Politics
Smith's career in politics began when he was appointed a special United States commissioner to Quito, serving in this capacity from 1842 to 1845. He then moved to the Iowa Territory in 1846 and became a minister. In 1852 he moved to the Oregon Territory and began editing the Oregon Democrat. In 1854 he was elected to the Territorial House of Representatives. There he served as Speaker of the House during the 1855 to 1856 session. The following session was his last as a representative of Linn County. In 1857 Smith was a delegate to the state's constitutional convention of that prepared the first constitution in preparation for statehood. Upon Oregon's admission to the Union as the 33rd state, Smith was elected to the Senate, serving from February 14 to March 4, 1859. He was an unsuccessful candidate for re-election.
Less than two years after leaving the Senate, Delazon Smith died in Portland on November 19, 1860 at the age of 44 years. His interment was at Albany, Oregon in the Masonic Cemetery.
Read more about this topic: Delazon Smith
Famous quotes containing the word politics:
“There is a place where we are always alone with our own mortality, where we must simply have something greater than ourselves to hold onto—God or history or politics or literature or a belief in the healing power of love, or even righteous anger.... A reason to believe, a way to take the world by the throat and insist that there is more to this life than we have ever imagined.”
—Dorothy Allison (b. 1949)
“Writing is the continuation of politics by other means.”
—Philippe Sollers (b. 1936)