History of Nebraska - Chapter 16



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CHAPTER XVI
POLITICS IN 1866 -- ROCK BLUFFS CONTEST -- JOHNSON AND ANTI-JOHNSON 
FACTIONS -- STRUGGLE OVER STATEHOOD -- ELECTION OF FIRST STATE OFFICERS -- 
TWELFTH AND LAST TERRITORIAL LEGISLATURE -- THE NEGRO SUFFRAGE CONDITION 
IN CONGRESS, AND IN THE FIRST STATE LEGISLATURE

   THE democratic convention was held at Nebraska City, April 19th. T. W. 
Bedford was its presiding officer, and J. Sterling Morton was nominated 
for governor; Charles W. Sturges of Sarpy county, for secretary of state; 
Guy C. Barnum of Platte county, for auditor; St. John Goodrich of Douglas 
county, for treasurer; William A. Little of Douglas county, for chief 
justice; Edward W. Thomas of Nemaha county and Benjamin E. B. Kennedy of 
Douglas county, for associate justices of the supreme court; and Dr. John 
R. Brooke of Richardson county, for representative in Congress.

   The convention adopted the following platform:

   Whereas, We regard the support of the state governments in all their 
rights as the most competent administration of our domestic concerns and 
the surest bulwarks against anti-democratical tendencies; the preservation 
of the general government in its whole constitutional vigor, as the sheet 
anchor of our peace at home and safety abroad. Therefore,
Resolved, That a jealous care of the right of election by the people; the 
supremacy of the civil over the military authority; economy in the public 
expense that labor may be lightly burdened; the honest payment of our just 
debts; the sacred preservation of the public faith; freedom of religion, 
freedom of the press, and freedom of the person under protection of the 
habeas corpus; and trials by juries impartially selected are the 
fundamental doctrines and tenets of the democracy.

   Resolved, That the official action of Andrew Johnson, president of the 
United States, in his legitimate endeavors to restore, under the 
Constitution, the several states to their legal status in the American 
union, elicits and receives the full, free and honest commendation of the 
democracy of Nebraska, and that we promise him our faithful and active 
support in all his efforts to sustain the constitution and laws.

   Resolved, That we regard the platform adopted by the radical official 
convention held at Plattsmouth on the 12th inst., as a direct and explicit 
condemnation of the wise and just policies of President Johnson; a clear 
declaration in favor of the destructive policies of the Stevens, Sumner 
and Fred Douglas directory; and that we hereby do invite the people of 
Nebraska to unite with the democracy and aid in verifying the historic 
saying of Andrew Johnson that "This is and shall be a government of white 
men and for white men."

   Morton was credited, or charged, with the construction of the platform; 
and after the republican press had heaped the matter-of-course partisan 
strictures and ridicule upon it, he took malicious pleasure in retorting 
that the preamble and first resolution were copied verbatim from the 
immortal Jefferson's first inaugural address. The absence of allusion to 
the statehood issue shows that Morton had been willing to compromise as to 
that question with the pro-state element of the party; and in the campaign 
his opposition to statehood was not aggressive.

   George Francis Train, who had a long career of remarkable vicissitude, 
was a picturesque figure in this campaign. Though his speeches were not 
characterized by coherency, they were wonderfully bright, droll, witty, 
sarcastic, and humorous, and the contrast between his performance and that 
of the weighty and ponderous Oliver P. Mason, who followed him in a 
discussion at Brownville, is concededly indescribable. Train -- and the 
audi-

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[image caption: OLE ANDERSON Pioneer of Otoe County]

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ences also -- had immeasurable fun at the expense of Butler and Kennard, 
whom he engaged in joint discussion at Cuming City and Tekamah. Train 
strongly advocated statehood, but supported the democratic ticket. The 
joint discussion was the regular order in those earlier campaigns, and 
Morton and Butler engaged in them all over the territory. Morton entered 
into a fray of this sort with all the bright alertness which characterized 
his public speeches to the last, but with a rough-shod vehemence that had 
been greatly modified in his later days. His part of the discussion is 
described from the opposition point of view: "Morton out-spoke himself -- 
for vehemence, argument, wit and sarcasm, outstripped everything I have 
ever heard in Nebraska." Butler was no mean popular debater, and in 
reaching the sensibilities of the plain people had the advantage over 
Morton. His favorite exclamation, "I thank God from my heart of hearts," 
etc., was at least a partial foil to the merciless cut-and-thrust of his 
greatly superior antagonist -- in ability and wit. But again Morton, by 
cruel fate and more cruel manipulation of the returns, just missed his 
prize, as the official count of the vote shows: "For the constitution 3,
938; against the constitution, 3,838. For congress Turner M. Marquett, 4,
110, Dr. John R. Brooke, 3,974; for governor, David Butler, 4,093, J. 
Sterling Morton, 3,984; for secretary of state, Thomas P. Kennard, 4,075, 
Charles W. Sturges, 3,945; for auditor of state, John Gillespie, 4,071, 
Guy C. Barnum, 3,968; for State treasurer, Augustus Kountze, 4,099, Saint 
John Goodrich, 3,955; for chief justice, Oliver P. Mason, 3,936, William 
A. Little, 4,040; for associate justices, George B. Lake, 4,108, Lorenzo 
Crounse, 4,027, Benjamin I,. B. Kennedy, 3,962, Edward W. Thomas, 4,017. 
It will be seen that one democrat, Little, was elected by a majority of 
104. The vote of the First regiment, Nebraska volunteer cavalry, was 134 
for and 32 against constitution.

   There was a wholesale emigration of the soldiers of the First Nebraska 
regiment to their homes in Iowa, Missouri, and other states after having 
voted in Cass and other counties. They voted for Stone in Iowa the year 
before, and "never pretended to be citizens here."

   Mason was the only candidate on the "union" ticket who was defeated, 
though Crounse escaped only by the narrow margin of ten votes. While the 
apology for Mason's misfortune may have been colored by the propitiatory 
exigency of his party organ, it yet throws an interesting light on two 
prominent politicians of that day:

   Mason is a tried and true union man; he has encountered the enemy in 
many instances during the recent rebellion where it was considered 
dangerous to openly denounce treason; where traitors stood thick around 
him, threatening him with violence for his plainness of speech. And it was 
on this account more than any other that the terrible effort was made to 
defeat him for chief justice, and also that Mr. Little, the most popular 
democrat in the territory became his competitor.

   The vigor with which the "loyal" shibboleth was sounded in the campaign 
of 1866 is illustrated by the charge that Dr. Brooke, of Salem, democratic 
candidate for member of Congress, lamented that his son enlisted in the 
union instead of the rebel army. The substantial ground of opposition to 
statehood was the dread of the still impecunious people of foregoing the 
paternal appropriations of the federal Congress for the support of the 
territorial government and undertaking the formidable responsibility of 
self-support under the increased expense of state government. This 
principal objection that a population of only 40,000, and in straitened 
circumstances, could not bear the burdens of state government was both 
strong and effective; but the objectors could not then see into the very 
near future when the advent of the two pioneer railway systems was to mark 
the real beginning of immigration, and such rapid rise of the commonwealth 
in population and importance as should require the advantages and deserve 
the dignity of statehood.

   The chief stimulus to the opposition of democratic leaders was 
tactical. In the beginning of the campaign the Nebraska Statesman, which 
supported the democratic ticket

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[image caption: J. W. Gilbert was one of the organizers of Saline county, 
Nebraska, and member of the legislature.]

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but favored statehood, urged this view of the case.

   We know we have the evidence to prove what we say, (and if we have not, 
Hon J. S. Morton has the best of proof in his own pocket), that the reason 
of the opposition of leading men in our party to the state movement is 
wholly and solely due to the fear they have that the democratic party has 
not the strength to elect a majority of the state legislature at the June 
election. We know that far from really believing anything irregular in the 
plan of a legislative made and submitted constitution that these leading 
men did advise, and that nearly if not all of the democratic members of 
the last assembly would have voted for, the constitution, then and there, 
if the vote on the adoption of the instrument had been separated from the 
election for state officers, carrying the latter over to the October 
election, so that the party could have been put into good training for 
success at that time. Any democrat who is candid, who was about Omaha 
during the last days of the session, knows these facts and will reiterate 
them.

   While the republicans could urge with candor the advantages of the 
increased prestige and influence of statehood -- and particularly the 
value of having three representatives in Congress entitled to vote, 
touching still unsettled questions concerning the Union Pacific railway -- 
yet their chief object was the honors and emoluments of congressional 
membership. It was estimated that, "counting from Hitchcock up, and from 
Marquett down, any ordinary observer can count at least forty persons who 
aspire to senatorial and still higher honors." In the spring of 1866 the 
Herald listed among the aspirants to the senate, Kellogg, Saunders, 
Redick, Thayer, Paddock, and Tipton; and, factionally classed, "Kellogg is 
for Johnson, Paddock leaning that way, Saunders against, Thayer, Redick 
and Tipton not well placed, Butler on both sides, and Edward B. Taylor, 
ring-master or big Indian,"

   The same journal called the faction which was defeated in the first 
senatorial contest the Taylor-Saunders-Irish party, and Judge Elmer S. 
Dundy, so far as his innate wariness permitted him to disclose his 
attitude, hung on the outer edges of this faction.

