Olympia Rejects Disunion
While the nation moved toward the brink of Civil War in January 1861, local Olympia leaders declared their firm loyalty to the Union, even as some proposed renaming the capital city.
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A cleaned-up reading of the newspaper page: spelling and layout repaired, one story lifted off a crowded page. It follows the original closely but it is not a transcription. The original page is below; read it if a detail matters.
Adding insult to injury, John M. Chapman, of Thurston County, introduced a bill in the Legislature to alter the name of Olympia to Stevensville. We have only rumors of the reason for this act, and request on behalf of the public suspension of public opinion until these claims are laid out. We rejoice in our status as a territory of the United States. It is our country. To anyone who proposes to break its bonds, we say: traitors they are who would so act. Our country is not yet too large, but while coveting no extension of its power at the expense of other domains, if need be its area is to be increased, let no such addition of territory be at the cost of the chain which binds into one Union. Wherever our flag may float, whatever territory may be acquired, our loyalty and devotion shall be absolute. Our territory and her people repudiate all such politics and every attempt to build sectional or geographic interests adverse to the Union. She ardently trusts the time is not far distant when she may join the confederacy of states and vie with her older sisters in their true loyalty and allegiance to that only confederacy which she would like to support: the Republic, which has been the hope and faith of every friend of liberty throughout the world—the Republic of America.
“Our country is not yet too large, but while coveting no extension of its power at the expense of other domains, if need be its area is to be increased, let no such addition of territory be at the cost of the chain which binds into one Union.”
In early 1861, Olympia was a fragile, remote outpost grappling with the question of national identity as the Civil War loomed. The move to rename Olympia 'Stevensville' was a short-lived attempt to honor a controversial former governor, Isaac Stevens, highlighting the town's early struggle to define its civic character amidst national upheaval.
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