History of Nebraska - Chapter 10



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CHAPTER X
THE THIRD LEGISLATURE -- THE THIRD CONGRESSIONAL CAMPAIGN -- RICHARDSON 
SUCCEEDS IZARD -- THE FOURTH LEGISLATURE -- FLORENCE SESSION -- DEATH OF 
GOVERNOR CUMING

   THE third territorial assembly convened January 5, 1857. Among the 
members of the council, Samuel I. Rogers of Douglas is serving his third 
term; A. A. Bradford of Otoe and S. M. Kirkpatrick of Cass were members of 
the second council; William Clancy and John A. Singleton were members of 
the first house; and Charles McDonald and A. F. Salisbury had served in 
the second house. Of the members of the house W. A. Finney of Nemaha had 
served in the second house and A. J. Hanscom of Douglas had been speaker 
of the first house. R. W. Furnas, a familiar name in Nebraska, is on the 
list of councilmen.

   L. L. Bowen, of the southern or Bellevue district of Douglas county, 
was chosen president of the council, and I. L. Gibbs of Otoe county was 
chosen speaker of the house without opposition. The South Platte was in 
the saddle, which meant that Douglas county was to be loser in the 
struggle against her dismemberment to form Sarpy county, and that Omaha 
was to lose the capital by a clear majority vote of the representatives, 
and would hold it only by the purely arbitrary veto of the executive. 
Morton's lampooning of Governor Izard's message had been without practical 
effect, for this year's fulmination excelled the other in grandiose 
verbosity. The message contrasts the disturbed condition of Kansas, "torn 
by internal dissension, her virgin soil overrun and desecrated by armed 
and hostile factions, her people murdered and pillaged by roving bands of 
lawless marauders, betrayed by mercenary demagogues and unprincipled 
politicians," etc., with the peaceable aspect of Nebraska, where "the 
people led by the councils of wisdom and moderation have succeeded in 
frowning down all foreign interference and in resisting the earliest 
encroachments of domestic difficulty, and have added, in their example, 
another bright testimonial of man's capacity for self-government to the 
many which already adorn the annals of the republic." These rhetorical 
bouquets, with which the governor was showering his administration, were 
in fact as artificial as they seem. Kansas was, by virtue of her 
contiguity to a slave state, the natural and the chosen battleground of 
the pro-slavery and the anti-slavery colonizers. There was bleeding enough 
going on in Kansas to satisfy all the requirements of both factions of the 
squatter sovereignty dogma, and so Nebraska was left in a condition of 
necessary peace. There was here no serious political question to fight 
over, and no force of any consequence to fight. In fact, no political 
question ever arose on the Nebraska horizon more heroic than the economic 
sectional question of the location of the capital, primarily raised and 
kept alive by the inconvenient barrier of the Platte river.

   In his chronically optimistic survey of economic conditions, which 
there was little to justify, the governor notes that there are more than 
fifteen thousand people in the territory. He finds it necessary to urge 
again the need of a better system of laws in place of the crude and 
unsatisfactory productions of the first two legislatures. He asks the 
legislature to urge Congress to place at once the school lands reserved by 
the organic act at the disposal of the legislature, an appeal which the 
Congress was for many years wisely to disregard. He again urges that 
Congress should

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[image caption: Nancy J. Tucker]

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[image caption: Geo. P. Tucker was a Union soldier during the Civil War 
and a prominent legislator from Johnson county, Nebraska.]

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be memorialized to grant lands to the "literary institutions" chartered by 
the first assembly, namely: Simpson University, Nebraska City Collegiate 
and Preparatory Institute, and Nebraska University. "The Simpson 
University," he says, "has been permanently located, and donations to a 
considerable amount have been received to aid in its erection. I am 
informed that some degree of progress has been made by the corporators of 
each of the others." Even at this comparatively recent date Nebraska 
pioneers were looking to the private or semi-private schools for the means 
of secondary education. They had no thought then that the state university 
and its coadjutors, the high schools in every county, wholly supported by 
public tax and administered by public authority, were so soon to supersede 
those early objects of their deep solicitude and fond hope.

   The message goes contrary to the preponderance of public opinion at 
that time in urging that a part at least of the public land should be put 
on the market without delay. In the Advertiser of December 6, 1856, Mr. 
Furnas contends that the settlers are not ready to buy their lands yet, 
and that the sales should be put off for two years, at least; and again in 
the issue of January 29, 1857, he urges that they should be put off ten 
years, though in the meantime those settlers who have the money should be 
allowed to make their entries. "But if the president listens to the 
pleadings of land sharks, and hastens the sales we believe it will be 
productive of untold injury to the pioneer settler and to the future 
growth of Nebraska territory." The message gives the information that the 
Omaha and Otoe Indians had been removed to their respective reservations 
during the past year. The Omahas still remain on their reservation, but 
the Otoes were recently removed and their reservation sold and it now 
forms part of Gage county.

   The message was a paean to prosperity. "No citizen of Nebraska," it 
avers, "can look around him and contemplate the unexampled degree of 
prosperity which has crowned the efforts of our infancy without feelings 
of the profoundest gratitude and satisfaction." The governor -- in an 
oblique sense -- emulated the part of the elysium in Richter's comforting 
conceit, "Heaven lies about us in our infancy."

   Under this dazzling halo the matter-of-fact territorial treasurer, W. 
W. Wyman, in his annual report, dated December 18, 1856, sets up a dark 
and dismal financial figure. He had been able to negotiate the bonds to 
the amount of four thousand dollars, whose issue. the last legislature had 
authorized, only by agreeing to pay interest semi-annually at the rate of 
fifteen per cent per annum. Of the demands the proceeds of these bonds 
were calculated to meet, $350.45 remained unpaid with only $92 of the $4,
000 on hand. The treasurer had bound himself personally to pay the first 
installment of interest -- $300 -- on the coming first of January, so that 
the necessity of advancing $208 of his own money was impending. Only three 
counties of the territory -- Cass, Dodge, and Nemaha -- "had paid into the 
treasury any portion" of the territorial levy of two mills on the dollar 
for the year 1856, "the two wealthiest and most thickly populated counties 
(Douglas and Otoe) having made no payment at all during the present year." 
Dodge county had loyally paid her quota of the territorial tax -- 
$20.20 -- but this loyalty does not appear so conspicuous when Mr. Wyman 
shows, as an illustration of his official woes, that after the county 
treasurer had also faithfully deducted his legal commission -- $1 -- and 
his mileage for transferring his county's largess to the capital -- 
$13.50 -- the net balance for the territorial treasury was $5.70. We do 
not wonder that the treasurer lugubriously remarks that this was the only 
instance in which mileage was charged by a county treasurer, and suggests 
that in future such small sums be sent by mail.

   The report of the auditor, Chas. B. Smith, is of course in no better 
spirits. It shows the indebtedness of the territory to be $10,457.51, and 
of this $8,062.01 is represented by warrants from the beginning, July 1, 
1855, to January 2, 1857. That the territorial government had failed thus 
far to provide for the meager public expense in excess of that paid from 
the federal treasury was evidently due

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in part to its own inefficiency, but in the main to the unsettled, 
uncertain social conditions which, it has been heretofore pointed out, 
were unusual or exaggerated as compared with any former beginning and 
early growth of our commonwealths.

   The work of the third session of the legislature was to be no better, 
but probably worse than that of its predecessors. The session centered on 
four principal objects -- the removal of the capital, the division of 
Douglas county, the hatching of a new brood of wildcat banks, and the 
rascally repeal of the criminal code. The first two were purely and 
spitefully sectional; after the expenditure of the first fifty thousand 
dollars appropriation in building the state house at Omaha there was no 
level-headed reason for removing the capital until the need should arise 
of placing it at some more convenient point in the interior. No excuse 
arose on that score before the removal was accomplished -- if it did then. 
The division of Douglas county was based on a neighborhood feud, 
Bellevue -- plus the sympathetic South Platte -- against Omaha. And yet 
contemporaneous authority informs us that "this and the capital question 
are the great features of the present session." The division bill passed 
the council by a vote of 7 to 6, Furnas and McDonald being the only South 
Platte members who voted on the Omaha side; it passed the house by a vote 
of 19 to 17, only two members from the South Platte, Finney of Nemaha and 
Sharp of Pawnee, voting no.

   In the original bill -- introduced by Councilman Allen -- the name of 
the proposed county was Omaha, but Sarpy was substituted in committee of 
the whole. In the bill introduced into the first legislature for the 
organization of Douglas county it was named Omaha, but on motion of Dr. M. 
H. Clark, and after sharp opposition by leading members of Douglas county, 
the change was made. Secondarily to the local and natural name -- Omaha -- 
both Douglas and Sarpy were appropriate. The mistake was recognized and 
corrected by allowing the metropolitan city of the territory and state to 
retain the Indian name. Restitution of the natural claim or right of the 
name of Douglas to have been perpetuated in that of the capital of the 
state was only partially made in its retention as the name of the county 
of which Omaha is the seat of government. Through the inexorable and 
inevitable course of events Lincoln succeeded his great rival, Douglas, in 
national political leadership. But if there had been untrammeled 
expression of the wish of the majority through its representatives in the 
legislature of 1857, the name of the great democratic and Union leader 
would have been rightfully and most appropriately perpetuated in that of 
the capital of the commonwealth of which he was the founder, and whose 
political birth was the precursor if not the cause of his own political 
death.

   In editorial correspondence with the Nebraska Advertiser, January 16, 
1857, R. W. Furnas, member of the council and public printer, complains of 
attempts of the Omaha members of the house to interfere with expression of 
opinion in that body in favor of the removal of the capital; and he 
predicts that the governor will veto the removal bill, as "he could do 
nothing else under the circumstances." The governor's veto was sent to the 
council January 19th, and, whatever the mysterious "circumstances" which 
Mr. Furnas hints were to influence his act in derogation of the will and 
wish of a clear popular majority, he justifies it with cogent if not 
unanswerable reasoning. We are led, by the absence from the veto message 
of much of that tedious verbosity and buncombe which abound in his regular 
messages, to suspect that the greater delicacy and importance of this task 
may have brought to its execution a clearer head and more skilful hands 
than Governor Izard's. The message is a plausible defense of an act 
bearing on its face suspicion of sectional and perhaps other improper 
bias, and is a realistic picture of the conditions and methods of that day.