   The Herald at this time also refers to John I. Redick as a renegade 
democrat, now so radical that "he would eat the tails of African rats and 
thrive on the diet."

   To men whose lives were pent up in the desert-like aloofness from the 
important world those ambassadorships to Washington must have seemed 
dazzling prizes indeed, and they awoke the covetous ambition of the unfit 
and unworthy as well as of the capable, strong, and worthy.

   The disgraceful record of elections and election contests in the 
territory finds a fitting climax in the exclusion of the vote of Rock 
Bluffs, a precinct of Cass county. But there was still so limited a 
public, and, in consequence, such paucity of public opinion, that the 
selfish aspirations of a comparatively few politicians were paramount and 
almost unrestrained; so that, when it was ascertained that manipulation of 
local election returns somewhere was necessary to insure a republican 
majority on joint ballot in the legislature, Rock Bluffs precinct was 
selected as the most promising field of operation. The reports of the 
committees of the two houses of the legislature give the history of the 
Rock Bluffs procedure, and the deep impression of its political and moral 
significance on the mind and conscience of the commonwealth is still 
uneffaced. Its immediate practical result was the choice of Crounse 
instead of Thomas as judge of the supreme court and the election of Thayer 
and Tipton as United States senators, instead of Morton and Poppleton, by 
a joint vote in the legislature of 21 to 29.

   The discerning reader will without much difficulty draw his own 
conclusions as to the animus and the right or the wrong of throwing out of 
the vote of Rock Bluffs precinct and of counting the soldier vote, from 
the reports of the committees of the first state legislature and the 
address to the public, written at the time by James M. Woolworth, and 
signed by twenty-one members of the legislature. The following is a 
verbatim copy of the address as published in pamphlet form:

   On the 19th of April, 1864, Congress passed an act authorizing the 
people of Nebraska to form a State government. The act provided for an 
election in May, of members of a con-

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vention which should assemble on the fourth of July, and frame a 
constitution. This instrument was to be presented to the people for their 
adoption or rejection, in October. The act did not provide for taking the 
sense of the people upon the fundamental question, whether or not they 
would become a State. But they asked it and answered it, and in this way: 
In the election for members of the convention, party lines were not drawn. 
On one side, candidates favorable to State organization were nominated; on 
the other, candidates who were pledged to vote for an adjournment, sine 
die, as soon as the convention was organized, and before it proceeded to 
business. The result was, two-thirds of the members elected were favorable 
to adjourning, and they were elected by very large majorities. For 
instance in Douglas, one of the most populous and wealthy counties in the 
Territory, but forty-five votes were cast for State organization. No 
record of the election was preserved, but we believe the majority was 
proportionately as large elsewhere as in that county. Accordingly, when 
the convention assembled on the fourth of July, 1864, it organized by the 
election of its officers, and immediately thereupon adjourned, sine die.

   Springing the question. This emphatic expression of popular will, as 
was generally supposed, laid State organization at rest. At the general 
election in October, 1865, it was not even suggested. In its platform, 
adopted at a territorial convention, for nominating candidates for auditor 
and treasurer, the Republican party did not mention the subject. The 
Democrats in a very emphatic resolution, declared against any movement 
which did not provide for taking the popular vote on that subject, 
divested of all other issues, and before any step was taken towards 
framing a constitution. Had it been supposed possible that the territorial 
legislature would draft a constitution, many men who succeeded in 
obtaining an election to it, would have failed to receive so much as a 
nomination. For instance, in the delegation from Otoe county were O. P. 
Mason and J. B. Bennett of the Council, and J. H. Maxon of the House. 
These gentlemen, after the legislature assembled, showed themselves to be 
very ardent friends of the scheme for that body making a State of 
Nebraska. And yet their county rejected their constitution by a majority 
of over four hundred votes. So, too, the Cass delegation supported the 
measure, and their county gave a majority of three hundred and twenty-five 
against it. Not one of them could have been elected if they had been known 
to favor State organization.

   But after the election the plan was developed. It was proposed now, for 
the first time, that the legislature should resolve itself into a 
convention, draft a constitution, and organize a State government. 
Conscious that such action was an exercise of powers confided to that body 
neither by the law nor by the people, the attempt was made to obtain 
petitions numerously signed, praying the two houses to perform this extra 
service. These petitions were in large numbers sent out of the "executive 
office," into all parts of the Territory, accompanied by letters urging 
the parties receiving them to circulate them generally in their 
neighborhood, obtain signatures and return them. The measure was 
prosecuted with great energy. Nearly every citizen in the Territory was 
solicited to sign one of these petitions. With all these efforts only 
about six hundred names were obtained. The attempt to give the scheme the 
appearance of a popular movement was confessedly abortive, so that the 
petitions were never made an apology for the action of the legislature.

   The action of the legislature. At the opening of the session, a decided 
majority of the members of the House were opposed to the measure. Among 
the Republicans, many were determined in their opposition. All the federal 
officials, Governor Saunders, Chief justice Kellogg, Secretary Paddock, 
Indian Superintendent Taylor, and others, made a party question of it. It 
was given out that no man who opposed it could expect or should receive 
recognition in the party. Meeting after meeting was held and the matter 
urged by all the eloquence and sophistry possible, while private 
conversations were converted into appeals and private bargains. One by one 
was won over -- promises of office and of contracts and yet more tangible 
influences doing the work. Chief Justice Kellogg, Secretary Paddock, Mr. 
Mason and two or three others, now set themselves to draft the 
constitution which this legislature should adopt. In the calm and 
undisturbed retirement of private rooms, and under the protection, from 
interruption, of locks and keys, these gentlemen pursued their work. They 
produced an instrument suited to their purposes, which the legislature was 
to adopt at their discretion. Its chief merit was that it provided a cheap 
government. According to their estimates, its annual expenses would not 
exceed over twelve thousand dollars. Not a single State officer, except 
the judges, was to receive as much as a hod carrier's earnings. The 
people, it was insisted, were able to support a State government, but were 
not willing to pay their officers respectable soldiers' pay for their 
services. A respectable State gov-

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ernment would, they argued, frighten the people and they would reject the 
constitution. A cheap government of cheap men answered the purpose 
designed, inasmuch as the senators in Congress are paid by the United 
States.

   On the fourth day of February, 1866, their constitution was introduced 
into the Council, accompanied by a joint resolution in these words:

   Resolved, By the Council and House of Representatives of the Territory 
of Nebraska, That the foregoing constitution be submitted to the qualified 
electors of the Territory, for their adoption or rejection, at an election 
hereby authorized to be held at the time and in the manner specified in 
the seventh (7th) section of the schedule of said constitution, and that 
the returns and canvass of the votes cast at said election be made as in 
said section prescribed.

   The constitution was not printed for the use of either house. No 
amendment was permitted to one of its provisions. A strenuous effort was 
made to obtain an amendment separating the election upon the adoption or 
rejection of this instrument from that for State officers, but the 
decisive answer was, candidates for office under the State organization 
will support the constitution. The effort therefore failed. On the 8th the 
resolution passed the House, and on the 9th was approved by the governor.

   In the contest proceedings in Cass county it had been stipulated that 
the testimony taken in the case of Cooper against Hanna should be used in 
the other senatorial contest and in the contest over seats in the house of 
representatives. It is said that by accident or oversight this stipulation 
was not placed on file, though it appears that it was at least verbally 
agreed to. It will be seen on reading the reports of the several 
committees of the legislature that they took advantage of this technical 
irregularity, and five of the six contested seats were awarded to the 
republicans, wholly without consideration of the facts. Probably nothing 
more, and certainly nothing less, should be said of this procedure than 
that its audacity was worthy of a better, while its shameless inequity and 
downright dishonesty would have disgraced even a worse cause.

   The four democratic candidates for membership in the house from Cass 
county were clearly entitled to seats, barring the technical irregularity 
on the part of the Rock Bluffs election officers, but against whom no 
fraud or intention of fraud was shown. By principle as well as by usual 
practice the house was in duty bound to disregard the technicalities and 
award the seats to those candidates who had the majority of the fairly 
cast votes. If the four democrats of Cass county had been seated in the 
house, on joint ballot for United States senators there would have been a 
democratic majority of one, at least; and according to the statement of a 
contemporary republican newspaper that three democrats contributed to the 
29 votes for the republican candidates, the democrats would have had 28 
votes and the republicans 22.

   Cass county had voted overwhelmingly against the state constitution, 
and this fact no doubt emboldened the members from that county to attempt 
to palliate the heinous Rock Bluffs offense and thus appease the righteous 
of a large majority of their constituents by agreeing to adjourn without 
action, and thus defeat the election of United States senators, which was 
the sole object of the session. But to the surprise of the other members 
of the delegation, on the roll call, Chapin and Maxwell smoothly failed to 
carry out their pledge. When the other members of the delegation 
discovered the trick they changed their vote and the republican plan was 
consummated.

