Mrs. America Butler writes of 1853

		Oregon	Jackson County
	Lincoln	5,344	394
	Breckinridge	5,074	675
	Douglas	4,131	406
	Bell	212	88

    Newspapers also had an effect on the strong showing of Southern sentiment in the county. In 1859, T'Vault sold his paper, which was now called the Oregon Sentinel, to James O'Meara, who was even more pro-Southern than T'Vault. O'Meara's anti-Union views soon became too offensive and he began to lose subscribers.
    In May of 1861 he was forced to sell the Sentinel to two Republicans, who ran it as a pro-Union paper for the duration of the war. In an attempt to keep pro-Southern sentiment alive, O'Meara began publishing the Southern Oregon Gazette, in which he continued to express his anti-Union, anti-Lincoln view.
    In less than a year, the paper was suppressed by the government. The Sentinel railed against the "rebels and copperheads," and urged everyone to support the Union, candidly admitting at one point that such loyalty could pay dividends in terms of federal money after the war.
    On the whole, the people of Jackson County were relatively unaffected by the Civil War. During the first year or so, the presence of the pro-Southern element and the newspapers kept interest in the conflict alive. In spite of government apprehension concerning possible rebel activity in the county, rebel and union antagonisms never reached a serious level.
    In fact, in 1864 most of the Southerners, including T'Vault, left Jacksonville for the gold mines in Idaho. A small number of residents went off to fight, some for the Confederacy and some for the Union. Two companies of volunteers were raised and a garrison was set up at Fort Baker in Phoenix, but ultimately, the war was just too far away and interest gradually waned.
    Politically, the war fostered a growing union sentiment in the county which helped the Republican Party to grow and even win a few local offices. But in the presidential election of 1864 Lincoln still only managed to receive 39 percent of the vote.
    After the war, the county again became almost solidly Democratic and remained that way, with very few exceptions, until 1890. An examination of precinct tabulations shows that within the county party loyalty remained unshaken. Jacksonville regularly voted Democratic by huge margins. Many precincts voted with Jacksonville, but some did not. Ashland was as chronically Republican as her neighbor was Democratic.
    Phoenix, the home of Sam Colver, usually sided with Ashland. In 1864, for instance, Lincoln polled 80 percent of Phoenix's vote. Butte Creek and Central Point, farming districts like Phoenix, customarily went Democratic. Countywide, however, the number of Democrats so far exceeded Republicans that an election was seldom in doubt.
The Chinese
    Although the vast majority of immigrants to Oregon were white, several nonwhite ethnic groups also came in search of a new life. One of the earliest minorities to come were Hawaiians, or "Kanakas" as they were called, who came in the 1820s with the express purpose of settling and learning western culture. They lived in the Willamette Valley and worked as laborers, canoemen, sailors, gardeners, herders and servants for the Hudson Bay Company. They readily converted to Christianity and tried to become part of white society.
    When the provisional government was formed in the 1840s it passed laws that taxed Kanakas and their employers, and severely restricted their right to own property or vote. In 1848, many Kanakas tried to circumvent these laws by applying for citizenship.
    The final blow to their aspirations to become citizens of Oregon came with the passage of the Donation Land Act of 1850, which gave emigrants free land, but at the insistence of Territorial Delegate Samuel Thurston excluded Hawaiians and blacks.
    Thurston feared that the settling of these two groups would result in their joining with the Indians into a racial combination directed against whites. After living and working in the Willamette Valley for over 30 years, the Hawaiians were forced to abandon their hopes and return to the Islands.
    This pattern of discriminatory legislation and economic pressure was to be used again in dealing with ethnic minorities who tried to come to Oregon, and succeeded in keeping the numbers of nonwhites at an insignificant level.
    But there was one ethnic group--the Chinese--who did come to Oregon and Jackson County in such numbers that they could not be ignored. Because they came to work and not to own land, the restrictive land laws did not apply to them. Three hundred Chinese lived in Jackson County in 1864, and by 1870, one out of every eight persons living in the county was Chinese!
    In spite of the fact that they lived here for over 50 years, information about them is incredibly limited. This is partly because of the indifference whites showed them as human beings, and partly because when the Chinese went away, they left nothing behind--not even the bones of those who died here. [It's largely due to language and cultural barriers.] All Chinese wanted to be buried in their homeland, so that whenever a friend or relative was returning to China, bones of the deceased were dug up, cleaned and taken back. [Repatriation of bones was conducted on a regular basis by groups organized for the purpose.]
    We do know that the Chinese first came to California in the early 1850s. Most came from the southern provinces around Canton, where poverty and political turmoil drove them to seek opportunities abroad.
    In China they signed with Chinese companies as contract laborers and were then sent to California to work in the gold mines and on the railroads. They dealt only with their Chinese "boss," who negotiated with the American companies for them, provided them with food, clothing and shelter and distributed their wages. Almost all Chinese came with the intention of returning to China after they had made enough money.
    The Chinese stuck together and avoided contact with the whites. They worked and lived together in groups and seemed better able to withstand the almost intolerable working and health conditions of the camps than white laborers were. One railroad executive described them as "Quiet, peaceable, patient, industrious and economical. Ready and apt to learn all the different kinds of work required in railroad building."
    Within their groups, the Chinese continued to live as they had in their native land. In large part, it was their "foreign" customs, religious rites, dietary practices and dress that whites found most offensive and frightening.
    The Californians in particular, greeted them with fear, abuse, resentment and oppression. As their numbers increased and the demand for their labor decreased, California passed an ever-increasing number of laws designed to keep them from working. In the 1860s many crossed over the Siskiyous into Oregon primarily to escape the repressive California laws.
    Most of the Chinese who came to Jackson County settled in and around Jacksonville and along the Applegate River where they took over abandoned mines, or bought claims that the white miners felt were already worked out. Usually working in groups of 10 or 15, the Chinese patiently and methodically reworked the gravel, taking out enough gold to make a living and to send money back home.
    The attitude of the miners and residents of Jacksonville toward the Chinese was no different than that of the Californians and most other settlers in the West. In their ignorance of Chinese languages, customs and religion, they treated them with ridicule, contempt and, on occasion, with violence. Their strange customs and behavior only confirmed the opinion of most whites that they were an inferior race. Newspapers routinely described the Chinese as "nasty, opium-smoking, thieving, moon-eyed heathens," who were most certainly "the most filthy race of human beings in the world."
    As with the Kanakas and blacks, the whites hoped to force the Chinese to leave by passing special laws, ordinances and taxes which made it difficult for him to live. Chinese paid very high fees to run a business. They paid a monthly tax to work a mine, and a yearly "poll tax" for the privilege of living. He could not vote, and those arriving after the adoption of the Constitution in 1859 were forbidden to own mines or property of any kind.
    The following editorial may or may not accurately reflect the attitudes of the general public, but it does comment on the economic role most whites believed the Chinese played in their community, and how it could be corrected. After urging the present legislature to continue the policy of taxing the Chinese, the editorial writer goes on:
    "It seems an unwise policy to allow a race of brutish heathens who have nothing in common with us, to exhaust our mineral lands without paying a heavy tax for their occupation. These people bring nothing with them to our shores, they add nothing to the permanent wealth of this country and so strong is their attachment to their own country they will not let their filthy carcasses lie in our soil. Could this people be taxed as to exclude them entirely, it would be a blessing."
    Although the Chinese did pay their taxes, which added considerably to the county treasury, and did buy supplies from local white merchants, their frugality and attachment to home and religion strikes the editorial writer as being "un-American."

The incredible robbery of a Southern Pacific passenger train

Depression spreads to Jackson County