   Capital Removal Appears Again. Although the capital had been located 
under strong contest and a considerable amount of money expended upon the 
building of the new state house, factionalism and local jealousies 
determined that the question should not rest. The removal bill called for 
the location of the

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capital at Douglas, Lancaster county -- a purely imaginary place somewhere 
on the banks of Salt creek. The bill passed both house and council with 
proper majorities, but Governor Izard interposed a veto and the Omaha 
delegation was able to gather sufficient strength to prevent the passage 
over the veto. In the council Robert W. Furnas voted with Omaha, which 
prevented the necessary two-thirds majority. Finney of Nemaha was the only 
South Platte member of the house to vote with Omaha.

   The removal seemed clearly the will of the people, and, had there been 
untrammeled action, in all probability the name of the great democratic 
leader would have been perpetuated in the name of the capital; but through 
the inexorable and inevitable course of events, Abraham Lincoln succeeded 
his rival in national leadership, and his name became perpetuated in the 
capital city. The Nebraska City News, and other papers, bitterly assailed 
Finney and Furnas and charged them with recreancy and corruption. Mr. 
Furnas defended himself and his colleague with vehemence. He declared that 
he had always favored removal of the capital, but "upon an honest and fair 
plan." At the preceding session, just a year before, Mr. Finney, as 
chairman of the committee, made a report in which he was joined by J. 
Sterling Morton, unequivocally favoring removal of the capital to the same 
locality to which the bill he voted against in 1857 proposed to remove it.

   Bills chartering additional banks were passed by this legislature, but 
were all vetoed by the governor. Two of them -- for the Bank of Tekamah, 
and the Bank of De Soto -- were passed over the veto.

   Miller and Bradford of the council, and Seely, Hanscom, and Holloway of 
the house constituted a select committee to pass on parts three and four 
of the code which had been reported by the commissioners to the last or 
second assembly, near its commencement, but which, owing to lack of time, 
or of industry and care, had not been considered. Part three, relating to 
courts and their jurisdiction, was adopted, while part four, relating to 
crimes and their punishment, was again passed over without the assignment 
of any reason therefor. The explanation of this delinquency must be looked 
for in the closely related repeal of the criminal code and that part of 
the civil code adopted from Iowa, which measure was introduced in the 
council by Bradford as early as the 22d of January. The serious 
consideration, and perhaps even the original passage of this bill in both 
houses might have been excused or explained on the ground that members 
expected that these bungled laws would be substituted by better ones 
during the session. But the following veto message sent by the governor on 
the last day of the session and the subsequent action of both houses sweep 
away or preclude excuse or palliation for the shameless act:

Executive Office, Omaha City,
To the Council: February 13, 1857.
   An act entitled "An act to repeal certain acts of the legislative 
assembly of Nebraska," passed at the first session of the said legislative 
assembly has been presented to me I for my approval.
   The bill proposes to repeal all of our criminal laws passed at the 
first session of the legislative assembly, and all that portion of our 
civil code adopted from the code of Iowa. This might be well enough if the 
bill itself proposed a substitute or if there was even a probability that 
a substitute would be passed at the present session of the legislative 
assembly; but in the absence of both I must be allowed to doubt the policy 
of sweeping away a very large majority of the laws now on the statute 
book, thus leaving us without any means to enforce the simplest civil 
rights without a resort to the common law. I therefore respectfully return 
the bill to the Council, the house in which it originated, for its 
reconsideration.

   Moreover, the repealing measure was brief, sweeping, and explicit, so 
that it must have been difficult for a reader or hearer of intelligence to 
miss its purport. The council promptly passed the repealing bill over the 
veto by a vote of 12 to 1, Dr. Miller voting the solitary no, and the 
house followed with a vote of 24 to 2. Mr. Furnas of the council gives an 
interesting but scarcely adequate account of this legislative rape. He 
first quotes the following explanation of the Nebraskian:

   Early in the session of our legislative as-

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sembly, which has just closed, a bill was introduced in the Council by Mr. 
Bradford, the title of which, as we remember it, was "a bill for an act 
repealing certain acts of the legislative assembly of Nebraska, passed at 
the first session thereof." At that time legislation was "dragging its 
slow and weary length along," the capitol question was not then disposed 
of, and this bill was several days reaching even a second reading. Our 
impression is that the bill was read by its title only the first, second, 
and third time, in the Council; we are confident that no member of that 
body except its originator knew anything of the merits of the bill. It 
was, however, at length passed in the Council and transmitted to the 
House, from whence it was returned near the close of the session, and was 
in due time enrolled and presented to the governor for his signature.
   In the governor's hands the bill was scrutinized, and its character 
fully determined, which was nothing less than the repeal of all the 
criminal code of Nebraska and most of the civil code. Governor Izard of 
course could not sanction such an act as that, and on Friday last the bill 
was returned to the Council with his objections. Bradford winked and 
blinked "like a toad under a harrow" and with an appearance of candor well 
calculated to deceive, assured the Council that the governor was 
unnecessarily alarmed about the objects of the bill, that the repeal of 
our criminal code would only oblige us to have recourse to the common law, 
which was much better than the criminal code we had adopted. With these 
assurances from the dignified and truthtelling (?) judge, what did the 
Council do? Why they passed that bill over the governor's veto by a vote 
of twelve to one. Dr. Miller was the only man in that Council chamber who 
seemed to reflect what the consequence of his act might be.
   The bill had the same fate in the House, and passed by a decided 
majority, and to-day there are no laws in Nebraska except ferry and bank 
charters. We have good reason to believe that the true import of the bill 
was no better understood in the House than it was in the Council, hence 
the ease with which it was smuggled through that body. We hold the 
originator of such frauds responsible; and though we were at one time 
disposed to regard Mr. Bradford as an honest, conscientious man, we are 
now forced to the conclusion that he is the most dangerous and corrupt man 
there was in that body of reckless knaves. He knew the effect of the bill 
he was introducing, and we now know the objects he seeks to attain; the 
principal of which, we are informed, is to enable the murderer Hargus to 
escape the penalty of his crime. A man who can thus recklessly and 
wilfully break down every barrier that has been raised for the protection 
of society, for so criminal an object as that, should never be invested 
with the power of a legislator; he is almost as much to be feared as the 
murderer himself.
   We have heard Mr. Bradford, the president of the Council, and one or 
two other distinguished (perhaps notorious would be better) gentlemen 
chuckling over the passage of this infamous measure over the governor's 
veto, as the best thing done. We doubt not that the large majority by 
which it passed both Houses will be cited as a certain indication of the 
unpopularity of Governor Izard, and the light estimation in which he is 
held by the people. But if there is one act of his administration which 
will redound to his credit more than all others, if there is one act which 
will receive the approval of all virtuous men, it is the vetoing of that 
bill, which, by repealing all protective enactments, leaves the citizens 
of Nebraska a prey to lawless violence, without the hope of legal redress.

   Then follows the comment of Mr. Furnas:

   The above from the Nebraskian we publish in place of an article we 
intended to write upon the same subject. We think Mr. Robertson, however, 
rather sweeping in his expression, terming the whole Council a "body of 
knaves." He well knows -- as he was one of the clerks, and present when 
the bill was returned for reconsideration -- that its passage, was only 
secured by a betrayal of trust reposed in Judge Bradford as a legal man -- 
"as an honest and conscientious man" -- on the part of the balance of the 
Council. Even Dr. Miller himself stated in his place that he would vote 
for the bill "over the governor's veto" if the "honorable chairman of the 
judiciary committee" would assure him that it only repealed, as Mr. 
Bradford said, "conflicting portions of the criminal code." This assurance 
was given, with all apparent candor and honesty, and the bill passed by a 
vote as stated of 12 to 1, Dr. Miller fortunately voting as he did. Had 
Mr. Bradford secured the passage of this repealing bill by shrewdness, 
legal or parliamentary management, there might have been a shadow of 
allowance for him; but securing its passage as he did by downright 
falsehood, and abuse of confidence and respect reposed in him, he deserves 
to be held up to the public contempt of all well wishers of this territory.

   Such, unfortunately, are the character and the reputation of 
legislative bodies of the

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present time that trying those of a generation ago by any high standard of 
morality or intelligence would be incongruous. And yet the act in question 
seems a mixture of inexplicable and unprecedented ignorance and 
immorality. It is true that the members of the legislature, most of whom 
were young and without training or experience, would naturally rely upon 
the representation of the longtime chairman of the committee for the final 
preparation of the code that the common law would take the place of the 
statutory criminal code on the repeal of the latter; but even before the 
governor's explicit warning they must have suspiciously questioned 
themselves touching the criminal code: "If so soon 'twas to be done for, 
what was it begun for?" And there were capable lawyers at hand who easily 
might have exposed Bradford's charlatanry to their doubting minds. 
Contemporaneous explanation of Bradford's motive for bringing about the 
repeal of the criminal laws is obviously insufficient, though it may be 
correct in part. James E. Lacy had "jumped" the west eighty of a quarter 
section claimed by Simpson Hargus lying just west of the present county 
court house at Nebraska City, and in an altercation over the matter Hargus 
killed Lacy with a shotgun on the 23d of April, 1856. Then, according to 
contemporaneous explanation and belief, A. A. Bradford conceived and 
successfully carried out the no less audacious than novel scheme to save 
his client Hargus, whose trial was pending, by repealing the criminal 
code. But there is some ground for a suspicion that the principal motive 
of Bradford and his co-conspirators was to provide immunity for the 
culprits of wildcat banking schemes, then in the heydey of their reckless 
career, and perhaps more reason for thinking that Bradford himself was 
ignorant of the effect of the repeal. The civil procedure prepared by the 
code commission was promptly passed on the last day of the session after 
the governor's veto of the repeal had been filed; so that the territory 
was not left, as the veto message recites, "with no means to enforce the 
simplest civil rights without a resort to the common law."

   Hargus was indicted for manslaughter by the grand jury and tried before 
Judge Black, who held, in a long and elaborate opinion, that he could be 
punished under the common law, and he was convicted; but at the December, 
1858, term of the supreme court, a motion in arrest of the judgment of the 
district court was granted, the supreme court holding that "the statute 
providing for the punishment of the crime of manslaughter, which was in 
force at the time of the commission of the offense charged, was 
unconditionally repealed before the trial and judgment in the said 
district court," and Hargus was discharged. The administrator of Lacy 
brought suit for damages against Hargus, but the supreme court, in an 
opinion by Judge Wakeley, held that the repealing act took effect from its 
passage and repealed "absolutely and unconditionally, by a single section, 
both the civil and the criminal codes of the territory." The court further 
held that, although "on the 13th of February, 1857, the date of the 
repealing act, a new civil code was adopted in place of the one repealed, 
containing the identical provisions above quoted," yet because this second 
act did not take effect until the following June it did not reach back to 
cover the hiatus between the repeal and its passage; and so the civil 
case, too, failed.