   But due consideration of prevailing political conditions at this time 
would preclude the conclusion which has been generally reached, that if 
the votes of Rock Bluffs precinct had been counted the first two United 
States senators from Nebraska would have been democrats. It is rather to 
be presumed that if democratic senators had been chosen the admission of 
the territory into the Union would have been postponed till a more 
convenient political season.

   By this time the breach between the stalwart republican majority in 
Congress and Andrew Johnson was complete and beyond repair, and the 
republicans of Nebraska, in the main, followed the eastern leadership. In 
October, 1865, Edward B. Taylor, editor of the Omaha Republican, but also 
superintendent of Indian affairs, and who had given strong

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[image caption: H. P. ANDERSON Farmer and banker, Dunbar, Nebraska]

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editorial support to Johnson's policy, retired from the editorship, and he 
was succeeded by General Harry H. Heath, who continued the pro-Johnson 
policy. On the 13th of April, 1866, the Republican announces that Saint A. 
D. Balcombe has bought a half interest in the paper and will be business 
manager; and in this number the political policy is changed and 
thenceforward it is the aggressive, thick-and-thin organ of the stalwarts 
as against Johnson. The Advertiser does not find it necessary to change 
editors, but as soon as the party tide goes against Johnson the editor 
unresistingly goes with it against Johnson, too.

   The process of fusion between Johnson republicans and democrats was 
formally completed in the summer of 1866, though its course was by no 
means smooth. In the early fall a Johnson club was formed at Dakota City, 
with Thomas L. Griffey, the well-known democrat, as president. A meeting 
to form a Johnson club was held at Omaha in July, at which Judge Kellogg 
presided and James G. Chapman was secretary; but, as a result of a wrangle 
over the articles or resolutions, the democratic leaders, including 
Poppleton, Miller, and Woolworth, withdrew, and only eight signed the 
articles of the club. George Francis Train and Judge William F. Lockwood 
were elected delegates to the Philadelphia fusion convention which 
undertook to organize the national union party. The democrats of the 
legislature had chosen Morton and Poppleton as delegates, and the 
Plattsmouth convention, September 11th, chose General Harry H. Heath, 
James R. Porter, and Colonel John Patrick. There were three sets of 
delegates at this convention, one headed by Morton, another by George 
Francis Train, and a third by Edward B. Taylor. Morton and General Harry 
H. Heath were appointed members of the executive committee of the new 
party. General Heath had succeeded Taylor as editor of the Republican and 
had held that post as lately as February, 1866. For some reason Taylor's 
loyalty to the office-dispensing power was futile, for on the 6th of the 
following November his removal from the office of superintendent of Indian 
affairs was announced, as also that of Colonel Robert W. Furnas from his 
office as agent of the Omaha Indians, Captain Lewis Lowry, "a copperhead," 
according to the Republican, succeeding him. The Republican complained 
that Tuxbury and Reed, "two of J. Sterling Morton's Vallandighammers, of 
the most violent kind," had been appointed as register and receiver of the 
land office at Nebraska City, the republican incumbents having been 
removed. But early in the next year the Senate rejected these 
appointments, as also that of Thomas W.

[image caption: WILLIAM FRANKLIN CHAPIN Prominent in politics and early 
Nebraska history]

Bedford as register of the land office at Brownville. Charles G. Dorsey 
was appointed register of the land office at Brownville by President 
Johnson in 1865. In November, 1866, the president appointed T. W. Bedford, 
who was a captain in the union army, in Dorsey's place. On the 8th of 
February the Senate refused to confirm the appointment, but Bedford 
obtained a writ of replevin from the district court and gained possession 
of the office and its contents. Public officers are often summarily 
ousted, but it is seldom that one is summarily injected into office as 
Captain Bedford was. The Nebraska City News, J. Sterling Morton editor, 
relates how it was done:

   Captain Thomas W. Bedford was duly in-

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[image caption: COLONEL JOHN M. STOTSENBERG Killed in action in the 
Philippines, April 23, 1899]

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augurated as register of the United States land office on Friday, February 
15th, 1867. The interesting ceremony was efficiently conducted by Deputy 
U. S. Marshal Dwight. Mr. Dorsey retired with ineffable grace, and his 
valedictory, remarks are said to be quite moving. The predictions of the 
News, so far as Dorsey's exit was concerned, have been verified. When 
Andrew Johnson concludes to appoint land officers in Nebraska he seems to 
pay but little regard to the personal comfort or courage of Mr. Dorsey.

   A short time before this, Bedford attempted to gain possession of the 
books of his of-

[image caption: SAINT ANDRE DURAND BALCOMBE Pioneer Editor of Omaha]

fice from the old incumbent by means of a writ of replevin issued by Henry 
C. Lett, the well-known democrat, and then mayor of Brownville. But the 
nerve of the deputy sheriff who undertook to serve the writ deserted him, 
and the scheme failed. After having been thrown out of the United States 
senatorship -- which he had fairly won -- by the "state" legislature at 
the first session in July, Morton proposed in the News the following 
course: "The questions for the Nebraska democracy to consider in relation 
to this matter are of vital importance. Shall we not put upon our tickets 
this next October election the words: 'For an enabling act and a 
constitutional convention. Against Thayer and Tipton. Repudiation of the 
Butler oligarchy'?"

   The "union" territorial convention was held at Brownville on the 6th of 
September, and Oliver P Mason was chosen president and Daniel H. Wheeler 
of Cass county and John T. Patterson of Richardson county secretaries. The 
principal candidates for nomination for member of Congress were Dwight J. 
McCann, Alvin Saunders, John Taffe, and Isham Reavis. Oliver P. Mason 
received twelve votes on the informal ballot, and his name was then 
withdrawn. On the fifth formal ballot John Taffe of Douglas county was 
nominated, receiving 33 votes against 32 cast for McCann. The committee on 
resolutions, consisting of John M. Thayer, Amos J. Harding, George 
Vandeventer, Ebenezer E. Cunningham, Hiram D. Hathaway, Leander Gerrard, 
John Taffe, Nathan S. Porter, and William W. Washburn, reported a platform 
consisting of the proposed 14th amendment to the Constitution of the 
United States with the following, addition:

   Resolved, That loyalty shall direct and control the destinies of this 
nation.
   Resolved, That the soldiers of the union who have saved this nation 
from destruction by armed traitors, shall, in the future, as in the past, 
have our hearty co-operation and unfaltering support, and that we are 
deeply sensible to the fact that the people of this republic can never 
fully discharge the debt of gratitude which they owe to the union soldiers 
and sailors whose self-sacrificing patriotism and blood have preserved 
constitutional liberty upon this continent.

   Mr. Taffe in accepting the nomination declared that he was unswervingly 
opposed to the Johnson policy. Turner M. Marquett was nominated for 
delegate to Congress on the first ballot, receiving 39 votes against 25 
for Oliver P. Mason and 1 for John Taffe. Mr. Marquett had been chosen 
member of Congress at the provisional state election held in

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[image caption: ISHAM REAVES Associate justice for supreme court of 
Arizona, 1869-1873]

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June, but President Johnson had in the meantime refused to approve the 
bill for the admission of the territory as a state, passed in July. While, 
therefore, the delegateship was intrinsically lesser, yet it seemed at 
this time the surer of the two offices; and for Marquett the change might 
be a reduction or a promotion according to one's political forecast. John 
Gillespie and Augustus Kountze were again nominated by acclamation for the 
offices of auditor and treasurer respectively, and Robert S. Knox for 
librarian, also by acclamation.

   The call for the democratic territorial convention to be held at 
Plattsmouth, on the 11th of September, invited all to participate "who 
favored the reconstruction policy of the president and complete 
restoration of the states to their rightful position in the union at the 
earliest practicable moment, and are opposed to the disunion policy of 
Congress."

   The Philadelphia national union convention had endorsed or accepted the 
results of the war, but, while denying the right of any state to withdraw, 
also denied the right of any state or convention of states to exclude any 
state or states from the union. The Omaha Herald expressed its readiness 
to unite with all men who agreed with the Philadelphia declarations, and 
was anxious to realize the best practical results through the coming 
Plattsmouth convention. The democrats were thus only a little less 
cosmopolitan and comprehensive in their call than the republicans were in 
the enlarged name of their party. And so the Republican facetiously 
analyzes the Plattsmouth "national union" convention as composed of seven 
office-holders, three office-seekers, three democrats who "don't like 
Tipton, and two in the wrong boat."

   The democrats and Johnson republicans had simultaneous, but separate 
conventions, the first held upstairs and the second downstairs, in the 
same building -- and their mode of procedure exactly anticipated that of 
the fusion parties of Nebraska at a later date. Dr. Andrew S. Holladay, 
postmaster of Brownville, presided over the Johnson convention and 
Theodore H. Robertson over the democratic convention. We are told that 
Judge Lockwood appeared in the democratic convention and reported that the 
"conservative" or Johnson convention "accepted implicitly the resolutions 
of this (democratic) convention, and would heartily endorse its action and 
nominations." The democrats nominated J. Sterling Morton for delegate to 
Congress, Frank Murphy for auditor, and Andrew Dellone for treasurer. The 
Johnson convention nominated Algernon S. Paddock for member of Congress 
and Robert C. Jor-

[image caption: ISAAC S. HASCALL Pioneer lawyer and legislator]

dan for librarian. Both conventions -- or wings of a convention -- 
endorsed the resolutions and address of the Philadelphia convention.

