This 150 years of statehood hasn’t come easy.

Oregon’s entry into the United States came in 1859 amid torrid turmoil and
dubious debate.

There was more at issue than the simple edict of manifest destiny. Slavery
was the hot topic in Washington D.C. and soon-to-be Oregonians were forced
to wrestle with the daunting decision of whether or not to be a slave state.

Just to prove that today’s politics are not exactly a novel concept, the power
structure of the Oregon Territory held a constitutional convention to address
the problem. The result, believe it or not, was that Oregonians voted against
making Oregon a slave state. But, they also voted (this is the hard-to-believe
part) to ban blacks from living in the state.

In typical political fashion — the present-day stimulus bill included — this
satisfied no one completely, but everyone somewhat.

To wit: abolitionists were indignant over the exclusion laws. Slavery
proponents chafed at the idea of a free state.

And, if further proof was ever necessary that the political poles in America
have flip-flopped right along with their polar cousins, the Democrats were for
slavery and the Republicans were anti-slavery.

The political battle was on and the fate of settlers was in the hands of the U.S.
Congress.

Jason Lee, a Methodist missionary, was mostly to blame for the Washington
D.C. debate. In 1838 he traveled to the nation’s capital to petition for
Oregon’s statehood.

"We flatter ourselves," Lee said with brazen bravado and halting humility,
"that we are the germ of a great state."

Ultimately Congress made its decision, though it looked more like a split
decision. By a six-vote margin, 114-108 — not surprisingly along party lines
— Oregon was escorted into statehood on Feb. 12, 1859.

Two days later, the soon-to-be-forgotten President James Buchanan signed
the bill into law and Oregonians got to the business of fashioning a flag,
removing the word Territory from all objects and testaments, and jockeying
for umbrage under the federal cloak.

THE DYE WAS CAST
It would have been difficult to imagine — in light of the youthful age of our
state — what was to come.

Today, however, it might not have even registered on the cable news
channels.

With a nod to the good work of the Oregon Historical Society, here’s a glimpse
of the political follies that followed:

n In 1891, Gov. Sylvestor Pennoyer (nicknamed the "Annoyer") put the
political world on tilt when he declined to leave Salem to greet President
Harrison at the state line, stating: "If you will attend to your business, I will
attend to mine." Dare we ask ourselves if Pennoyer would have voted against
the stimulus bill but reveled in its rewards?

n John Hipple Mitchell — or John Mitchell Hipple, depending on which state he
was in and to whom he was married — was found guilty of fraud and
conspiracy during his term as Oregon’s senator. By the time of his conviction
in 1905, bigamy was the least of his problems.

n Elected in 1911, Governor Oswald West was part of the intense social
reform movement of the time. A vocal supporter of prohibition, West made
waves when he sent the National Guard to eastern Oregon mining towns to
combat drinking and gambling. There is no official record of the outcome, but
it is suspected this was likely the first official battlefield setback suffered by
the Oregon Guard.

n In 1948, Dorothy McCullough Lee — Portland’s first woman mayor — was
determined to rid the city of its vices. She famously sent undercover
policemen and women into Portland’s more unsavory establishments in order
"to clean up sin." Her efforts were received with, at best, mixed results. She
lost her bid for reelection after serving one term, totally underestimating
Oregonians ability to suffer, perhaps embrace, the seedy side of a city.

n In the 1950s, the mob came to Portland. The Teamsters, lured by the city’s
thriving waterfront industry, built a sophisticated organization involving
shipping contracts, but also gambling, prostitution and political payoffs. The
operation was uncovered in 1956 and the magnitude of the operation
attracted the FBI and a federal investigator, Robert Kennedy.

n The popular former governor, Neil Goldschmidt, stunned Oregonians when
allegations of an affair with his teenaged babysitter surfaced in 2004. His
public life came abruptly to an end.

Goldschmidt’s career aside, it was not the end of Oregon’s follies. We still
have radio talk jock Lars Larson scraping at the edges of the state’s progress,
or lack of it, depending on his mushy mindset at the moment.

But Oregonians are resilient, and survive in spite of it all, and guarantee a
bicentennial celebration a little farther on down the rocky road.