   In accordance with a resolution passed by the council by a vote of 8 to 
5, Bradford, Allen, and Miller were appointed a committee to investigate 
the official acts of Mr. Cuming, both as governor and secretary, and to 
report to the council at its next session. The reactionary or subservient 
spirit of the first house of representatives, which passed a bill to 
prevent free negroes from settling in the territory, appeared again when 
Singleton introduced a bill of like purport at the third session. In the 
meantime public intelligence or a healthier moral sentiment had been 
growing in the territory, for the second bill received little 
encouragement. On the last day of the session it was indefinitely 
postponed in the house without division,(1) and was laid on the table by a 
vote of 10 to 3 in the council.(2) Only 

(1. House Journal, 3d ter. sess., p. 191.)

(2. Council Journal, 3d ter. sess., p. 160.)

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three members of the council -- Bradford and Reeves of Otoe county and 
McDonald of Richardson and Pawnee -- were possessed with that quality of 
economic and moral infirmity which prompted them to stand by the even then 
moss-grown measure at the final test.

   The third legislature undertook to strengthen the revenue law, and 
raised the levy for territorial purposes from two mills to three mills, 
limited the levy for county purposes to not over six mills, and for 
schools between one-half of a mill and a mill and a half. Though under the 
law of 1856 county superintendents of schools were authorized to levy a 
tax not less than three nor more than five mills for the support of 
schools, yet, up to this time, the revenue for support of public schools 
had been confined virtually to taxes raised by the individual districts 
and to fines for breach of penal laws, and the proceeds of sales of water 
craft and of lost goods and estrays.(3) The state superintendent complains 
in his report for the year 1856 that only two counties -- Dodge and 
Douglas -- have sent in reports, and in them the county superintendents 
had levied the maximum tax of five mills. He naively adds:

   I believe there are two other counties which have such school officers, 
viz: County superintendents of common schools, although I am not informed 
of the fact from a legal source, still there are undoubtedly such officers 
in the counties of Washington and Cass, unless by recent death or 
resignation their offices have become vacant.(4)

   This session ground out perhaps more than the usual grist of 
incorporations of cities and towns -- Omaha appearing as the City of Omaha 
instead of Omaha City, in the charter of this year-of colleges and 
ferries. A select committee, consisting of Geo. L. Miller, S. M. 
Kirkpatrick, and S. E. Rogers, reported a memorial to Congress -- which 
was adopted by both houses -- in the nature of a protest against proposed 
excessive grants of land to certain private corporations and companies in 
a bill then pending in Congress to aid in the construction of a Pacific 
railroad. The memorial, which is evidently in Dr. Miller's vigorous style, 
barring a degree of extravagance, is yet a true and prophetic forecast of 
events soon to follow. In later years protest against actual 
accomplishment of this prophecy became a familiar part of political 
platforms, national and state.

   The third legislature authorized the organization of three new 
counties, namely-, Cedar, L'eau-qui-court, and Sarpy, and all three were 
ready to vote at the ensuing general election -- in the fall of 1857. 
L'eau-qui-court is now comprised within the boundaries of Knox county. The 
legislature continues to represent the predatory, undomesticated spirit 
still dominant in the territory. This spirit neglects the duty of 
developing and perfecting a system of law, under which permanent domestic 
institutions might grow, but it is enterprising in the creation of 
unstable banks, in bestowing innumerable special corporate privileges, and 
in repealing criminal laws -- all, that exploitation and spoliation 
schemes of adventurers may be the more expeditiously and safely 
accomplished. Mere sectional jousts engage attention in both houses while 
the welfare of the commonwealth suffers. On the first of February 
Councilman Furnas bitterly complains: "It is a lamentable fact that 
legislation in which the people of the territory are interested is lost 
sight of amid the multitude of speculative operations for the benefit of 
individuals or companies, mostly, too, nonresidents of the territory . . . 
The session is now within eleven days of the close, and not a bill save 
the one relocating the capital has passed both houses. The wheels of 
legislation are blocked up in the council on the bank question, and in the 
house on the question of dividing Douglas county."

   After little more than half of his regular term had expired Governor 
Izard left the territory, apparently not intending to return. Official 
record is made of this incident: "Governor Mark W. Izard left the 
territory of Nebraska for Washington, Arkansas, etc., on the steamer 
Admiral, on the 2d day of June, 1857." William A. Richardson of Illinois 
had 

(3. Governor's Message, House Journal, 3d ter. sess., p. 14.)

(4. House Journal, 3d ter. sess., p. 28.)

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been appointed governor in May, 1857, but declined to accept the office.

   The De Soto Pilot of July 11th quotes the Bellevue Gazette of June 18th 
as follows: "With hat in hand we announce to the people of the territory 
that Mark W. Izard is peremptorily removed from the office of governor 
which he has so long disgraced." The Pilot then quotes a statement in the 
Chicago Times of July 25, 1857, that "Col. Richardson having declined the 
governorship of Nebraska, Governor Izard will return to the territory and 
resume his duties," and then twits Gen. L. L. Bowen for having spent two 
months in Washington at his own expense, "pressing on the part of the 
people the removal of Izard, authorized as he was by eight members of the 
council of which he is the presiding officer."

   On the 16th of July the Nebraska Advertiser states that, on account of 
Richardson's declination, "Governor Izard has been ordered back to resume 
his duties, and is now at his post in Omaha, where he will undoubtedly 
remain until the expiration of his term of office." It is probable that 
Governor Izard went to Washington with the expectation that he would be 
superseded, and that he came back to assume his official duties when it 
was found that Richardson was not willing to take his place.

   On the 30th of May Governor Izard issued his proclamation for the 
general election to be held on the first Monday in August. Five new 
counties were included in the legislative apportionment of this year: 
Cedar and L'eau-qui-court were placed in the Dakota representative 
district, Gage was included with Lancaster and Clay, and Johnson with 
Nemaha, while Sarpy was awarded four representatives. The apportionment of 
the thirty-five members was as follows: Burt and Cuming, 1, Cass, Clay, 
Lancaster, and Gage, 4, Cedar, Dakota, and L'eau-qui-court 2, Dodge and 
Platte 1, Douglas 8, Nemaha and Johnson 3, Otoe 6, Richardson and Pawnee 
3, Sarpy 4, Washington 3. No changes had been made in the representation 
of the year before except that the four members from the southern district 
of Douglas now came from Sarpy. Those districts to which the new counties 
were attached received no increase of members. The interest in the 
election centered on the choice of delegate to Congress, but the usual 
sectional edge was wanting in this contest because four candidates 
appeared in the field -- B. B. Chapman and J. M. Thayer of Omaha, Judge 
Fenner Ferguson and B. P. Rankin of Sarpy county. Though all of the 
candidates resided north of the Platte, Ferguson represented more 
particularly the South Platte, and Chapman the North Platte faction. 
Chapman, Ferguson, and Rankin were certainly democrats, but J. Sterling 
Morton's quick eye professed seeing the virus of republicanism working a 
little in General Thayer at this early period. The Bellevue Gazette of 
July 9, 1857, notes that "J. M. Thayer announces himself an independent 
candidate for Congress; platform: 'The best interests of the whole 
territory of Nebraska'"; but in 1859, the year of the actual organization 
of the republican party in Nebraska, and when the metamorphosis of 
democratic politicians into republican politicians first gathered courage 
to openly manifest itself, the Nebraska City News remarks that "the 
general was exceedingly wrathy because in his run for Congress two years 
ago we alluded to him as a republican." The Advertiser nominated Mr. 
Rankin on the 18th of June, pressing his merits as "the poor man's friend,
" and as "a conciliator in those strifes which have rent and distracted 
the territory." Judge Ferguson was nominated by a delegate convention at 
Bellevue, July 14th. Chapman was bitterly assailed by the News and the 
Advertiser, personally and politically, and they charged that he had never 
voted in the territory and was not a bona fide resident. Not many months 
before the Advertiser had been the profuse eulogist of Chapman, and now 
that it was recreant that smart politician did not scruple to publish a 
letter to himself from Mr. Furnas, editor of the Advertiser, stating that 
one of the official positions in the newly created land-office at 
Brownville would not be unacceptable to him. In the meantime Chapman had 
filled the offices with other men. At the election Ferguson received 1,654 
votes, Chapman 1,597, Rankin 1,304, and Thayer 1,288. The large vote for 
Ferguson in Otoe

Page 233

and Sarpy counties saved him; and while Chapman had a heavy vote in 
Nemaha, Thayer ran nearly even with him in Douglas and thus caused his 
defeat. He of course contested the election at Washington, but without 
success, and his political career was ended. William W. Wyman was again 
elected treasurer; Samuel L. Campbell was elected auditor; John H. Kellom, 
librarian; and Charles Grant, attorney-general. 0. 0. Richardson was ill-
requited for his faithful service in the first council by defeat as a 
candidate for attorney-general. Another prominent and worthy figure in 
Nebraska history, George W. Doane, makes his first public appearance 
through election to the office of district attorney of the third district; 
and two other well-known men, James G. Chapman of Douglas county and 
William McLennan of Otoe county, were elected attorneys of the first and 
second judicial districts respectively.

   Governor Izard left Nebraska for his home in Arkansas on the 28th of 
October, 1857, having previously resigned his office. A local newspaper, 
taking exceptions to a fulsome eulogy of the governor by another journal 
on the occasion of his departure, mildly hits off his character: "We 
consider him a good man -- an amiable and worthy citizen -- but not 
exclusively designed for a practical executive."

   In 1857 James C. Mitchell, the whilom capital commissioner, was 
publisher, and L. H. Lathrop, editor of the Florence Courier. The issue of 
March 12th of that year contains a scurrilous attack on Governor Izard. 
Mitchell no doubt knew the vulnerable spots of the governor's official 
character and record, and so, while the reckless severity of the 
accusation suggests a suspicion that the governor had thwarted some of the 
crafty commissioner's political schemes, yet it is likely that they 
contained at least the tincture of truth.