   The Plattsmouth Democrat censured the leaders -- Morton, Miller, 
Poppleton, and Woolworth -- for bad tactics, insisting that James R. 
Porter of Cass county should have been nominated instead of Mr. Morton. 
The opposition organ styled the distinguished democratic leader as, "J. 
Sterling Morton, the worst copperhead and rebel Nebraska affords," alleged 
that Colonel Patrick wanted a mild union democrat like James R. Porter, but

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[image caption: WILLIAM V. ALLEN United States senator, 1893-1899]

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[image caption: SILAS A. HOLCOMB Governor of Nebraska, 1895-1899]

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Morton, Miller, Woolworth, and Poppleton beat him and forced Morton on the 
ticket. Even the suavity and all-embracing friendliness of Secretary 
Paddock's deportment failed to stay the poisoned shafts of the "loyal" 
party organs. The Republican charges that,

   He has deserted the republican party in the time of its most severe 
trial, in its efforts to restore this union upon a firm basis, and allowed 
himself to be used as the standard-bearer of the copperhead and rebel 
party. He was a professed republican a few weeks since, and rested his 
claims to the highest office within the gift of our people with a radical 
legislature upon radical assurances. He was

[image caption: LORENZO CROUNSE Eighth governor of Nebraska]

beaten. He went with unseemly haste to Washington and secured his 
reappointment to the secretaryship of the territory, by far the most 
valuable office within it. Immediately upon his return he heads a movement 
with the expressed intention of disorganizing his old party; and today he 
is a nominee on the same ticket with J. Sterling Morton, a bitter, 
uncompromising Vallandigham democrat.

   But if the Republican's pen was dipped in bitterness the Herald's was a 
fountain of gall, and even its defense was aggressive attack. As a sample 
Roland for an anti-Paddock Oliver the Herald notes that George B. Lake, 
"renegade democrat and African equalizer," tries to read Paddock out of 
the republican party. Attacking Thayer's vanity it says, "For weeks he has 
been so busy bragging himself into consequences that his activity has been 
tremendous."

   George Francis Train entered the canvass as an independent candidate 
for delegate, and a list of names of thirty-one Irishmen urging him to 
remain in the contest was published. They favored him because he had 
"advocated so long the cause of Irish nationality." The remark that "Mr. 
Train has already done and is now doing more for the future advancement of 
Nebraska than any other man, or set of men, has done for it since it was 
organized as a territory," might be taken to lend color to a previous 
averment that the "program of Morton and Miller is Morton and Train for 
United States senators"; and a later one that "Train found that, after 
being encouraged by Miller, et al., he was set aside for Morton, but he 
anticipated them by becoming an independent candidate." However, the 
Herald's puff was limited to Pacific railway purposes. While this most 
picturesque personage was very effective in his peculiar role, no one 
would have taken seriously a proposal to play him in an important 
political part, and if Morton and Miller put him aside once they doubtless 
did it twice; for he was probably embarrassing Morton's canvass, and so in 
a characteristic letter he withdrew from the contest. "When men," he says, 
"emancipate themselves from party, when voters regain their independence, 
when the people of Nebraska are more anxious to have me for their 
representative than I am to represent them, when an election can be 
carried without purchase, perhaps I may enter the field again."

   We have another example of the humor of this remarkable campaign in the 
Herald's illustration of the anxiety of Kountze to be elected treasurer: 
"We never saw Kountze before when he could speak more than two languages. 
Yesterday we heard him using not less than six, including Danish, and he 
spoke each with equal fluency. Augustus is always very busy when there is 
anything pecuniary in sight." This second campaign of 1866, con-

Page 375

sidering both the number and ability of those engaged in it and the 
aggressiveness with which it was fought, had not been equaled by any 
political canvass of the territory. The formidable array of old war-horses 
Miller, Morton, Poppleton, and Woolworth -- old relatively speaking only, 
for they were really colts of thirty-five years or under -- were 
reënforced by Paddock and Lockwood, with Judge Kellogg, an astute 
politician, in the background. Woolworth made speeches in this campaign, 
but refused to become a candidate for state senator.

   Marquett, Mason, Taffe, Thayer, and Tipton were the most conspicuous 
republican orators, and they were ably reinforced by Orsamus H. Irish of 
Otoe and Isham Reavis of Richardson county, while Dundy "The Cautious," 
but of the longest head, kept more in the background, and his productive 
cunning in this instance presently brought him the appointment to the 
federal district bench by President Johnson and confirmation by the 
clashing Senate. Other able, and perhaps fitter, but certainly less astute 
aspirants were dashed against either this Scylla or that Charybdis. With 
the exception of course of George Francis Train's speeches, the inevitable 
joint discussion between Marquett and Morton -- for a forensic duel was 
always insisted upon when Morton was candidate was the striking feature of 
the campaign. While Marquett was no match for Morton in the positive 
sense, yet he was shrewd enough to appreciate, and witty enough to make 
the most of that disadvantage. Morton, in his usual aggressive style, 
consistently pressed Marquett to say whether he was for or against negro 
suffrage, but without effect; for suffrage sentiment in the territory was 
as yet either so conservative or so timid as to have placed the white 
restriction in the pending constitution whose acceptance republicans were 
urging upon Congress. Morton of course declared himself positively against 
negro, suffrage, and thereby strengthened his character but weakened his 
vote. He also positively endorsed President Johnson's policy. Morton on 
the stump and Miller in the press took the most aggressive ground against 
negro suffrage and the "disunion" conditions Congress was imposing on the 
return of the rebellious states to the Union. The republicans had little 
else to do but to cry "copperhead" and charge their opponents with intent 
to put unrepentant rebels in the saddle in the South. And in existing 
conditions the republicans won, almost as a matter of course..

   The republicans nominated the same set of candidates for both 
territorial and state legislative tickets.

   This was the last chance of the democratic party in Nebraska for many 
years; it required a generation of time for it to recover sufficiently 
from the disadvantages of the logic of conditions or of its own mistakes, 
so as to be able to make, single-handed, even a formidable campaign; and 
during that time republican majorities waxed rather than waned. It was 
also Morton's last chance; and it was chiefly a compliment to his prowess 
and not out of disrespect or wanton meanness that all the bitterness and 
vituperation, all the old wives' tales, all the facts and all the fiction 
which the greed for office could summon or invent, were focused upon him. 
The republican press even raked up the, scurrilous abuse which the 
democratic editors of Omaha heaped on Morton in the early days when he led 
the factional section of the South Platte. "J. Sterling Morton has long 
been a mark for the venom of political hatreds. No man in this territory 
has been more bitterly assailed in season and out of season. This has 
arisen in his independence of thought and action, and might have been 
expected." The Herald observed that Mr. Morton's loss by theft of two fine 
horses, one the favorite of his wife and children, "has brought out once 
more the venom and malignity which only political bloodhounds can cherish 
towards their opponents. Men and the press have openly rejoiced in his 
loss." But the very large vote which Morton received at home is 
illustrative of the fact that, in spite of his penchant for arousing 
enmity and opposition, those who knew him best never ceased to recognize 
in him great qualities which attracted them and

Page 376

inspired admiration and respect. But he lacked entirely that essential 
quality of the successful practical politician which composes differences 
and placates enemies; and he proceeded upon the impracticable, 
uncompromising presumption that "he that is not for me is against me."

   In the meantime the first, or provisional state legislature, which was 
elected in June, met on the 4th of July, proceeded to elect two United 
States senators, and adjourned on the 11th of the same month. But 
President Johnson having "pocketed" the admission bill which was passed by 
Congress, July 27th, the day before adjournment, it failed to become a 
law. Just before the passage of this bill in the Senate, Charles Sumner 
attempted to attach the same condition to it, respecting negro suffrage, 
which was afterward adopted; but his amendment received only five votes -- 
those of Edmunds, Fessenden, Morgan, Poland, and Sumner. The bill passed 
by a vote of 24 to 18, all these senators voting with the democrats in the 
negative. In this debate the leading advocates of the bill were Nye of 
Nevada and Wade of Ohio, and its chief opponents were Hendricks of 
Indiana, Doolittle of Wisconsin (Johnson republican), and Sumner of 
Massachusetts. Sumner's primary objection to the admission measure was the 
suffrage -- restricting word "white" in the proposed constitution. 
Doolittle, Hendricks, and Sumner pressed the objection of fraud in the 
election at which the constitution was adopted, and which had caused an 
investigation in the legislature. Mr. Doolittle adduced the statement of 
Isaac L. Gibbs, who was speaker of the house in the legislature of 1857:

   The gentleman for whom I pledged my honor was a captain of one of the 
companies of the first Nebraska regiment, who stated to me that two of the 
companies of that regiment were raised in Iowa, and the soldiers of those 
companies voted in favor of this constitution while they were in the 
territory of Nebraska; that those same soldiers voted, on a commission 
from Iowa, for Governor Stone at Fort Kearney in Nebraska; that subsequent 
to this voting they have been mustered out and have gone home to Iowa 
where they reside. I say that for his statement, stated to me upon his own 
knowledge, I do vouch for his honor as a man and a soldier.

