of the Salem Clique. Washington Democrats hoped the Supreme Court might overrule this, but the highest court of the land refused to hear the case, thereby affirming the decision of the Attorney General.

Before the Supreme Court ruling could be acted upon, Congress acted upon Matthew Deady's request for support. Backed by the efforts of former Democratic governor Joseph Lane, Oregon's Delegate to Congress, legislation was passed declaring Salem to be the new capital of the Oregon Territory, and money was appropriated to pay the Salem Clique and build a new capitol in Salem. President Fillmore was forced to sign the bills into law in order to pass other, more politically valuable legislation pending in the Congress. The first recombined session of the legislature convened on December 3, 1854, in the still-unfinished capitol building in Salem.

That should have ended the matter once and for all, but it didn't. The political quarrel continued in the pages of the Democrat-controlled Salem newspaper, the Oregon Statesman, and the new Whig mouthpiece in Oregon City, the Argus. The Whigs took to calling the Statesman's publisher, Asahel Bush, "the Ass of Hell"; in turn, the Statesman began referring to the Argus as the "Air Goose." A fire of suspicious origin destroyed the new capitol building, and following a brief meeting of the 1855-56 winter legislature in Corvallis, the people of Oregon were asked to vote on where they wanted the seat of government -- not once, but on three separate occasions over the next few years.

In June of 1856, the official tally of the first such vote was Eugene City 2319 - Salem 2049 - Corvallis 1998 - and Portland 1154. However, ballots from four counties were thrown out because they allegedly arrived late. The unofficial tally put Salem in third place, behind Eugene City and Corvallis, by more than two hundred votes. Since an absolute majority was required to establish a winner, a runoff election was held between the top two cities from the official tally. The outcome of that election was overwhelmingly in favor of Eugene City (2559 votes to 444, with 318 write-in votes cast for Corvallis), but the Salem Clique voided the election on the grounds that the ballot measure contained "confusing wording" which may have mislead some voters.

Another referendum in 1862 failed to yield the desired results, but in 1864 the voters finally gave Salem their seal of approval. Thirteen years after the Salem Clique stole the capital from Oregon City, they received permission from the people of Oregon to keep it. Coincidentally, 1864 was the last year in which Marion County was the most populous county in Oregon. The population of Multnomah County surpassed that of Marion County in November, 1864.