   A part of the Courier's arraignment follows:

   We want a man who will be governor of the whole territory, not one who 
(like the present incumbent) will so far pervert his mission as to set 
himself up as the governor of a particular city, holding the balance of 
the territory as mere outside dependencies, subservient and tributary to 
that particular locality. We want a governor with some snap to him, one 
who will occasionally visit the different sections of our territory, and 
endeavor to make himself acquainted with its position, its resources and 
its wants; not one like Mark W. Izard who will stick himself down in Omaha 
and confine himself to its limits month after month and year after year, 
idling away his time in the mere animal enjoyment of eating, drinking and 
sleeping, to the manifest neglect of the interests of those over whom he 
has been sent to preside; looked upon and pointed at by them as the very 
quintessence of ignorance, indolence and imbecility.

   Surely this was more than enough, but the article goes on to charge the 
governor with the downright sale of his approval or disapproval of bills, 
joint resolutions, and memorials, including bank and ferry charters.

   Governor Izard interposed three notable vetoes of legislative action. 
His obstruction of the will of a decided majority of the legislature to 
remove the capital in 1857, tried by the general principle involved, seems 
unwarranted. Yet on the whole it may have been prudent and for the best 
interests of the public; and at any rate, considering his environment and 
his temperament, this action was a matter of course. The veto of the bank 
bills and of the act repealing the criminal law was in point of duty and 
effect, at least, wholly to his credit. The accusation which found its way 
into the press, that his opposition to the bank bills was purchased by the 
existing banks to shut out more competition, should be regarded with 
consideration of the reckless charges against the public men of the 
territory which characterized that period. The Omaha Herald of October 19, 
1866, in noticing a statement in the Helena (Arkansas) Clarion that 
Governor Izard died at his residence in St. Francis county on the 4th of 
October, 1866, remarks that, "when in Arkansas we heard of Governor Izard 
as having lost everything during the war."

   RICHARDSON SUCCEEDS IZARD. William A. Richardson of Illinois succeeded 
to the governorship, January 12, 1858, Secretary Cuming acting as governor 
in the interim.

   Governor Richardson was born in Kentucky in 1811; he secured his early 
education

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[image caption: W. A. Richardson]

Page 235

in the common schools of his county, spent three years in preparatory 
study, entered Center college at Danville, Kentucky, from which he later 
entered Transylvania University at Lexington, Kentucky. At the end of his 
junior year he left college to teach school, and then began the study of 
law, which he practiced in Illinois for some time. He was state's attorney 
for his district, but resigned upon his election to the state legislature. 
He served four months in the Black Hawk war as a volunteer. He served a 
term in the state senate. In 1844 he was unanimously nominated and elected 
to the house of representatives and was chosen speaker. He served in the 
Mexican war with the rank of captain. In 1847 he was elected to Congress, 
and reelected to the same position upon the expiration of his term. In 
1856 he resigned his seat in Congress to accept the nomination for the 
office of governor on the democratic ticket and was defeated. The next 
year President Buchanan tendered him the appointment as governor of the 
territory of Nebraska, which appointment he declined; but in December of 
1857 the office was again offered him and accepted. He was inaugurated 
January 12, 1858, at Omaha. He resigned his office within a year and 
returned to Illinois where he was again elected to Congress; he resigned 
his seat in the house to enter upon his duties as United States senator to 
fill out the unexpired term of Stephen A. Douglas.

   J. Sterling Morton and Andrew J. Poppleton were again returned to the 
house, and among other members who afterward became prominent in the state 
were J. W. Paddock and T. M. Marquett. The contest for the office of 
speaker was between J. H. Decker and J. Sterling Morton -- both of Otoe 
county -- the former receiving 20, and the latter 12 votes. Mr. Morton's 
attitude toward the capital question had been completely reversed, and at 
a public meeting held at Nebraska City, after the adjournment of the 
legislature, where the members from Otoe county were called upon to 
explain their action in the Florence affair, Morton boldly stated that two 
years before in the capital contest he had struggled to the end for 
removal; a year later when he became a candidate for reëlection he was 
defeated on this record (by 20 votes), and he came to the conclusion that 
his constituents cared but little about the removal, and he himself 
believed that it was impolitic and inexpedient to raise the question at 
the late session. It is quite likely that Mr. Morton had other reasons 
also for this change of attitude -- and not unlikely some scores to 
settle -- but this one was sufficient, and justified itself.

   THE FOURTH LEGISLATURE. The message of Acting Governor Cuming, 
delivered at the opening of the fourth session of the general assembly, 
was his last important official communication. Few public men of Nebraska 
have written so forcibly as Cuming wrote; but the youthful glow and the 
rhetorical flavor of this message are in decided contrast with the mature, 
matter-of-fact expression of Governor Richardson's communications. These 
opening paragraphs of Governor Cuming's message illustrate the rhetorical 
quality of his writing:

   We are assembled to-day under the most favorable auspices. The 
territory of Nebraska has, thus far, achieved all that her friends could 
ask. Her early organization and rapid progress have signally illustrated 
the safety and expansive force of the principles of the federal compact, 
from which naturally sprang her organic act.

   The imprint of her "Great Seal" has been genuine. "Popular Sovereignty" 
has been vindicated; "Progress" verified. Peace and good order, practical 
vigor and manly observance of constitutional obligation have characterized 
the conduct of our people. No dangerous agitation or political heresies 
have been permitted to take root; but the seeds of industry, education and 
law, planted at the commencement by enterprising and practical men, have 
yielded the legitimate fruit of a safe and efficient self-government.

   Under such circumstances, and inhabiting a country of such vast extent, 
natural beauty, and productive wealth -- although lamentable dissensions 
have given to our sister territory a wider notoriety -- we may well 
congratulate each other, upon our verification of the political truth, 
"Happy is that people whose annals are tranquil."

   We have, assuredly, no ordinary cause of gratitude to Him who rules, 
over all things for the opportunities vouchsafed us -- the as-

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[image caption: Wm. McLennon was a member of an early Nebraska legislature]

Page 237

vantages of geographical position on the great natural line of commerce, a 
foremost place in the race of territories, and the facilities of modern 
improvements and great enterprises to promote our advancement in every 
department of history and art. By continued adherence to wise and moderate 
councils, by earnest and real public spirit and internal harmony, 
immigration will be rapidly increased, our new counties speedily 
populated, the great cities of the seaboard will identify with ours their 
commercial interests, and capital, once more libated from financial 
paralysis, will find its safe and more profitable investment in the fee-
simple of our fertile woodlands, prairies, and valleys.

   The legislature is advised that the capitol, a "spacious and imposing 
edifice, now nearly completed under the appropriation by the general 
government and through the public spirit of the city of Omaha," has cost 
fifty thousand dollars more than Congress had provided, and the governor 
recommended an appeal to that body for the amount of the deficit. He 
advises another memorial to Congress for the proper distribution of troops 
along the emigrant line in connection with an application for grants of 
land for building a Pacific railroad along the valley of the Platte; he 
states that arrangements for the completion of the Atlantic and Pacific 
telegraph from the Missouri river to the Pacific have been perfected; 
advises a memorial to Congress for an appropriation to build a military 
bridge across the Platte river; avers that the code of practice "is 
universally regarded by the bar as meager and defective" and that "the 
statutes are limited, confused, and contradictory."

   He complains that the school law, though adequate, has been almost 
unheeded.

   Many county superintendents have failed to qualify as prescribed in 
sections 19 and 20, chapter 18, 2d statutes; and the county clerks have 
provided no substitutes; nor has the forfeit been collected by the 
prosecuting attorney as provided in section 23. Others have neglected to 
report to the superintendent of public instruction on the 1st of November, 
as ordered in section 32. Thus the law has been rendered virtually a dead 
letter. In many, if not all the counties, no districts have been formed; 
no taxes levied; no teachers employed and no steps taken in respect to 
school laws. The act of Congress of 1857, providing for the selection of 
other sections in lieu of the 16th and 22d, when occupied and improved 
prior to the surveys, has temporarily abridged the land fund, but it is 
the duty of the county superintendent (chap. 18, sec. 9) to examine, allot 
in parcels, and value the sections not thus occupied, as well as others 
after they shall have been selected.

   It appears that the law of 1856 providing for a general military 
organization had not been carried out; for, the message informs us, while 
"companies exist in nearly every county their organization is very 
imperfect or suffered to decline." The governor favors the then 
undemocratic expedient of "a small appropriation" to each county from the 
territorial revenue "to encourage the development of our agricultural and 
productive resources."

   Governor Cuming's limited and faulty understanding of the principles of 
banking, as also his clear foresight and positive opinion as to the vexed 
subject of the territorial banks, were expressed as follows:

   It may be urged that specie is again returning to its former channels, 
and that public trust will soon revive. Yet what amount of coin will 
repair the injury already wrought, or afford a basis of security against 
human avarice, stimulated to extravagant speculations and unscrupulous 
excesses by the facilities afforded by an insecure banking system? The 
history of "profitable" banking is inevitably the history of alternate 
depression, overaction, and ruinous expansion. May we not hope that the 
events of the year will lead to a general reform, and to the restriction 
of paper to the uses of commercial men? Believing as I do, that the whole 
system of banking is insecure, even when based on state stocks and 
securities, where one promise to pay is made the basis of another, both 
perhaps equally fallacious, and being especially convinced that the 
institution of banks in this territory was impolitic, and that there are 
imperfections in the charters, I respectfully urge that some adequate 
means be taken to remedy the evil and protect our citizens in future. Many 
persons who have realized from such systems advantage to themselves may 
have heretofore seen no danger to others. But the experiment has now, at 
least, been fully tried, and none can be so far deluded by the transient 
stimulus and temporary vigor imparted to business transactions by traffic 
in expanded credit as to fail to see the necessity of additional 
protection of labor and of the

Page 238

great agricultural and other producing interests, upon which our true 
prosperity depends. The action of the first few years is apt to fix the 
character of the future state; and in the important respect of the 
financial policy to be pursued, no timidity, or indifference, or 
interested motives should be permitted to prevent or postpone a determined 
effort to avert, in future, calamities such as those from which the 
country is just emerging. The banks now in existence in the territory are 
perhaps as safe as most of such institutions. Prudently managed in their 
infancy, but few of the community have suffered loss. Yet it is equally 
true that their profits are to be made hereafter. In the meantime gold and 
silver, withdrawn from eastern adventures and depositaries [sic], may be 
expected in sufficient quantities for the ordinary purposes of trade. 
Although, therefore, paper money is now so identified with the business 
habits of the community that the prospect of its abolishment, perhaps for 
a long time to come, seems impracticable and to many absurd, yet, within 
our own jurisdiction, by proper safeguards and restrictions, we may 
approximate such a result; and may now provide that the full specie 
equivalent of all circulated batik paper shall be at all times within the 
reach of every citizen.

