Laws
Over the course of nearly six years under the provisional government, the settlers passed numerous laws. One law allowed people to claim 640 acres (2.6 km2) if they improved the land, which would be solidified later by Congress’ adoption of the Donation Land Claim Act. Another law allowed the government to organize a militia and call them out by order of the Executive or Legislature. Under the first Organic Laws of 1843 inhabitants were guaranteed due process of law and a right to a trial by jury. Some other rights established were: no cruel and unusual punishment, no unreasonable bails for defendants, and no takings of property without compensation.
In 1844, the legislature passed a law banning the sale of ardent spirits, out of concern that the Native Americans would become hostile if intoxicated. Another 1844 law prohibited additional African Americans from settling in the region (slavery had already been banned in the Organic Laws). The law banning black people authorized the lashing of any black person forty times from time to time until they left the region, but this punishment was never actually carried out. In 1849, one of the last laws passed authorized the minting of coins. These coins would be called the Beaver Coins and were created as a result of significant amounts of gold dust circulating in the area due to the California Gold Rush.
Read more about this topic: Provisional Government Of Oregon
Famous quotes containing the word laws:
“The counting-room maxims liberally expounded are laws of the Universe. The merchant’s economy is a coarse symbol of the soul’s economy. It is, to spend for power, and not for pleasure.”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)
“The tide which, after our former relaxed government, took a violent course towards the opposite extreme, and seemed ready to hang every thing round with the tassils and baubles of monarchy, is now getting back as we hope to a just mean, a government of laws addressed to the reason of the people, and not to their weaknesses.”
—Thomas Jefferson (1743–1826)
“His talk was like a spring, which runs
With rapid change from rocks to roses:
It slipped from politics to puns,
It passed from Mahomet to Moses;
Beginning with the laws which keep
The planets in their radiant courses,
And ending with some precept deep
For dressing eels, or shoeing horses.”
—Winthrop Mackworth Praed (1802–1839)