April 2010 NHC NEWS A Monthly Bulletin of the Northwest Horticultural Council NESMITH One of the earliest members from Oregon of the United States Senate was James Willis Nesmith, who served from 1861 to 1867.  He was a Democrat and was elected to that high office by the state’s legislature.  Prior to his service in Washington, D.C., which was in the days before U.S. senators were elected by a popular vote of citizens, he was the superintendent of Indian affairs for Oregon and Washington Territories. Senator Nesmith found himself in the nation’s capital during the great trial of our democracy, the Civil War. While in the minority party, he was a “War Democrat” who strongly supported the Union and defeat of the rebellious South. And as it happened, he was a friend of General U.S. Grant, from Grant’s days of military service at Fort Vancouver, Washington in the early 1850s.  In 1864, when General Grant was in military encampment at City Point, Virginia, the North’s commanding general entertained a visit from the senator from Oregon.  According to Horace Porter in his great war-time memoir “Campaigning with Grant”, Senator Nesmith was a “true artist as a raconteur.” One tall tale told by the Senator around the camp fire involved the manner by which he was elected by the Oregon legislature to the U.S. Senate: …I found, on counting noses, that I had corralled a majority of one certain on joint ballot of the two houses; but that didn’t make things quite safe, and I told my friends that we ought to have still another fellow persuaded of what was due to my eminence as a statesman; that it was altogether likely that if we relied on the one man, he would be shot, or landed in jail, or get blind drunk about the time the vote was to be taken, and we were playing too big a game to take any such chances. So what could be done to secure a more comfortable margin of victory than one mere vote?  An Oregon legislator who had recently come up from California was suggested: ‘Send the man to my hotel room to-night; there’s no time to be lost.  I intend to handle this rooster myself.’  When he came to my room, I shoved him into a chair, locked the door, seated myself in front of him, folded my arms, looked him square in the face, and said: ‘See here, I want your vote.  How much?’  He glued his eyes on me, and remarked: ‘Now, pard, yer talkin’ business. I don’t know just what the state of the market is in Oregon, but what would you propose as a starter?’  I countered:  ‘How would a hundred and fifty dollars strike you?’  He rose up out of his chair, looking as if he actually felt hurt by my evident lack of appreciation, and roared out in a tone of voice calculated to wake the dead: ‘a hundred and fifty hells!  I paid the governor of California twice that much last year to pardon me from the penitentiary, or else I wouldn’t be up here in your blank old legislature to vote for anyone!’ ¨ April 8 – NHC Science Advisory Committee meeting, Yakima, Washington. April 15 – NHC Executive Committee meeting, Yakima, Washington. April 20 – NHC Foreign Trade Committee meeting, Yakima, Washington. Christian Schlect April 19-23 – United Fresh 2010 and Produce Safety meeting, Las Vegas, Nevada But of course every spring the earth’s beauty is something new, never before seen.  But how ludicrously brief it all is.  Four or five days and the cherry blossom one morning is merely white compared with its first days, for which there is no word. The Lyttelton Hart-Davis Letters Volume II Northwest Horticultural Council 105 South 18th Street, Suite 105 Yakima, Washington 98901, USA Voice: (509) 453-3193, Fax: (509) 457-7615 E-mail general@nwhort.org