   The message shows from the records of the land office at Omaha that 
during the ten months, from February to November, 462,349 acres of land 
had been entered by preëmption. The governor felicitates the territory on 
its isolation from the embroilments growing out of the imminent questions 
of national politics:

   Safe thus far from the interference of reckless agitators and the mad 
efforts of intolerant fanatics, we can furnish to the world an enviable 
proof of the legitimate effect of the genius and spirit of our republican 
institutions. No retribution can be too severe if through casuistry or 
local strifes or political infidelity, we prove recreant to that beautiful 
federative system to which we owe our existence, and under which alone we 
can achieve true and permanent greatness.

   The foreboding thus expressed by this bright man was no doubt 
representative of the sentiment of northern democrats of that time as to 
the source of the impending danger.

   The report of the superintendent of public instruction, Mr. J. H. 
Kellom, sets out that the public school lands are not yet available for 
the purpose intended, and that "The title to them not having passed from 
the general government, a special act of Congress is thought by some to be 
necessary in order to make them ours." What follows is prophetic, as well 
as wholesome admonition.

   If the school lands are held intact; sold too early, nor exchanged for 
others less value, the time is not far future when this territory will 
possess a school fund equal in value to that of New York or Connecticut, 
and which will give to every son and daughter within her borders a good, 
practical, common school education. As the school lands are the basis of 
this prospective fund, every citizen in the territory should be deeply 
interested in their preservation; and you, in the capacity of legislators, 
will not hesitate to throw around them that protection which shall 
preserve them for all time to come.

   The territorial treasurer again makes a dismal report showing that 
"only two counties, Douglas and Otoe, have paid any territorial revenue 
into the treasury for the year 1857." The Napoleonic scheme of doing 
things affecting the public at large is pretty sure to be equally as short-
lived as it is at first efficient and irresistible.

   The capital question had logically run its course, and it was puerile 
politics to revive it at this time. The present location was as available 
as any that could be found, a large sum of money for those times had been 
spent upon the building, Congress would be in no mood, especially in the 
prevailing financial distress, to provide for a new building, and the 
territory itself was so desperately poor that it could not or would not 
meet its trifling incidental expenses. The legislature proceeded in about 
the usual way, the usual bills had been introduced, and Bradford, 
inexplicable though it seems, was placed at the head of a committee of the 
council to report a criminal code, and also continued as chairman of the 
judiciary committee. Now that Hargus was out of limbo through his 
effective mediatorship, and the wildcat banking field had been worked to 
sterility, he doubtless felt free and had the face to promulgate a bill 
for restoring the criminal law.

   At the outset the capital trouble began in the council with the 
introduction by Bowen of Sarpy county of a resolution providing for

Page 239

the appointment of a committee of two to investigate the condition of the 
capital building, its cost, in whom the title rested, and what legislative 
action was necessary. The resolution passed with only one adverse vote, 
that of Dr. Miller; and Bowen and Rogers of Douglas were appointed on the 
committee. On the 17th of December a resolution declaratory of Judge 
Ferguson's right to a seat as delegate in Congress, and incidentally 
reflecting severely on Chapman's action in contesting it, and which passed 
by a vote of 8 to 5, further inflamed factional hatred.

   On the 6th of January Mr. Abbe of Otoe county introduced the inevitable 
bill to relocate the capital. Councilman Furnas made a statement in the 
Advertiser in palliation of this annual South Platte sin.

   While Governor Cuming stated as a legal proposition that the city of 
Omaha had a lien on the capitol for the amount the city had expended in 
its construction, yet Mr. Rogers, the Omaha member of the committee, and 
the city council as early as January 4th were ready to eat humble pie by 
giving the territory full title to the property, making no claim on 
account of the city's large expenditure. On the 7th of January Governor 
Cuming sent the following message to each house:

   I have to inform your honorable body that I have received from Jesse 
Lowe, mayor of Omaha, a deed of trust to all that portion of land known 
and designated on the old plat of Omaha City as "Capitol Square" for the 
use and purposes of the capitol of the territory, and the state of 
Nebraska when it may become such.
T. B. CUMING,
Acting Governor of Nebraska.

   But the day after this question of title to the capitol had been set at 
rest by the liberal action of Omaha, a majority of both houses voted to 
withdraw from the seat of government and go on with the legislative 
session at Florence, where a relocation bill was passed. This 
revolutionary break-up was the outcome of years of greed, violence, and 
sectional folly.

   A committee of nine members of the minority rump which remained in 
Omaha -- four from the council and five from the house -- took a large 
amount of ex parte testimony, as laborious as it was inconsequential, on 
which they based a report. Their proceedings are printed in the journals 
of the session in question. The majority members made counter-statements 
in the newspapers. Though the anti-Omaha faction was guilty of the first 
overt act of violence, this priority was accidental, for the Omaha 
minority had undoubtedly determined at the outset to obstruct, by force if 
necessary, the clear moral and legal right of the majority to pass a 
removal bill. The unbridled spirit of violence which possessed the 
minority is shown by a sample of the affidavits of the majority faction, 
which also shows that old age secured neither respect nor immunity from 
assault by young and vigorous men:

   S. A. Chambers, being duly sworn, testified as follows:

   "My name is Samuel A. Chambers; am fifty-nine years of age; was a 
member of the House of Representatives at the last session; was in the 
House on the 7th while the House was in committee of the whole on the 
subject of the election of public printer; I heard Mr. Poppleton and Mr. 
Steinberger, members from Douglas county, and Mr. Minick, from Nemaha, say 
that unless the capital bill was withdrawn no further business should be 
transacted during the session; was out of the hall when the difficulty 
between the speaker and others commenced; heard that there was a call for 
members; started to go in; found the crowd at the door so intense that it 
was with difficulty I made my way within the door, and was utterly unable 
to get to my seat within the bar; when I got within the door I saw a 
number of persons having hold of Mr. Speaker Decker, among whom I 
recognized Mr. Murphy, member of the House from Douglas county, and a Mr. 
Kimball, resident of Omaha, and who was not a member of the legislature. 
During the scuffle I saw Mr. Hanscom, a prominent citizen of Omaha and not 
a member of the legislature, rush toward the parties and seize the Speaker 
who was then torn from the stand to the floor where I could no longer see 
because of the crowd.

   Was in the House on the morning of the 8th when a motion was made to 
adjourn to Florence; did not vote on the motion; after the motion carried 
the majority retired, and the minority immediately reorganized by electing 
Mr. Poppleton of Douglas, speaker, and also electing other subordinate 
officers. I still remained in my seat directing some documents to my 
friends, after completing which I called

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[image caption: Jesse Lowe was a member of an early Nebraska legislature.]

Page 241

the page to take charge of them and take them to the post-office; Mr. 
Morton of Otoe spoke to me from his seat, saying, "You have not the 
franking privilege -- you have no rights here.," I replied I had rights 
and would assert them. The speaker then ordered the sergeant-at-arms to 
"clear the House from all refractory members -- take him out." Some one 
other of the minority added "and see that he does not take more than 
belongs to him." The sergeant-at-arms approached me when I replied, "I can 
go without being put out"; he took hold of me and walked with me to the 
door. From the time Mr. Morton spoke to me until I left the hall there was 
continued cheering and stamping by the minority and lobby. As I went out I 
looked back and discovered Mr. Poppleton, the newly elected speaker, near 
my back with his gavel drawn over me. He afterward told me he had followed 
me to the door, expecting I would prove refractory; but that he was 
ashamed of his conduct.

   The following statement is credited to William B. Beck, "an old and 
highly respected citizen of Washington county":

Ed. Pioneer: Dear Sir: I see in the Nebraskian a charge against you to the 
effect that you had stated in a certain "extra" that knives were drawn at 
the time of the fracas in the last legislature.

   I take the liberty to state that such was the case to my own personal 
observation and knowledge; and I considered at that time, as I do now, 
that further opposition to Omaha men and measures would have been attended 
with serious consequences, and put in jeopardy the lives of at least a 
portion of that body.

   The legislative correspondent of the Bellevue Gazette, in the issue of 
January 21, 1858, stated the case thus:

   I cannot but believe that the people will feel proud of this 
legislature for the course it has taken. When an effort was made by an 
unscrupulous minority, aided by a mob, to clog the wheels of legislation, 
and cleave down the declared rights of the people and the majority to make 
their own laws, they stood up in the defense of those rights and the cause 
of the people.

   An excited mob, and an indignant and self-important accidental 
executive, together with the free offer of gold, could not swerve them 
from the path of duty and integrity. They knew that to yield would be to 
act the traitor to their friends, and they would prove faithless to 
themselves, faithless to their constituents, faithless to the country of 
their adoption, and faithless to the eternal principles of democracy as 
embodied in the Declaration of our independence, and with these sentiments 
of right and honor in their hearts, they took their stand. An effort was 
made to buy some of them but failed. They stood firm to the last hour and 
minute, in the defense of the people and right; and if their labor is 
lost, and the territory remains without laws for another year, they are 
not responsible for the consequences.
   
   Five members of the council -- Miller, Rogers, and Salisbury of 
Douglas; McDonald of Richardson and Puett of Dakota -- and thirteen 
members of the house -- Armstrong, Clayes, Murphy, Poppleton, Paddock, 
Steinberger, Stewart, and Thrall of Douglas; Cromwell of Richardson and 
Pawnee; Jones of Dakota and Cedar; Morton of Otoe; Minnick of Nemaha and 
Johnson; and Van Horn of Cass county; remained in Omaha, unable to do 
business, being no quorum, until January 16th, the end of the regular 
forty days. Presumably all the rest of the members went to Florence; but 
since the validity of the acts of the Florence session was denied at the 
time, and was not afterward recognized, no official record of them was 
preserved. But the Florence seceders, having a quorum, kept busy until the 
expiration of the forty days, and among the acts they passed were a 
criminal code, a homestead exemption law, a law setting off the north part 
of Douglas county -- that is, Florence -- into a separate election 
district, and a law for the relocation of the capital. The capital act 
named S. F. Nuckolls of Otoe, W. D. McCord of Cass, John Finney of Sarpy, 
and Elisha N. Hamilton of Washington as commissioners to choose the new 
location, which was to be within a district six miles wide on either the 
north or the south side of the Platte river, and between the guide 
meridian -- the present west boundary of Cass, Johnson, Otoe, and Pawnee 
counties on the east, and the sixth meridian -- the present west boundary 
of Jefferson, Saline Seward, and Butler counties on the west. The bill 
provided that the entire townsite should belong to the territory and for 
the sale of one-third of it the first year, by the com-

Page 242

[image caption: John S. Bowen was a prominent citizen of Washington 
county, Nebraska, formerly probate judge. He was a delegate to the 
national convention which nominated General Grant for president.]

