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THE ASTORIAN • SATURDAY, OCTOBER 2, 2021
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Three who mattered
‘Eminent Oregonians: Three Who Matter,’ is a new book by Jane Kirkpatrick, Steve Forrester
and R. Gregory Nokes. • The authors tell the stories of Abigail Scott Duniway, a leading
suff ragette; Richard Neuberger, an infl uential U.S. senator; and Jesse Applegate, a pioneer who
helped establish the Applegate Trail. • The Astorian is publishing excerpts from the book.
MORE ABOUT THE BOOK
» FORMER CONGRESSMAN LES AuCOIN REVIEWS ‘EMINENT OREGONIANS’ • A4
RICHARD
NEUBERGER
ABIGAIL SCOTT
DUNIWAY
Neuberger pos-
sessed an extraordinary
reportorial instinct, and
after a month-long stay
in Germany in 1933
he returned to New
York with a story to
tell. He sought out the
offi ces of The Nation,
a weekly investigative
magazine founded in
1865, and talked with
one of the editors.
Ernest Gruening
listened to the young
writer and decided to
commission him to
write what he would
later describe as an
“epoch-making arti-
cle.” When “The New
Germany” appeared in
the October 4, 1933,
issue, “it was the fi rst
realistic fi rsthand reve-
lation in any American
magazine of what was
taking place in Nazi
Germany.” The arti-
cle is bracing reportage,
with sickening details
Richard Neuberger at his typewriter.
of violence infl icted on
Jews, young and old.
The historical signifi cance of “The New Germany” has been largely forgotten,
and in large part so has Neuberger. But his story is still relevant, as the times he lived
through were no less perilous to democracy than those of the early twenty-fi rst century.
Richard Neuberger inhabited three eras. Born in 1912, he was seventeen years old
on Black Monday in 1929, and within four years he was immersed in prewar Nazi
Germany. In 1945, as an aide to U.S. Secretary of State Edward Stettinius, he was
present at the United Nations Conference in San Francisco, an event that would defi ne
the postwar world.
Finally, his election to the United States Senate in 1954 was pivotal in making
Texas Senator Lyndon B. Johnson majority leader, a prelude to an era of landmark lib-
eral legislation that would peak in the 1960s.
Looking back at that life, six decades after his death at age forty-seven, we can see
that he lived at a fast pace and took big risks. He was like a meteor, a brilliant light
streaking through the night sky and suddenly gone.
— Steve Forrester
Her accomplish-
ments were astonish-
ing. She gave birth to
six children; cared for
her disabled husband;
wrote poetry, twen-
ty-two novels, and
numerous essays and
editorials; gave at least
1,750 speeches; owned
and ran two schools
and a millinery; and
established a newspa-
per, the New North-
west — one of the few
women in the country
to do so — engaging
her family in the busi-
ness and then holding
it all together. She also
took on Portland-area
powerbrokers, includ-
ing the liquor industry,
wealthy elites, Confed-
eracy-leaning neigh-
bors, religious lead-
ers opposed to suff rage,
her competitor-edi-
tor brother, and even-
tually her own compa-
triots over the best way
Abigail Scott Duniway was a leading suff ragette.
to fi ght for women’s
liberty.
Abigail was a commander of the social media of her time. Her letters to the
editor were today’s op-eds. She ran the Duniway Publishing Company, a media
empire that included a weekly newspaper and a press for printing tracts and post-
ers for the cause of women’s suff rage. Her weekly updates of her travels and
the political scenery were the blogs of the era. She investigated issues related to
prisons and asylums and social justice concerns aff ecting the Chinese. She gave
speeches, submitted journalistic articles to other newspapers, and wrote essays
that both encouraged and provoked. Her voice was distinctive, often witty or
acerbic.
Fifty years earlier she might have been put on trial as a “scold,” as writer and
newspaper owner Anne Royall was in 1829 for calling out corruption and speak-
ing her mind despite the eff orts of men to silence her. Abigail’s brother, Harvey
Scott, editor of the Oregonian, was her greatest rival and likely her most compli-
cated relationship.
— Jane Kirkpatrick
JESSE APPLEGATE
While Applegate is best known for the emigrant trail into southern Oregon, his
most important contribution to the region is largely overlooked — he helped steer Ore-
gon away from becoming a slave state. A considerable degree of pro-slavery sentiment
existed in Oregon when its future was being decided in the mid-nineteenth century,
especially among many of its leaders.
Whether Oregon would become a slave state was the dominant issue facing dele-
gates to the 1857 Constitutional Convention. While Applegate was not an abolition-
ist, he stridently opposed extending slavery to Oregon and other United States territo-
ries. “Whoever is against the extension of slavery is of my party,” he declared in 1855,
“whoever is for it is against me. My platform has been one single plank.”
Applegate’s story is a window on Oregon’s formative era — its years of aspiration
A wagon train splitting off
between California and Oregon.
as well as its nascent racism.
Born in Kentucky, Applegate was among Oregon’s earliest pioneers, one of sev-
eral captains of the 1843 wagon train from Independence, Missouri. Known in western
history as the Great Migration, it brought a thousand settlers to the region, more than
doubling the white population. Better educated than most settlers, Applegate quickly
assumed a leadership role in a region that was contested by the United States and
Great Britain.
He was elected in 1845 to the Provisional Government’s Legislative Committee,
the region’s fi rst legislature, where he made his fi rst overt public stand against slavery
in his adopted home.
— R. Gregory Nokes