   In the House, Kelly of Pennsylvania pressed Rice of Maine to yield to 
him so that he might offer an amendment similar to that of Sumner, but 
Rice declined on the ground that if he should entertain such an amendment 
"it would be the means of killing the bill." A prediction then that at the 
end of six months negro suffrage sentiment would have so grown and 
crystallized and that republicans would have so far recovered their wonted 
confidence, after the demoralizing Johnson disturbance, that the state 
would be admitted with Sumner's amendments as an accepted condition, and 
by a two-thirds vote over Johnson's veto, would have seemed visionary.

   The twelfth and last session of the territorial legislature convened in 
Omaha, January 10, 1867. The two districts comprising respectively Cedar, 
Dixon, and L'eau-qui-court, and Dakota, Cedar, Dixon, and L'eau-qui-court 
were not represented. Mr. Chapin of Cass county was chosen speaker of the 
house, receiving 23 votes against 11 cast for Mr. Balzer of Lincoln 
county. The absence of Governor Saunders from the territory at this time 
gave Acting Governor Paddock an opportunity to deliver the message, which 
in its business aspect was creditable; but its closing bold appeal in 
behalf of President Johnson's reconstruction policy stirred the now 
dominant congressional faction of the Republican party to wrath, and drew 
a storm of protest from the party organs. The territorial treasurer had 
reported the remarkably large sum of $23,324.56 on hand, and adding to 
this the tax levy for 1866, not yet collected -- $69,973.86 -- the militia 
reimbursement appropriation by Congress, $45,000, and delinquent taxes, 
$26,983.24, and then making an estimated allowance for loss on delinquent 
taxes, $10,000, and for possible disallowance of militia accounts $8,000, 
the acting governor optimistically ventured to congratulate the territory 
on the possession of a surplus of $61,810.22 above the indebtedness of $85,
471.44. The treasurer reported that during the current year he would have 
sufficient funds to redeem the outstanding warrants as well as

Page 377

the bonded debt, and recommended the passage of a law compelling holders 
of warrants to surrender them. Here we have perhaps the first positive 
manifestation that orderly administration and general solvency and thrift 
have been attained-in fair measure, though by very slow growth.

   The concurrent advent of the free homestead and corporation land grant 
systems already arouses jealousy and fear of abuses, and the message 
sounded a note of warning and alarm:

   Wherever the lands are subject to location under this [homestead] law, 
the newly made cabin of the homestead settler is found; and it is not an 
extravagant estimate that another year will find one-twelfth of the 
population of the territory on homestead lands, and fully that proportion 
of our aggregate productions in the granaries of this class of our fellow 
citizens.

   It is then pointed out that it is "a very great hardship to the 
enterprising settlers in the valleys of the Nemahas, the Elkhorn, and the 
Loup Fork that the lands surrounding their homesteads should thus be tied 
up from actual settlement for the benefit of a corporation (the Burlington 
& Missouri River Co.) which contemplates the construction of a railroad 
through a section of country far removed from their homes." And then to 
the core of the question:

   I do not doubt that if the evil effects of this baleful system of land 
grants were properly represented by you in memorials to congress some 
remedies for present evils might be applied; or at all events, some 
barriers placed against this rapid absorption of the public domain in the 
future by railroad monopolists and land speculators. We need every 
available acre in this territory, not already given away by the government 
for the construction of railroads and agricultural colleges in other 
states, for our own state endownments and for the industrious poor who, 
from all sections of the union, and from foreign countries, are coming to 
secure homesteads amongst us.

   The governor then expresses his firm conviction that the whole country 
would be benefited if the Union Pacific railway company would at once 
exchange its lands for United States bonds, at a fair price, so that they 
might be held exclusively for location under the homestead law.

   The message urged the construction of a free bridge across the Platte 
river, for the old, familiar reasons:

   The construction of a bridge over the Platte river is a much needed 
improvement. The crossing of this stream, always difficult, is at certain 
seasons of the year an utter impossibility, and communication between two 
great sections of the territory is for this reason extremely limited. A 
journey to the territorial capital from some of the most popu-

[image caption: WILLIAM F. SWEESY Prominent pioneer of Omaha, Nebraska]

ious counties south of the Platte is considered quite as difficult to 
perform on account of the dangers and delays in crossing the Platte, as 
one to St. Louis -- five hundred miles distant, and from the North Platte 
to Chicago is quite as cheerfully undertaken as one across the Platte into 
the rich grain growing districts below it. Such an obstacle to commercial 
intercourse between the two sections should be immediately removed, if it 
is in the power of the people to do it. It is not at all strange that with 
such a barrier in the way of travel and commerce, the people

Page 378

of both sections should not only lose their active sympathy for and 
interest in each other, but that they should be easily led into 
misunderstandings, jealousies, rivalries, and strife.

   The fact that "a bridge," merely, was demanded illustrates the still 
limited progress of settlement westward from the Missouri river.

   The message favored the admission of the territory as a state, but it 
reflected the conservatism of President Johnson as to the suffrage 
question, inasmuch as it "would give the

[image caption: Engraving loaned by Nebraska State Historical Society.
THOMAS WESTON TIPTON United States senator, 1867-1875]

franchise to intelligence and patriotism wherever found, regardless of the 
color of its possessor."

   The prospective glories attendant on the completion of the Union 
Pacific railway and the appeal for Johnson's reconstruction policy, under 
the head of "peace and union," are reserved for rhetorical exaltation in 
the still inevitable peroration. How perilously near having regard to his 
later political preferment -- Mr. Paddock came to being a democrat appears 
in the fact that he boldly questioned the expediency of the proposed 14th 
amendment to the Constitution: "If the amendment threatens to perpetuate 
hatred, strife and discord it should be abandoned at once, whatever 
sacrifices of cherished political dogmas or partisan prejudices are 
involved." It was stated that 262 miles of track had been laid on the 
Union Pacific road during the year, and it was now complete to the 305th 
mile post.

   But "the big thing which has engaged the attention of our legislature 
since its organization has been the legislative printing." Since the 
republicans had been in control the secretary, following Morton's example, 
had placed the printing in the hands of a public printer virtually of his 
own choosing without clash with the legislature; but now the Johnson 
schism stimulated Secretary Paddock to place it with printers of his own 
faction -- the Barkalow brothers -- whom the Herald speaks of as "two 
conservative young republicans." A resolution, introduced by Abbott, 
directing the chief clerk of the house to procure the printing of the 
laws, journals, messages, rules, bills, and other incidental papers of the 
two houses, was defeated. This move was in the interest of Mr. Balcombe, 
the orthodox editor of the Republican. A. F. Harvey, in speaking against 
the resolution, related that Secretary Morton had successfully resisted E. 
D. Webster's attempt to control this printing in the same way in 1860-
1861, and that Mr. Dix, secretary of the treasury, had decided that the 
legislature had no authority whatever over it. This decision had been 
acquiesced in ever since and Secretary Paddock had given out the printing 
wherever he wanted to. The Republican, furious at the loss of this 
patronage, made scurrilous attacks on Paddock in which "apostate," 
"renegade," "traitor," "light-top-gear," and "weakmind," were the more 
moderate epithets. The Herald retaliated with attacks to match or, the 
record of Mr. Balcombe, publisher of the Republican, as agent of the 
Winnebagos. The Advertiser interjected that "the secretary of the 
territory has always controlled this printing since its infamous 
usurpation from the legislature by Morton," and scolded the Republican

Page 379

for, "spreading it on (Paddock) too thick for the occasion," offering as a 
salve that hoary and paradoxical characterization of politicians: "As an 
officer he is sound, as a citizen he is a gentleman, as a politician he is 
rotten to the core." And yet so smooth was Paddock's exterior political 
finish that such poisoned darts glanced from it harmless, as he pursued 
his way to two elections to the United States Senate by the orthodox 
Republican party. The contrasting orthodoxy of Senator-elect Thayer 
appears in a note to the Republican in his protest that he had not tried 
to persuade the "acting-president" to sign the Nebraska state bill; "I 
abhor the course, the 'policy,' and the treachery of Andrew Johnson."