Page 243

missioners, from the proceeds of which the necessary buildings were to be 
constructed. There is no explanation as to how the commissioners were to 
obtain title to the site which belonged to the public domain.

   We should be very thankful that the impracticability of the whole 
scheme saved the territory, with its distinctively and exclusively local 
and western associations and traditions, from the infliction of the far-
fetched foreign name -- specified in the act -- Neapolis; and we should 
also feel a half-hearted thankfulness that the political bias of those who 
finally named the capital of the state drew them half way toward their 
high privilege and plain duty in this respect. But poetical and political 
justice would have named the capital Douglas.

   FLORENCE SESSION. The house broke up on the 7th of January in a typical 
frontier row, in which trespass on the prohibitory law cut an important 
figure. The Omaha minority were talking against time on a minor question, 
in committee of the whole, and Poppleton had the floor, when Decker, the 
speaker, who had been out about the town, returned, and finding that there 
was no quorum, interfered, and insisted on resuming the chair. Morton, the 
chairman of the committee of the whole, ruled that the point of no quorum 
could not be raised while a member held the floor. Afterward, Mr. Thrall 
of Omaha took the chair, and a message from the council was announced. 
Poppleton made the point that under the rules this message could not be 
received, as the council was not in session at the time; but Decker 
insisted that the message should be received then and there, and attempted 
forcibly to take the chair, when Murphy and Paddock, Omaha members, 
dragged him away, and then A. J. Hanscom, a very strenuous lobby member, 
rolled Decker under a table. Finally the speaker left the hall, Morton was 
elected temporary speaker, and the house adjourned. The next morning 
Decker took the chair as usual, but on motion of Donelan of Cass county 
the house adjourned to meet in Florence the next day. In the council on 
the same morning -- January 8th -- Reeves of Otoe moved an adjournment to 
meet at Florence on the 9th. The president, Dr. Miller, refused to 
entertain the motion, whereupon Reeves himself stated it, and it was 
carried by a vote of 8 to 2, Furnas and McDonald voting in the negative. 
In this miniature secession Mr. Furnas took about the same position as 
many southern leaders were soon to take, when, after opposing 
dismemberment, they at last went out with their states. Furnas opposed 
secession, but went with the majority.

   Though the Omaha rump had the executive, or federal, part of the 
government on its side, and by virtue of this advantage con-

[image caption: From an unpublished daguerreotype taken in 1855. ROBERT W. 
FURNAS]

trolled the official records and gained its object in practical results, 
the majority, or seceders, had the best of it before the people, because, 
outside of Omaha, the press was on their side -- with the exception of the 
Nebraska City News, now edited, nominally at least, by Milton Reynolds. 
The News took both sides. Through the evident influence of Morton it 
condemned the secession; but it also promptly took advantage of the 
opportunity to again urge Morton's original scheme for annexation of the 
South Platte to Kansas. Perhaps a more definite illustration of the 
general anti-Omaha sentiment is contained in the statement of the News 
that "eleven out of the

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[image caption: REV. JOHN MILLER TAGGART. The Rev. J. M. Taggart was a 
pioneer missionary and a member of an early legislature]

Page 245

thirteen papers in the territory (the two remaining being owned by 
Chapman) have, week after week, since the election, expressed their 
preference for Ferguson"-- in the contest over the congressional election.

   On the 15th of January, in response to a request by J. Sterling Morton, 
Attorney-General Estabrook gave a written opinion as to the validity of 
acts passed by the Florence legislature, in which he correctly held that 
the seat of government clearly had not been removed from Omaha, and that 
therefore the only question was as to the power of the legislature to 
conduct business at any other place than the seat of government. His 
contention for the negative was lame, and perhaps, from the nature of the 
case, necessarily inconclusive. Considering the almost unlimited inherent 
powers of legislative bodies such as this -- not being restrained by a 
constitution -- and the weighty practical reasons for the adjournment to 
Florence and the urgent need of legislation, the Florence majority had the 
stronger argument, unless it could be met by contrary adjudication by the 
courts. This the attorney general attempted to do with a result negatively 
damaging to his side of the case; for the only authority he cited was that 
of the obscure territorial court of Oregon, and the decision evidently 
turned upon a different point from that held to be the issue in the 
Nebraska case, though he quoted two of the judges as deciding, 
incidentally at least, that the legislature could pass valid laws only at 
the regular seat of government.

   Governor Richardson having refused to sign the acts of the Florence 
assembly, a controversy arose as to whether he had returned them to the 
legislature, with his objections, according to the provisions of the 
organic act, so as to require their passage again by a two-thirds 
majority. The following statement of Mr. Reeves, member of the council 
from Otoe county, apparently settles the question in the negative:

Editor News:
   In your paper of the 13th is an article which needs a passing notice, 
for the purpose of "vindicating the truth of history."

   In the article alluded to I find the following, language:

   "But the governor says he distinctly refused to recognize them (the 
bills passed at Florence, I presume) and upon the back of each document 
wrote as follows: This paper was left in my room on yesterday, Jan. 13, 
1858, after I had refused to receive it. I neither veto nor approve it; 
but respectfully return it.
"'Jan. 14, 1858. W. A. RICHARDSON.'"

   Now as I was a member of the enrolling committee of the Council I wish 
to state the facts in relation to the presentation of those Florence bills 
to the governor, and let the people judge how they were "received," and 
who is at fault that we are now suffering the want of just and equitable 
laws for the protection of life and property and the administration of 
justice.

   The committee on enrolled bills in the Council was composed of Mr. 
Allen and myself. In the House it was composed of Messrs. Taggart, Hail 
and Abbe.

   On the 13th of January, Mr. Taggart, Mr. Hail, and myself waited on the 
governor, at his room in the Hamilton House, and presented him all the 
bills passed previous to that date at Florence, except one which was 
presented to him by Mr. Abbe on the same day, but at a later hour. I made 
a memorandum of what transpired at our interview with the governor, from 
which the following is an extract, and will be certified to as truth by 
every member of the committee:

   "The governor was notified by Mr. Allen, immediately after our 
introduction to him, that we were the enrolling committees of both 
branches of the legislature. The bills which originated in the Council 
were in one bundle, and were presented to him by Mr. Allen; and the bills 
which originated in the House, were in a separate bundle and were 
presented by Mr. Taggart. The governor took the bills from out of our 
hands and observed that he should take no action on them. When reminded by 
me that the legislature would consider them laws if not returned within 
three days, and being asked whether in that case he would file them in the 
secretary's office, he answered that it was a matter which required 
consideration."

   After mature "consideration" the governor concluded that the papers 
were "left at his room after he had refused to receive them, and that he 
would respectfully return them." But how did he return them? and to whom? 
Certainly not to the House in which they originated nor to either House 
separately; nor to both Houses jointly. They were never returned to the 
legislature at all, and were never before that body or either branch of 
it, after their presentation to the governor.

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[image caption: James P. Peck was a charter member of the Omaha Medical 
Association.]

Page 247

   The "respectful return" was made as follows:

   On the night of the 14th of January, about 9 o'clock, while some half 
dozen members of the legislature and others were sitting around a table in 
the parlor of the Willett House, some reading, and others writing, Mr. 
Howard, the governor's private secretary, stepped into the room and threw 
down a large package, remarking: "Gentlemen, the governor has sent your 
bills back."

   Now with these facts before him, who can believe that the governor 
"refused to receive them and respectfully returned them"?

   As stated before, I wish the facts to go before the people and let them 
form their own conclusions. Had the governor recognized the acts of the 
legislature, we would now have in force all the laws, except one mentioned 
in your paper of the 6th, as being necessary for the prosperity of the 
country; for such acts were among those presented to the governor. It is 
believed by many eminent jurists that these acts are laws; but if they are 
not it is no fault of the legislative branch of the government.

   But if it is necessary to cure all doubt that an extra session be 
called is it necessary that the majority will stultify themselves by 
making "promises" and "pledges" to the governor in advance? Is it expected 
that they will surrender the rights of the people for the inestimable 
privilege of returning to Omaha to be insulted and cheated out of their 
rights? I can hardly think that the governor would require such promises, 
but if he should, I for one will never make them. I am ready to pledge 
myself to the people and obey their behests; but I owe allegiance to no 
other power.

   I am willing to return to the capitol and labor faithfully, earnestly 
and peaceably for the enactment of all laws which are calculated to 
promote the prosperity of Nebraska and the happiness of her people; but I 
must be free and untrammelled [sic], save by the voice of my constituents.

   Thus, Mr. Editor, I have answered for myself your question, "Shall we 
have an extra Session?"

   The net product of the Omaha rump of the legislature is in itself a 
very concise illustration of how Cuming's skill in making things go and 
come his way had overreached itself. Only two very brief general laws were 
passed -- one abolishing the use of private seals, the other providing 
that hereafter the legislature should meet on the first Monday in January.

   Even the list of incorporations and territorial roads acts was 
relatively meager, and besides this, the sole accomplishment of the 
session was four inconsequential private acts and two joint memorials to 
Congress -- one praying for the establishment of a daily mail service from 
Iowa City, Iowa, to Omaha, and the other for the "division of the present 
surveying district of Kansas and Nebraska and the erection of a new 
district for this territory."

   Our novelists are now the makers or the expounders of our social 
philosophy; and it is a pity that the philosophy of George Eliot and 
Thomas Hardy, which teaches us not merely that it is better to attempt and 
fail than not to attempt at all, but that the virtue lies in the resolute 
purpose, so that often failure may even be better than accomplishment, was 
not then available for the consolation of the Omaha rump. The then budding 
"Sage of Arbor Lodge," perhaps unconsciously, gives point to this 
philosophy in the following inventory of residuary conditions, which is 
perhaps no less truthful than picturesque. Though Morton was not then the 
editor of the News, the piquant paragraph bears plainly his image and 
superscription: "The last legislature adjourned in a row, left, departed 
this life, miscellaneously and in a mixed manner, and left us no laws. The 
governor is absent, the secretary deceased . . . We occasionally see the 
squatters in little squads, whispering among themselves in a wicked, 
malicious, and mischievous manner that we are 'just as well off' now as we 
ever were."

