Oregon's Lash Law

Oregon’s Lash Law

Dreams of a better life, gold, game, and land were the draw for pioneers to brave the peril on the trail to Oregon, risking their lives and the lives of their families for the promise of a better life. People of all colors and ethnic backgrounds chose to take the trail in search of a better life for themselves and family. The Treaty of 1844 brought Government and exclusion to the new territories of Oregon.

Prior to 1840, the Northwest frontier at Fort Vancouver boasted a multicultural cacophony of people from England, France, Native Americans and Canadians Indians, and Hawaiians; a “Frontier of Inclusion”. (Faragher 398). The 1840’s brought Oregon fever and Midwestern settlers vying for a chance of free land and a better life. These settlers also brought their slaves and families. The 1849 treaty conclusion between England and the US brought the “frontier of exclusion” to Oregon and the West. White males were offered 320 acres to settle Oregon and nothing was offered to non-whites.

Lash Law and Exclusion

“In June, 1844, the Provisional Government of Oregon enacted its first laws regarding the status of slaves, and therefore blacks, in the Oregon Country. Slavery was declared to be illegal, and settlers who currently owned slaves were required to free them within three years. Any free blacks age 18 or older had to leave the area, men within two years and women within three. Black children were permitted to stay in the Oregon Country until they reached age 18”. (Oregon Trial) This law was made not only to not allow slavery in Oregon, but to exclude Blacks from living there permanently. The penalty for violating this new law was the lash, no less then 20 and no more than 39 were given to Blacks who didn’t leave Oregon, this was to be repeated every 6 months until that person left the territory. There is no record that this law was enacted on any person.

Exclusion laws were seen as a “fix” to the question of if slavery should be allowed in the new territory, instead of facing the Pro-Slavery proponents in Congress, the Legislators took the cowardly way out. . Oregon is the only State admitted into the Union with exclusion in its Constitution. In 1926, Oregon’s Constitution was amended to remove the exclusion from the State’s Bill of Rights.

End of the Oregon Trail. http://www.endoftheoregontrail.org/slavery.html

Faragher.J.M., Buhle, M.J., Czitrom, D. and Armitage, S.H. Out of Many: A History of the American People. 5th Edition. Upper Saddle River, NJ, 2007.