   Republicans at this session consumed much valuable time in the empty 
enterprise of making a record on the question of negro suffrage. A bill to 
remove distinctions in the school laws on account of race or color was the 
subject of a heated contest. It passed the house by a vote of 25 to 10, 
and the council by 10 to 3, but was vetoed by Acting Governor Paddock. Mr. 
Harvey, democrat of Otoe county, for the purpose of putting ardent 
suffrage reformers on record, introduced a resolution declaring that the 
members of the house are in favor of "impartial and universal suffrage, 
and believe fully in the equality of all races, colors, and sexes at the 
ballot box." This was amended so as to declare simply for impartial 
suffrage, and then passed by a vote of 22 to 9. Another resolution 
introduced by Mr. Harvey, thanking President Johnson for his veto of the 
Nebraska enabling act, was defeated 21 to 13. Negro suffrage was at last 
adopted at this session by striking out the restrictive words "free white" 
from the election law; though amendments to the bill by Doane striking out 
the word "male," and providing that no negro or Indian, who could not read 
the Constitution of the United States and write his own name, or did not 
possess property to the value of $250, should be entitled to vote, were 
defeated by only 7 against 6.

   This legislature was not prolific of enactments, and in the case of 
general laws was almost barren, partially because the preceding session 
had at last completed a tolerable revision of former laws, and largely 
because time and attention were given to factional squabbles with the 
temporarily aberrant Secretary Paddock over petty printing spoils, and to 
such facetious partisan measures as the enfranchisement of imaginary 
negroes. There were no well-known, recognized leaders of the republican 
party in either house, for the reason, doubtless, that they were all 
striving for the higher congressional and judicial places which would be 
opened by the coming admission to

[image caption: JOHN MELVIN GRAHAM]

statehood. The partisanship of this session had, perhaps, been whittled 
down the smaller to conform to these conditions.

   The special enactments of interest authorized the city of Omaha and the 
city of Bellevue, respectively, to raise $100,000 to be used in securing 
the construction of a railway bridge across the Missouri river at each 
place. This was but the preparation for Bellevue's last, and, as the event 
proved, death struggle. Omaha was to win the bridge, but at a cost to 
which this proposed gratuity was a bagatelle. The organization and the 
last election of officers of Saline county were legal-

Page 380

[image caption: DAVID BUTLER First governor of Nebraska]

Page 381

ized; Lincoln county was attached to the first judicial district; Saunders 
county was detached from Cass to which it had been joined for judicial, 
election, and revenue. purposes; the sixteen townships east of Jefferson 
county and lying adjacent to the same, known as Jones county, were annexed 
to Jefferson county, and the officers of Jones county were authorized to 
remain as officers of Jefferson county until their successors should be 
qualified; the name of L'eau-qui-court county was changed to Emmet, 
provided the electors of the county should vote at the next general 
election in favor of the change; and the limits of the new counties of 
Clay, Webster, Hamilton, Adams, and Franklin were defined.

   But this session was prolific of joint resolutions. The first of these 
was a sop to Congress for admission, and it declared that the legislature 
favored the adoption of the pending amendments to the federal 
Constitution, and that in case they should be "submitted to us as the 
legislative assembly of the state of Nebraska we would immediately ratify 
the same." Another prayed for the establishment of a fort or sub-military 
post on or near the Republican river at some point between Turkey creek 
and Beaver river, for the protection of "southwestern Nebraska, as well as 
northwestern Kansas, from the threatening invasions and barbarous outrages 
of roaming tribes of desperate savages, who frequent all that superb scope 
of country south of the Platte and north of the Arkansas river, and 
prohibit the ingress of the white man." Another prayed for a bounty for 
the Nebraska volunteers of the Civil war which should place them on the 
same footing as soldiers from the states for whom the federal government 
had provided additional compensation in the nature of bounty money; or, in 
lieu of money, a grant of 160 acres of public land was requested. At this 
early period Congress was requested to extinguish the Indian title to the 
Otoe reservation and throw it open to settlement. Another resolution 
congratulated the managers of the Chicago & Northwestern railroad company 
on the completion of its line "within a few miles of the eastern boundary 
of the territory of Nebraska." When it was too late to become available on 
account of the admission to statehood, the lifelong prayer of the 
territory for an appropriation for a penitentiary had been granted, and 
the legislature in a joint resolution thanked Mr. Hitchcock, the delegate 
in Congress, for his mediatorial efforts to obtain an answer to the oft 
repeated legislative petition.

   This last territorial legislature adjourned, finally, February 18, 
1867, and it ended as spectacularly and frontier-like as the first had 
begun. The republican majority had passed an apportionment act which took 
a councilman away from democratic Otoe county and added one to Nemaha and 
Richardson. A new bill was offered as a substitute, but on account of 
dissatisfaction in a North Platte district it could not be passed. The 
whole scheme of reapportionment was killed through the timely arrival of 
Rolfe of Otoe who was immediately sworn in. The News gives this graphic 
account of the summary action: "A precedent was read from Jefferson's 
manual; a motion was made removing the speaker which was put and carried 
so quick that he did not know what hurt him; he drew a pistol -- the 
sergeant-at-arms drew his sword, -- the speaker vacated the premises -- a 
new speaker (Abbott) was elected. Mr. Rolfe was sworn in by Governor 
Saunders at about ten o'clock at night. The apportionment bill was killed, 
and the law-making machine began to go as though it had been greased and 
did more business in an hour and a half than had been done before in a 
week."

   Mr. Rolfe, who lived until very recently, an exemplary citizen of Otoe 
county, described the revolution in the following nutshell:

Omaha, Feb. 16, P. M,
   J. S. Morton: just had a legislative row -- Chapin is deposed and 
Abbott is in the chair -- pistols were drawn by the opposition, but they 
had a scarcity of nerve. We have busted them. ROLFE

   On the third day of the second session of the Thirty-ninth Congress, 
December 5, 1866, Senator Wade of Ohio introduced a bill (Senate file No. 
456) for the admission of Nebraska into the Union, and it was passed on 
the 9th of January following by a vote of 24

Page 382

to 15, with the following amendment offered by Mr. Edmunds of Vermont:

   And be it further enacted, That this act shall take effect with the 
fundamental and perpetual condition that within said state of Nebraska 
there shall be no abridgment or denial of the exercise of the elective 
franchise or of any other right to any person by reason of race or color, 
excepting Indians not taxed.

   On the 15th of January the House passed the bill by a vote of 103 to 55 
after adopting the following amendment, offered by Mr.

[image caption: JACOB E. FREY Early settler, Richardson county, Nebraska]

Boutwell of Massachuusetts [sic], as a substitute for the Edmunds 
amendment:

   Strike out the third section in the following words: And be it further 
enacted, That this act shall take effect with the fundamental and 
perpetual condition that within said state of Nebraska there shall be no 
abridgment or denial of the exercise of the elective franchise, or of any 
other right to any person by reason of race or color (excepting Indians 
not taxed,) And insert in lieu thereof the following:

   And be it further enacted, That this act shall take effect with the 
fundamental and perpetual condition that within said state of Nebraska 
there shall be no abridgment or denial of the exercise of the elective 
franchise or of any other right to any person by reason of race or color, 
excepting Indians not taxed; and upon the further fundamental condition 
that the legislature of said state, by a solemn public act, shall declare 
the assent of said state to the said fundamental condition, and shall 
transmit to the president of the United States an authentic copy of said 
act, upon receipt whereof the president by proclamation, shall forthwith 
announce the fact, whereupon said fundamental condition shall be held as a 
part of the organic law of the state; and thereupon, and without any 
further proceeding on the part of congress, the admission of said state 
into the union shall be considered as complete. Said state legislature 
shall be convened by the territorial government within thirty days after 
the passage of this act, to act upon the condition submitted herein.

   The following day the Senate concurred in this amendment. On the 29th 
of January President Johnson vetoed the bill on the ground that the part 
of it composed of the Boutwell amendment was unconstitutional, and he 
suggested that the conditions ought to be submitted to a vote of the 
people.

   On the 8th of February the bill was passed in the Senate over the 
President's veto by a vote of 31 to 9. The nine in opposition were Charles 
R. Buckalew of Pennsylvania, Garrett Davis of Kentucky, James R. Doolittle 
of Wisconsin, LaFayette S. Foster of Connecticut, Thomas A. Hendricks of 
Indiana, Edwin D. Morgan of New York, Daniel S. Norton of Minnesota, David 
T. Patterson of Tennessee, and Willard Saulsbury of Delaware. Four of 
these -- Doolittle, Foster, Morgan, and Norton -- were republicans, and 
Foster was president of the Senate. In the list of the ayes are such well-
known names as John Sherman, Charles Sumner, Lyman Trumbull, and Benjamin 
F. Wade. The next day the bill passed the House by a vote of 120 to 43.