   While men of more of that wisdom which comes only of experience than 
was possessed by those who comprised this fourth legislature would have 
avoided the foolhardy and, so far as its direct object was concerned, 
inevitably futile Florence revolution, yet, as may be said of most 
revolutions, its results were not all evil. For it precipitated unsettled 
public sentiment, and revealed to the pro-Omaha minority that the 
determined majority must be reckoned with in some other way than by 
bribery and coercion. It made both sides sufficiently tired of the 
disastrous controversy to permit an experienced, tactful, and masterful 
political leader to restore orderly conditions

Page 248

and supply necessary laws through a special session of the legislature. 
Governor Richardson arrived at the capital on the 10th of January, and he 
not only arrived just at the right time, but he was just the right man to 
arrive. He brought with him the two things needful, prestige and the 
impartiality of the outsider, strengthened by the insight of the astute 
politician. He assumed the office on the 12th of January, and the contrast 
of his fair and fatherly attitude with that of the youthful ardor of the 
aggressively sectional Cuming, whom he succeeded, was both sharp and 
reassuring. Furthermore, Richardson was the next friend of the great 
Douglas, the natural idol of the northwestern democracy who were beginning 
to love him the more on account of the ultra pro-slavery enemies he was 
making, and whom the politicians would propitiate because it was likely 
that he would be the next president. And so the tone of the press soon 
became quieter, its insistence upon the validity of the Florence laws was 
dropped, submission of the capital removal question to a popular vote -- a 
squint at least toward compromise -- was advocated, and finally there was 
general acquiescence in the proposal of a special session.

   THE DEATH OF GOVERNOR CUMING. The death of Thomas B. Cuming, secretary 
and acting governor, occurred between the Florence fiasco in the early 
part and the special session in the latter part of the year 1859, and the 
way was opened for the appointment of J. Sterling Morton to succeed him. 
With Lewis Cass at the head of the department of state at Washington and 
backed by his already recognized leadership, he had great advantage in his 
contest for the appointment. In the last days Mr. Cuming must have 
realized as the irony of fate the probability that his arch enemy would 
succeed him. It is a mere matter of course that these two brilliant men, 
of the most aggressive temperament and great political ambition, confined 
within the small limits of the dominant party of the territory, should 
have been mutually and bitterly hostile.

   If Cuming, by his masterful manipulation of the capital business, had 
blasted Morton's first hopes and driven him from his first home at 
Bellevue, Morton had perhaps repaid him in full by thwarting his hopes to 
become governor.

   The funeral of Governor Cuming at Omaha was a notable and imposing 
event for that period of sparse population and scanty sources of the 
trappings of pageantry; and he was especially fortunate in his eulogist. 
The formal funeral oration was delivered by James M. Woolworth, April 17, 
1858. Making due allowance for the young orator's natural North Platte, or 
Omaha, partiality or bias, he yet gave to the commonwealth, in this fine 
address, a very valuable sketch of the character and career of its first 
actual governor. Furthermore, the oration is remarkable for its rhetorical 
construction, its formal and stately style, showing the great influence of 
the dominant classical training of those days. This feature of the address 
has been modified, and its almost extravagant youthful warmth of 
expression is wanting in the writings and addresses of the seasoned lawyer 
and scholar of later days, while its clean-cut diction abides as a 
characteristic of his style.


THE ORATION
   Mr. President, Ladies and Gentlemen: ---
The tolling bell, the meeting of the citizens called to express a city's 
sorrow, the solemn announcement to the court, the judge on the bench, the 
juror in the box, the counsel at the bar turning from the business all 
undone, the soldier marching with slow and measured tread, with muffled 
drums and colors furled, and arms reversed, the public buildings draped in 
mourning, the public offices closed, business and labor all suspended, the 
flags at half mast, the minute guns, the lengthened process, unwhispered 
sympathies and sorrows, tearful eyes, sad, sad hearts, -- what cause, what 
abundant cause, for all these tokens of public and private bereavement!
   Thomas B. Cuming dead! That form that passed and repassed before our 
eyes, daily, almost hourly, that mingled among us, made one of us on the 
street, in the office, at the public meeeting [sic], at the social 
gathering, ever present, ever welcome everywhere; so recently erect and 
proud and ironbound, now prostrate, cold, dead. That countenance, set with 
the firmness of the ruler of a great country, yet varying with the varying 
emotions which chase each other through his mind, fixed now in the 
changeless expression of death.. That eye that

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beamed ever with ardor and intelligence, and anon flashed lightning from 
its black depths with the kindlings of brilliant intellect, closed now 
forever. That voice which thrilled, and swayed, and commanded the public 
assembly, gasped its last words, silent now. Nerveless the hand that 
grasped a brother's cause so generously ever -- ever as you, sir, or I, 
and how many others can testify. High ambitions, great promises, sanguine 
hopes -- all shattered into dust. A people cut off from its leader, its 
stay, its hope. What cause, what abundant cause, for public and private 
sorrow!
   Thomas B. Cuming dead! Meet are all these signs of woe. A great "man 
has gone to his long home and the mourners go about the streets." Let the 
court be closed; he was the noblest of all its members. Let the soldier 
honor his memory; he was the most gallant of all this band. Let the public 
officers suspend the public business; he was the chief and ruler of them 
all. Let the banker close his vaults, the merchant his ledger, and let the 
mechanic and the laborer lay down his tools, and let a great people 
assemble in this common sorrow to mingle together their tears for one 
whose like we shall not see again. Let the long procession bear him to the 
capitol, lay him in the very penetralia of his country's temple; let the 
priest of his church say over him the solemn office of his burial chant, 
over the inanimate remains the sacred requiem of the dead. Let the people 
gather around him once more to look on those well known features for the 
last time. Yes, let her -- alas for her whose heart breaks beneath the 
burden of its sorrow -- let her gaze and gaze, and as those sad, sad 
words, "Never again, never again," break the awful silence, let every 
heart melt; then let the tears flow unchecked, unheeded in the common 
sorrow for the dead and sympathy for the living, and then lay him in the 
bosom of his own Nebraska, beloved forever; "earth to earth, dust to dust, 
ashes to ashes."
   And meet is it that your association, sir, should consecrate an hour to 
his memory. He was one of its projectors and founders. He contributed of 
the abundance of his learning and his eloquence to its success. He was on 
the list of lecturers for the course just ended. Even in his last days he 
consulted for its prosperity. And yet, sir, I could have wished you had 
found another to do this sad office to his memory; to teach you his 
virtues, to recite to your lasting profit the lessons of his life and of 
his death. And yet what need of words?
   Thomas B. Cuming dead! Perish from among men the great principle of 
popular sovereignty which he vindicated and established here in stormy 
times, among enraged men who thirsted for his blood -- which he vindicated 
and established here, as no one else could, by his own unaided arm, by his 
own resolute will; perish peace, prosperity, and progress, which by his 
wisdom and energy he established in the first days of the territory; once 
and forever perish the achievements of her progress, the home of the 
settler, the admiration of human heroism, the love of human benefactors; 
then, and not till then, let us say, Thomas B. Cuming dead!
   Governor Cuming was born in Genesee county, in the state of New York, 
on the 25th day of December, 1828. His father is the Rev. Dr. Cuming, of 
Grand Rapids, Michigan, an Episcopal clergyman of distinguished learning, 
eloquence, and piety. His mother died while he was yet a young child. He 
was then removed to Rochester, and placed in the family of the Rev. Dr. 
Penny, an uncle, at that time a distinguished Presbyterian divine, 
afterwards the president of Hamilton college. He was afterwards removed to 
the home of his father, in Michigan, under whose care he was prepared for 
college. In his boyhood Governor Cuming enjoyed a training of the highest 
character. His father instilled into his young mind with all a parent's 
anxiety and care those habits of laborious study, of thoroughly mastering 
whatever engaged his attention, which eminently fitted him for the 
difficult positions to which he was destined. Especial care was had of his 
religious culture. Those elevated and severe doctrines which distinguished 
the higher school of the Episcopal church were early instilled into his 
young mind, and it is believed that through all the distracting scenes of 
his life, in the midst of the great temptations to easy, often sceptical 
notions which beset young and ardent minds in our day, he never ceased to 
revere the salutary teachings of his father and of the church.
   He entered the university of Michigan, at Ann Arbor, at a very early 
age. But young as he was he carried with him a familiar acquaintance with 
the Latin and Greek languages, a singular aptitude for their acquisition, 
and a native fondness for letters in general; and to these he added a 
devotion to study and an ambition to excel very uncommon at so early an 
age. He accordingly took a high standing as a scholar. In the classical 
and belleslettres department be had not an equal in the institution. He 
enjoyed also an uncommon flow of animal spirits. Perfect health was a 
blessing he enjoyed from his earliest days till his last sickness; and in 
a boy, health and activity are concomitant. He mingled in all the sports 
of college life, in all the mischief, too, and made himself notorious by 
them. The

