The Great Partition: Why Walla Walla Wants to Leave Washington

SEATTLE, July 26th, 1876.

The Walla Walla Statesman says that nine out of ten of the inhabitants of the Walla Walla valley are in favor of having that part of our Territory annexed to Oregon, and that upon the reassembling of Congress in December next, "the 1st of January should mark the annexation of Walla Walla valley to the State of Oregon."

That this desire is reciprocated by the people of Oregon I have good reason to know, for during a recent visit to Portland I took occasion to ascertain the views of leading men in that city. Moreover it is intended by the Senators and Members from that State to push the enterprise through during the next session of Congress.

The efforts of one single Delegate will be powerless to prevent it, and we will find ourselves consigned to a condition of puny provincialism which no American citizens of any spirit will submit to any longer than it is possible to avoid it by removal elsewhere. The admission of the remaining portion of the Territory as a State will be postponed so far into the future, that but few now living will ever witness it.

The scheme as now presented must be defeated. This can be done in one of two ways.

First, let eastern Oregon, eastern Washington, and that part of Idaho lying north of the Salmon Mountains, be constituted the Territory of Washington, and that part lying west of Cascades be annexed to Oregon as an equivalent for our eastern territory. There would be but little, if any loss, to Oregon, of population, and the new territory would gain immensely in the mere compacting a people into a home-government, with similar industrial pursuits and mutuality of interest.

Second. A still better plan would be to annex the whole of Washington Territory to Oregon, providing in the act, as in the case of Texas, for the admission of that part lying east of the Cascades as a separate State, whenever a fixed minimum of population should be reached.

This would at once make Oregon what she ought to be, a balancing power upon the Pacific Coast. Now, she is but an outlying province (commercially) of California. With this accretion of population she would be entitled to two members in the lower house, and thus double her political strength.

The desire of the people of Walla Walla to be separated from us is a very natural one. They are far removed from the capitol, and there is but little commercial, and no social, intercourse between the people of the two sections. The Cascade mountains present an almost impassible barrier to any practicable interchange of products, and would seem to mark a natural boundary between different governments and people.