   The question of the right of Congress to impose the negro suffrage 
condition precedent to admission occasioned a great debate in the Senate, 
the most polemical part of which was contributed by two great lawyers -- 
Edmunds of Vermont on the affirmative and Reverdy Johnson of Maryland on 
the negative. Some of the ablest republican senators opposed the 
contention of Edmunds -- among them Wade and Sherman of Ohio, Fessenden of 
Maine, Kirkwood and Grimes of Iowa, and Doolittle and Howe of Wisconsin. 
The strongest opponents of Edmunds's position, in addition to

Page 383

[image caption: ASHTON C. SHALLENBERGER Governor of Nebraska, 1908-1910]

Page 384

Reverdy Johnson, were Doolittle of Wisconsin, Howard of Michigan, and 
Hendricks of Indiana. Wade at first opposed the condition as 
unconstitutional, but while he did not seem to think it was worth while to 
press it, he admitted that he had been technically converted by the 
argument. Reverdy Johnson argued with great force that the effect of 
Edmunds's contention was that "Congress has a right to form a constitution 
for the people of a territory who may desire to come in as a state." Mr. 
Sherman said emphatically: "I am in

[image caption: ELIAS HICKS CLARK Prominent lawyer, Omaha, Nebraska]

favor of admitting Nebraska without any amendment, without any 
qualification, without any condition, and I think it is an unwise policy 
to impose conditions on the admission of Nebraska." But while the 
polemical power and habit of Edmunds did not convince, neither did the 
insistent moral consistency of Sumner move or trouble the evasively 
practical Sherman; and so he added:

   But still as the friends of the measure think that the declaration 
drafted by the senator from Vermont will strengthen the bill, I am rather 
disposed to vote for it. I believe it will be entirely nugatory. I do not 
believe that we have the power by any act of Congress to restrain the 
people of Nebraska from framing such a constitution, republican in form, 
as they choose. I have no doubt they can amend this constitution or they 
can disregard this condition; it does not operate on them; it is not 
really in the nature of a condition. I vote for it simply because I 
believe its adoption will strengthen the main measure and enable us to 
admit the state of Nebraska into the union.

   Wade and Sherman emphasized the fact that the constitution of their own 
state, Ohio, had the same white restriction of the suffrage as that of 
Nebraska. Wade pressed also the proposition that this was a question for 
the states alone. "Up to this hour the regulation of the elective 
franchise has been regarded as a state question. It belongs, under the 
constitution as it now stands, exclusively to the states of the union." 
Wade urged also that "one reason why the territory of Nebraska should be 
very soon admitted is that the land there is being taken up by your 
college scrip, by your railroad grants, &c." Soon there would not be 
enough left "to give to the state for school purposes and for various 
other purposes those grants which we have uniformly made to new states." 
Sherman argued along the same general lines, and, like Wade, insisted that 
the question of relative population was not important, and that, at any 
rate, Nebraska had more inhabitants than most of the existing states 
contained at the time of their admission. Wade said that the bureau of 
statistics of the treasury department had been ordered "to make out as 
well as they could the number of inhabitants"; and their return showed 88,
530. When it was pointed out that the vote at the last October election 
was only 9,136, Wade insisted that owing to the scattered condition of the 
population this vote was an uncertain guide. The fact that the federal 
census of 1870 showed a population of 122,993 tends to support Wade's 
contention that the estimate of the bureau of statistics was very 
conservative; but since the impetus to growth resulting from the advent of 
the railways to the territory was very strong in the years immediately 
following 1867, no accurate deduction can be made from a comparison of the

Page 385

estimate of that year and of the census of 1870.

   Though the advocates of the condition were clearly beaten in the 
debate, the majority seemed disposed to take Sherman's and Wade's view, 
that it would not be of practical importance. This indeed turned out to be 
the fact, because before the provision was tested in the courts, as it 
otherwise would have been, the adoption of the fifteenth amendment to the 
constitution superseded it. Charles Sumner strongly advocated the 
amendment of Senator B. Gratz Brown of Missouri, which provided that the 
people should ratify at the polls an agreement against restriction of 
negro suffrage. This he thought would clinch the question, while 
ratification by the legislature might not. Mr. Sumner took the broad view 
of the moralist that discrimination against the negro as to suffrage was 
repugnant to the principles of the Declaration of Independence and 
therefore of the federal Constitution. The restrictive provision of the 
Nebraska constitution if not annulled by the act of Congress, would render 
the government unrepublican. Mr. Kirkwood very pertinently retorted that 
the constitutions of twenty out of the twenty-six states then comprising 
the Union contained this very restriction against negro suffrage, and he 
thought it strange that Congress should not have known what a republican 
form of government was when it admitted all these states; and then he 
demanded, "Why do you not require us in Iowa to make our constitution 
republican in form?"

   Wade attacked Sumner for calling Nebraska a "rebel state" and the 
proposed constitution a "rebel constitution"; but Sumner replied that he 
read that language from a letter from a citizen of Nebraska. Wade retorted 
that the republican members of the legislature had voted unanimously for 
the constitution and only copperheads voted against it. He said the 
constitution was copied almost literally from that of Wisconsin, "and as 
to the negro restriction they seem to have followed the usual form."

   Mr. Hendricks of Indiana criticised the indifference of those who 
believed the restriction unconstitutional. "This precedent," he said, 
"will establish that the Congress of the United States and the territorial 
legislature have the power to change a constitution that the people have 
deliberately made." He was willing to accept Brown's amendment -- which 
Sumner favored, but for a different reason, -- to submit the question to 
the people instead of the legislature. But party spirit and exigencies 
demanded haste, and won the day, alike

[image caption: MRS. PHEBE A. (ANDREW) CLARK]

over constitutional conservatism and the determination of Sumner to have 
the restriction insured beyond question of a popular vote.

   The debate in the House was no less spirited than in the Senate. George 
S. Boutwell, the mover of the conditional restriction as it passed, 
Thaddeus Stevens, James A. Garfield, and William B. Allison were the 
leading republicans who supported the measure, but such noted members of 
the same party as John A. Bingham, James G. Blaine, Henry L. Dawes, 
Columbus Delano, and Robert S. Hale stoutly opposed it. Mr. Boutwell rose 
to the same transcendental or speculative moral heights as Mr. Sumner 
occupied in the Senate, and insisted that "when a state deprives a 
particular class of men of participation in the govern-

Page 386

ment in which they live, just to that extent the government fails to be 
republican in form." To this Mr. Delano retorted in the same strain as 
Kirkwood's retort in the Senate, that "it is worse than idle for us to 
assert that the form of government presented by Nebraska (in her 
constitution) is not republican in form. The whole history of the nation 
gives the lie to the assertion that the Nebraska state government is not 
republican in form. . . . Upon what principle can we say to the people who 
live in Nebraska, 'You shall not come into this Union as a state unless 
you come upon conditions other than those which have been recognized as 
fit to constitute a state a partner in the great government of the United 
States ever since that government was formed?"

   Mr. Maynard took issue with the contention that the adoption of the 
condition by the legislature would give moral assurance of its observance. 
"I submit that the moral assurance will be the other way. The people of 
Nebraska have adopted a constitution in which they have restricted the 
right of suffrage to white men . . . We may in passing this bill intimate 
to them and to the country what our views and principles are, but we have 
no assurance that those principles will be regarded or that our views will 
be adopted by them. On the other hand all the assurance we have is that 
they will be disregarded, and that our views will not be adopted."

   Mr. Bingham took the same ground as Sherman had taken in the Senate: "I 
would not vote for this bill but for the conviction that the section in 
question (the Edmunds amendment) has no more validity than so much blank 
paper, and that so much of the bill as is valid is just and ought to pass 
that the people of Nebraska may be admitted as a state of the Union." 
Again, if the third section is passed and is valid in law, Nebraska 
becomes a state, not upon the constitution made by the people but on a 
constitution made by Congress, "and I venture to affirm that the 
legislation which is attempted to be imposed upon this state by the third 
section of this bill has no parallel in anything that has ever before been 
attempted by an American Congress."

   Mr. Bingham was consistent and denounced the Boutwell amendment on the 
same ground: "What is proposed by this amendment? It is this: That the 
legislature of a state shall change its organic law in direct 
contravention of the express authority of the people of that state and 
only by authority of Congress."

   Mr. Blaine opposed the Edmunds amendment on the same ground -- its 
utter invalidity. "I protest for one against humbugging myself or being 
humbugged, or assisting in humbugging my constituents." But unlike Mr. 
Bingham, he would compromise with humbuggery by consenting to be half 
humbugged himself and to humbug the Nebraska constitution, and to this end 
he asked Mr. Ashley of Ohio, who had yielded him time to speak, for leave 
to propose an amendment providing for the assent of the legislature or of 
the people, but was refused.

   Mr. Dawes pointed out that the bill itself declared the constitution 
which the people of Nebraska had adopted to be republican in form, and the 
inconsistency of undertaking to interfere when this condition had been 
complied with, and he stoutly denied that Congress had any right to do so. 
But he thought the difficulty could be overcome by submitting it to a vote 
of the people; and again Mr. Ashley refused consent to an amendment for 
that purpose. Mr. Morrill of Maine showed, as Mr. Dawes had shown, that 
"the first section of the bill admits the state without any conditions, at 
all, 'upon an equal footing with the original states in all respects 
whatsoever,' while the last proposes fundamental and perpetual 
conditions." He rightly said that it would raise a question for the 
courts, "and I prefer not to go into the courts at all on such a question.

