“Out of order”: Pasting Together the Slavery Debate in the Oregon Constitution

Abstract

Amy E. Platt’s and Laura Cray’s recent research on the Oregon State Constitution for Oregon Historical Society (OHS) exhibits and digital collections prompted this reflection essay to commemorate OHS’ 160th anniversary and the opening of its new permanent exhibit, Experience Oregon. Platt guides readers through Oregon’s slavery debate by examining accounts of the Constitutional Convention proceedings and select readings from the final document and draft copies held at OHS. Cray describes how those draft pages were digitized and how they reveal the physical work of cutting and pasting changes that were required to produce this guiding document. Platt describes those changes as “remnants of issues that newly arrived mid nineteenth-century Oregonians had been wringing their hands over since the 1840s: who could live and work in Oregon; who could own property; would Oregon be a slave state; and how was the government going to control it all?” That process of changing a word and pasting a sentence “helped create one of the most racially exclusionary states in the country.”