The Pacific Slope and Alaska (Volume 10) (Paperback)

This historic book may have numerous typos, missing text or index. Purchasers can download a free scanned copy of the original book (without typos) from the publisher. 1904. Not illustrated. Excerpt: ... CHAPTER XXIV RECENT POLITICAL AND ECONOMIC MOVEMENTS The time has not yet come for writing fully and finally about the political contests marking the past forty years in the history of the Pacific coast commonwealths, for their results are not yet determined. Yet this volume may properly be expected to include at least an outline sketch which shall summarize the more significant movements of the period. The Civil War affected the Pacific coast less than it did other sections of the country because of the extreme remoteness of this section from the centres of disturbances, yet stirring episodes show that the people on the Western Ocean were powerfully swayed by the feelings dominant in the great contest whose field was the East. Some of the characteristics of the Border States reappeared in the communities along the Pacific; their populations, drawn from every part of the country, retained the sentiments and sympathies of the States from which they came. In California, as we have already seen, and the same thing was true in Oregon and Washington Territory, were to be found many adherents of the Southern cause. The Territory of Idaho, set off in 1863, had an even larger Southern element. When the war began, an unprecedented emigration set in across the Rockies from the Border States, many, if not most of the emigrants, being Southern sympathizers seeking to escape from the disturbed conditions prevailing in their home States. They settled in Colorado, Montana, and Idaho, where mining camps were being planted, or passed to the agricultural sections of Oregon, Washington, and California. In Idaho the population was still small when this tide set in, and as a result the Territory remained for several years under the political control of the Southerners. The influence...