After arriving in Oregon with his wife and six sons, he decided to settle north of the Columbia River near Puget Sound, out of the reach of the 1844 Oregon law.
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The law did discourage at least one settler- George Bush, a Pennsylvania-born free Black who had been a successful farmer in Missouri. We are in a new world, under the most favorable circumstances and we wish to avoid most of those evils that have so much afflicted the United States and other countries.''īecause the lashing penalty was judged to be unduly harsh, the council substituted a lesser penalty later that year, and voters rescinded the law in 1845 before anyone could be punished. governor of California, gave this explanation for his support for the law: "The object is to keep clear of that most troublesome class of population. Any free Black who refused to leave would be subject to lashing, a provision that was known as "Peter Burnett's lash law." Burnett, who later became the first U.S. Moreover, once freed, a former slave could not stay in Oregon-a male would have to leave after two years, a female after three. The effect was to legalize slavery in Oregon for three years. Oregon's small white population had voted on July 5, 1843, to prohibit slavery by incorporating into Oregon's 1843 Organic laws a provision of the 1787 Northwest Ordinance: "There shall be neither slavery nor involuntary servitude in the said territory otherwise than in the punishment of crimes whereof the party shall have been duly convicted.'' The law was amended, however, on June 26, 1844, by the provisional government's new legislative council, headed by Missouri immigrant Peter Burnett. As amended, the law prohibited slavery, gave slaveholders a time limit to “remove” their slaves “out of the country,” and freed slaves if their owners refused to remove them. A few immigrants brought slaves to Oregon during this time, taking advantage of the lack of enforcement of Oregon's anti-slavery laws.
To avoid a similar competitive situation in Oregon, they favored excluding Blacks entirely, although a small number did settle in region. Many were nonslaveholding farmers from Missouri and other border states who had struggled to compete against those who owned slaves. White emigrants who came to present-day Oregon during the 1840s and 1850s generally opposed slavery, but many also opposed living alongside African Americans. These laws, all later rescinded, largely succeeded in their aim of discouraging free Blacks from settling in Oregon early on, ensuring that Oregon would develop as primarily white. Oregon's racial makeup has been shaped by three Black exclusion laws that were in place during much of the region's early history.