Page 250

name of Cuming was known in every hamlet in the state before his first 
year in college was over. At the age of sixteen he graduated, carrying off 
the first honors of the institution. His oration is spoken of to this day 
for the force and eloquence which distinguished it from the platitudes 
usually spoken by young men on such occasions. Upon his graduation he was 
appointed geologist to a scientific expedition sent to explore the mineral 
regions about Lake Superior; a position whose importance is evident from 
the immense wealth annually derived from the copper of that country.
   At the breaking out of the Mexican war he was a young man averse to the 
drudgery of any of the professions, but full of the high hopes and 
aspirations of youth. The sound to arms appealed to the military passions 
of his nature, for his nature was that of a soldier through and through. 
He entered the army as a lieutenant, and served out the time of his 
enlistment. He always regretted that the circumstances of his station 
prevented his mingling in those great conflicts which reflected such glory 
on American arms.
   After the war he found himself loose upon the world, without friends to 
whom he could go, without means, without advantages, save those he had 
within himself. Accidentally he found employment as a telegraph operator 
in Keokuk, Iowa. But it was not enough for him to feed his stomach and 
clothe his nakedness. The mind of the young man must be at work. He wrote 
an anonymous article to the Dispatch, a paper published at that place. it 
arrested attention. He wrote another; curiosity as to who was its author 
was excited; another and another appeared, and curiosity increased more 
and more. One person and another to whom they were at first attributed 
disclaiming the authorship, they were at last traced to the young 
telegraph operator. The ability which they displayed was not to be lost 
and he was immediately placed in charge of the paper. It was soon the 
leading paper in the state, a power in the state, and hardly ever was 
there a country paper exercising such a large influence. During his 
residence in Keokuk he married Miss Margaret C. Murphy, whose beautiful 
devotion to him in all the changes and trials of life has been only 
equaled by the great sorrow which now crushes her.
   It was while in charge of the Dispatch, in 1854, and somewhat in reward 
for the eminent services which he had rendered to the democracy, that he 
was appointed secretary of Nebraska. He was at this time only twenty-five 
years of age. He arrived here on the 8th of October, accompanied by his 
accomplished bride. It is well known that very soon after Governor Burt 
arrived in the territory he sickened and died, and that Cuming thereupon 
became the acting governor. Young as he was he brought to the duties of 
the office qualities singularly fitted to their faithful discharge. His 
mind was filled with the idea of a Roman governor and pro-consul in Rome's 
best days. A mind stern, haughty, severe, and unyielding in the policy it 
had marked out; resolved by its own invincible will to bend all men to 
that will, to bend itself to none, to be a great power in the state, and 
then by virtue of that policy to plant the institution of sound and stable 
government and order and law. To teach all men the wisdom and the power of 
that great central government which granted them an organization, and 
gradually, safely, and surely to fit them for citizenship in its great 
confederacy.
   What a work was that for a man of twenty-five, but how nobly did Cuming 
do it! Those factious jealousies and contests, so common and so bitter in 
new countries, rent the territory into numerous and distracted parties; 
and when the young governor took one step in the direction of organization 
he found arrayed against him the combined opposition of all parts of the 
territory, save this city alone. When he convened the legislative assembly 
here all the fury of excited passion burst upon him. Any other man would 
have stood appalled before it; would have retreated before its threats; 
would have compromised with its turbulence. To do so, however, was to give 
up the peaceful organization of a territory, consecrated in the midst of 
national excitement to popular sovereignty; to give up all law and all 
order, to give up himself, as he was, all he hoped to be. He did not 
waver. He issued the certificates of election to those who were elected 
members of the assembly. He pressed the two houses to an immediate 
organization, and in one week every vexed question was settled, his 
opponents defeated in their disorganizing purposes, and orderly government 
in the territory secured as a new proof of the ability and the right of 
the people to govern themselves. It was a triumph of his commanding will 
which awed opposition. It was genius mastering transcendent difficulties. 
Governor Cuming lived to see the blessings of peace, order, law, and 
prosperity follow his acts.
   It is unnecessary for me to recount in your hearing the life of our 
friend. It was passed in your midst. You were sharers of its joys, of its 
generosities, of its devotions. It was a part of your own, and the thread 
of its narrative is entwined with that of yours so that

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you can not recall the past but you recall him. It was a life of energy, 
of activity, of effort for every good word and work which concerned this 
city which was his home, and this territory over which he presided. 
Beautiful is old age; beautiful as the rich, mellow autumn of a bright 
glorious summer. The old man has done his work and he is gathering in the 
abundant harvest of his good services in the love of the old and the 
reverence of the young. He has laid off the cares of life and waits 
placidly for the end; waits placidly for the beginning beyond the end. God 
forbid we should not call that beautiful! But more beautiful even than 
that is young manhood, with strong arm and stout heart, in the face of 
storm, and wind, and rain, sowing the good seed of national order, 
prosperity, and peace; sowing the good seed of its own fame which a whole 
people shall embalm in the memory of its best affections. Raise on the 
spot where he lies what tomb you will, his true sepulcher is in our 
hearts, his true epitaph is written on the tablets of our memories.
   The resignation of Governor Izard returned Governor Cuming to the 
responsibilities of the chief executive. While in their discharge the late 
assembly convened. For some time before he had been suffering from 
prostrating sickness, and he was little fitted to meet the violent 
contests which attended the session. He nerved himself for the task and 
prepared the message. But the disease which prostrated him gave to his 
mind a deep coloring of sadness, of doubt for the future, of fear both for 
himself and the country. He was unable to prevent its tinge appearing in 
the message, and as he delivered it to the assembled houses, the deep 
pathos, the hopelessness of some of its passages, cast over the minds of 
those who loved him, even amidst the excitements of the occasion, a 
strange foreshadowing of a coming sorrow. The effort was too much for him, 
and he returned to his home to preside over the territory from his sick 
bed. The hopefulness of his nature did not at all forsake him in his 
painful sickness. He hoped he might be permitted to rebuild a better and a 
nobler self on the ruins of the old constitution; that to the services of 
his country he might add others, still higher; that he might yet give 
wider and, freer play to those affections of the heart, to those 
sentiments of Christian duty and religion which an anxious father had 
early instilled into his mind. But it was not to be; all the love of 
friends, all the promises of his young manhood and his abundant 
acquisitions, all his capacities to do good, all his hopes, all his 
ambitions could not save him. He was cut down and withered. Peacefully he 
lies in the embrace of his own Nebraska, and as fond kindred grace the 
hallowed spot with marble shaft or consecrated iron, with the beauty of 
the flower, with its rare odor that comes to us as a sweet consolation, a 
loving people will turn ever and anon from the path of their prosperity to 
pay their tribute of affection to the great man buried there.
   The character of Governor Cuming was marked by a most striking 
individuality. In these days, when the etiquette and customs of social 
life conform even the heartiest salutations and coldest reserve, the dress 
we wear, all the manners of our life, to one standard of phase and 
fashion, most men lose, especially in daily intercourse, all distinctive 
characteristics, become like all others, are least themselves. It was not 
so with Governor Cuming. You always met him. His peculiarities of phase, 
of manner, arising not from any desire to be singular, but a natural, 
unconscious, yet most intense individuality, always impressed you. Besides 
you always felt you met a man; a man of will, who resisted all external 
influences and followed the line of his own convictions and purposes. The 
physical formation of the man indicated the firm, well-knit, active 
nature; every inch of him was alive and tremulous with the energy which 
poured along the nerves. His grasp was the grasp of the lion; for its 
physical power first, most of all for the mighty will which directed it. 
This same organization was indicated by the eye, which no one ever looked 
into and ever forgot. That deep black iris, that fervid glance and gleam 
indicated an organization very remarkable and seldom seen in temperate 
zones. It was a torrid eye, from which flashed out all the tremulous 
sensibilities, all the passions, and all the fire of natures born and bred 
near the sun. In the mental physiology of Governor Cuming imagination held 
a large space; but it was not the subtle imagination which delighted in 
beautiful, soft-phrase words, empty of large, strong, vigorous vision; nor 
yet, even in its highest altitude, did it soar aloft in the clear but cold 
regions of disenchanted spirit. It was wrapped about, or rather it was at 
one with his sensibilities. It dwelt among and upon those visions which 
are beautiful because they are lovely, and delightful because they are 
creations of *the heart and its affections, not of the cold, selfish mind. 
This was one peculiarity of his eloquence. It was luxuriantly imaginative, 
but it was so full of sentiment, of the warm, gushing natural sentiment of 
the heart. No matter what the occasion, he led captive the feelings, if 
not the convictions of his audience. The very copiousness of his language, 
his appeals to numerous passions,

Page 252

the magnetic power of his figure gave him a command, sometimes an absolute 
tyranny over his hearers, very seldom equaled by the greatest orators.
   And yet I would not speak of these qualities to the exclusion of the 
more substantial. They were the leading peculiarities of his mental 
organism, and yet logic, large abilities at argument, what the Germans 
call the absolute reason formed a stable and sufficient substratum. He 
never laid hold of a subject but he mastered it. He took it in, both in 
its grand outlines and as a whole, and in its minute details. Its 
scientific nature and relations were clear to him. He could speak of them, 
and speak of them in the formal propositions of science. But when he came 
to speak of them to the people, when the full play of his powers moulded 
them into forms tangible to the popular touch, visible to the popular eye, 
then he brought them home to the heart by the most singular appeals of 
passion, of interest, of desire.
   I have already spoken of his early studies, of his devotion to them, of 
his ambitions and successes in them. He was known here, not at all as a 
man of books but as a man of the world, dealing with its appliances, 
means, objects, and yet to the last he was the same ardent student as in 
early days. His acquisitions in one so young, whose life had been in 
excitement little congenial to literary habits, were astonishing. No man 
ever crossed the Missouri so thoroughly educated. By that intense 
individuality of which I have spoken, he made what he read a part of 
himself. His knowledge was not something outside of him; it entered into 
his being; out of it the muscles and sinews of his mind drew their vigor. 
It was always at command. It sounded not like some familiar words, but 
like himself alone, and graced and enforced every subject which he touched 
by its abundant illustration.
   His manner was reserved, especially of late years. He held almost every 
one at a distance.
   Few penetrated into the great heart within him. But that heart was a 
great fountain of affection, of sympathy, of generosity. The hard world, 
long contact with its selfish struggles and hates and jealousies, may have 
crusted it over with constraint, but within it was warm and true and 
loving as ever. In his last sickness it came back again to the simplicity 
and freshness of ingenuous youth. He turned back to old thoughts and 
feelings and pursuits. The well-thumbed volumes of his schoolboy days were 
once more brought out, and, clustering thick around them the associations 
of early life, which none but the scholar knows, he read again and again 
the lines dimmed by the tears that would come. He talked of those high and 
holy things which most fill a child's wondering mind, which most fill the 
soul looking into a world where it must be a child again. It was sad to 
see him then, with such capacities for good, marked for the grave; to hear 
him wish for life with a strange hope; to hear him speak with deep pathos 
of those he loved and must leave, of himself and the past, and his 
resolves and his prayers; but who could help but feel that he had come 
back again to the freshness of youth, that he might enter into that youth 
whose freshness is immortal. I am told by those who knew him in his youth 
that, as he lay awaiting the last mournful testimony which we have paid to 
him, he looked, more than he ever has since, as he did before the changes 
and trials of life had placed their marks upon him. Who shall say that 
that fair, bright, placid face was not the symbol to us of the spirit 
fairer, brighter, more placid above?

Light be the turf of thy tomb;
   May its verdure like emeralds be;
There should not be the shadow of gloom
   In aught that reminds me of thee.
Young flowers and an evergreen tree
   May spring from the spot of thy rest,
But no cypress or yew let us see,
   For why should we mourn for the blest?