We might seem removed from controversies like the one over the Confederate flag, but we’re not.

The Pacific Northwest was very much involved in the politics of the Civil War. Early leadership in the Oregon and Washington territories leaned Democratic and emigrants were often pro-Southern in their sympathies, as were many of the political appointees of Democratic presidents like Franklin Pierce and James Buchanan.

Many of those who came to the region in the pre-war period hoped to escape sectional tensions, violence, racism and slavery. Some brought those things with them. I wrote about that not long ago in a column called, “Slavery, Here?” A town in Oregon even flew the Confederate flag during the war, until a column of U.S. Cavalry took it down. One of the Rebel sympathizers was nearly lynched.