   He argued that there was not need to hurry -- "Let us welcome Nebraska 
but not until she is ready, as I have no doubt she soon will be." Mr. 
Allison of Iowa believed the condition precedent was within the power and 
the duty of Congress and would be binding upon the people of the state 
when assented to by the legislature. Mr. Garfield thought it was doubtful 
that the Boutwell amendment "does legally affix that condition," but he 
believed that the people would not break the covenant

Page 387

they would make in accepting the condition through the legislature.(1) It 
was generally assumed in the course of the debate that there were then 
about one hundred negroes in Nebraska who would be entitled to vote under 
the condition of the act. More than thirty years later Mr. Boutwell 
applied the same uncompromising moral spirit and broad moral principle to 
the Philippine question, and no doubt if Mr. Sumner had lived he would 
have stood with Mr. Boutwell in regard to this question as he did in 
regard to the Nebraska question. To the people of today who face the 
actual and generally recognized breakdown of the thirty years' experiment 
in universal negro suffrage, the matter-of-fact, confident assumption of 
the oratory of that Nebraska debate that it must and would be established 
as a matter of unquestionable moral obligation, without thought of its 
practicability, comes as an almost startling echo of the fallibility of 
human judgment and the vanity of human selfishness. Congress failed to 
pass the Colorado bill over the president's veto, and so Nebraska was the 
first and the last state to come into the Union on such capricious, ex 
post facto compulsion. It is true that Congress required that the 
constitutional convention of Nevada, held in 1864, "shall provide, by an 
ordinance, irrevocable without the consent of the United States and the 
people of said state, that there shall be neither slavery nor involuntary 
servitude in the said state." But that requirement was at most a condition 
precedent, while the Nebraska requirement was a condition subsequent. 
Besides, in 1864 there was no longer any slavery in fact, and it was well 
known that it was about to be formally abolished by the pending thirteenth 
amendment, while a large part of the most intelligent people of the 
country were of the opinion that universal enfranchisement of the negroes 
would be impracticable and pernicious -- an opinion which experience seems 
to have confirmed.

   Mr. Morrill's fear that the Boutwell condition would throw the question 
into the courts was justified. Reverdy Johnson wrote to a prominent 
democrat of Nebraska an opinion that the state constitution had not been 
amended or altered by the congressional scheme, and so statehood had 
better be accepted, "and thus in law and effect exclude negro voting."(2) 
Accordingly, when twenty or more negroes attempted to vote at the Omaha 
municipal election, early in March, 1867, their constitutional right to do 
so was denied. The Herald charged that the negroes were marched up to the 
polls under armed leaders wanting a fight, and the Republican denied the 
truth of this charge and alleged that Mayor Miller and Sheriff Dellone 
both declared that the negroes had no right to vote and that a mob of four 
hundred armed democrats backed up their declaration.

   The constitution of Missouri, framed in June, 1820, contained this 
provision: "It shall be their [the general assembly's] duty, as soon as 
may be, to pass such laws as may be necessary to prevent free negroes and 
mulattoes from coming to, and settling in this state, under any pretext 
whatever."

   The principal reason for this drastic measure doubtless lay in the fear 
that free negroes coming in contact with the slaves might stir them to 
mutiny or other trouble. But the Congress imposed as a condition precedent 
to the acceptance of the constitution that the legislature of Missouri 
should agree, in substance, not to enforce this restriction. While the 
legislature -- June 26, 1821 -- assented to the condition, after a 
fashion, it did so in a spirit of independence and with a plainness of 
speech worthy of a better cause, and which Nebraska might have emulated to 
her honor and dignity.

   It insisted that as the state came into the Union under the 
constitution and laws of the United States, and were bound thereby, that 
sufficed.

   Although this general assembly are of opinion that the congress of the 
United States have no constitutional power to annex any condition to the 
admission of this state into the federal union, and that this general 
assembly have no power to change the operation of the constitution of this 
state, except in the 

(1. These debates took place in January 1867, and are recorded in the 
Cong. Globe, pt. 1, 2d sess., 39th Cong.)

(2. Omaha Republican, March 1, 1867, quoting Omaha Herald.)

Page 388

[image caption: CHARLES H. VAN WYCK Governor and United States senator]

Page 389

mode prescribed by the constitution itself, nevertheless, as the congress 
of the United States have desired this general assembly to declare the 
assent of this state to said fundamental condition, and forasmuch as such 
declaration will neither restrain nor enlarge, limit nor extend the 
operation of the constitution of the United States or of this state, but 
the said constitutions will remain in all respects as if the said 
resolution had never passed, and the desired declaration was never made, 
and because such declaration will not divest any power or change the 
duties of any of the constituted authorities of this state, or of the 
United States, nor impair the rights of the people of this state, or 
impose any additional obligation upon them, but may promote an earlier 
enjoyment of their vested federal rights. Therefore, be it resolved that 
this state has assented, etc.

   There was no important reason for the legislature of Nebraska to 
undertake to annul by resolution a practically negative provision of the 
state constitution. Its haste to do so, and unqualifiedly, showed a lack 
of dignity and an unworthy subserviency to partisanship -- if not a 
selfish greed -- in strong contrast to the assertion of constitutional 
rights and principles by the legislature of our adjoining state, and 
remains an unique incident in such procedure.

   A bill passed by Congress prohibiting the denial of the elective 
franchise to negroes became a law January 25, 1867, without the signature 
of the president, and it was stated that Mr. James M. Woolworth had given 
a written opinion to an Omaha democratic caucus to the effect that by the 
territorial law negroes were entitled to vote. But after March 1st, these 
provisions had been superseded by the state constitution. Since the 
adoption of the fifteenth amendment to the Constitution of the United 
States so soon settled this vexed question, the suffrage status of the few 
negroes in Nebraska in the meantime is not of practical importance. After 
every practicable measure to enforce negro suffrage, in those states where 
these unfortunate people of an inferior race are numerous enough to invest 
the question with importance, has been exhausted and proved futile, it is, 
it seems, by common consent of the people of all sections recognized as 
impracticable, and the formidable guaranties of the constitution and the 
laws remain only a dead letter.

   Striking evidence is not wanting of the change in public sentiment 
wrought by experience whose outcome ought more generally to have been 
foreseen. In the spring of the year 1903, Mr. Root, secretary of war in 
President Roosevelt's administration, in an address before the Union 
League club of New York city, pronounced the fifteenth amendment to the 
Constitution a failure. Soon after this Mr. Henry Watterson, editor of the 
Louisville Courier-Journal, and the leading journalist of the South, was 
invited by the Hamilton club of Chicago, the conservative republican 
organization of that metropolis, to deliver an address. Mr. Watterson not 
only spoke thus plainly and boldly, but his remarks were vigorously 
applauded by his northern hearers:

   After thirty years of observation, experience and reflection -- always 
directed from a sympathetic point of view -- I am forced to agree with the 
secretary of war that negro suffrage is a failure. It is a failure because 
the southern blacks are not equal to it. It is a failure because the 
southern whites will not have it.

   The negro can never become in a beneficent or genuine sense an integral 
and recognized part of the body politic except through the forces of 
evolution, which are undoubtedly at work, but which, in the nature of the 
case, must needs go exceedingly slow. Where there is one negro fit for 
citizenship there are myriads of negroes wholly unfit. The hothouse 
process has been tried and it has failed. If, invested with every right 
enjoyed by the whites, the blacks, gaining in all things else, have 
brought corruption into the suffrage and discredit upon themselves, is it 
not a kind of madness further to press artificial methods, which however 
justified, theoretically, from educational look-outs in Michigan, Iowa, 
and Wisconsin, fall helpless to the ground in their practical application 
to the semi-barbarous toilers in the cotton fields and corn lands of 
Alabama, Georgia, and South Carolina?(3)

   Other speakers of national note have recently expressed opinions 
similar to those of Mr. Watterson's, and typical parts of these addresses 
and of those made in the debate on the admission of Nebraska are in 
striking con- 

(3. Copied from Chicago papers.)

Page 390

[image caption: GURDON W. WATTLES President Trans-Mississippi exposition]

Page 391

trast as opinions held in two different periods but only a single 
generation in time apart.

   In a lecture at Yale university, April 22, 1903, President Hadley said 
that the North had made a great mistake in giving the ballot to the negro 
before he was fitted for it. "It was not the fault of the negro; it was 
the fault of those who gave him the ballot without previous preparation. 
The North did not recognize this at the close of the war. It had 
recognized the dictum that all men are born free and equal. When the North 
recognized the conditions which prevailed in the South it acquiesced in 
the suppression of the negro vote." And yet, to the mind and conscience of 
the intelligent and candid, this is a distressing condition and a 
humiliating confession. Without the ballot these millions of negroes thus 
thrust upon a superior race and under institutions in advance of their 
capacity to appreciate or support, can not avert or escape grievous 
oppression. This discordant anomaly, this flat contradiction of our 
political principles, which jeers at our bills of rights and sets aside 
our constitutional covenants, and from which we see as yet no escape, is 
the inevitable and inexorable penalty visited upon the children of those 
who were guilty of the original sin of African slavery. And it is not 
inexplicable that, just as our eyes were opening to full recognition of 
this predicament, we should have entangled ourselves voluntarily in a 
worse one of the same sort in the Philippine islands?

   The state legislature which had been elected in the fall of 1866 
convened in special session, February 20, 1867, in response to the 
proclamation of Governor Saunders issued on the 14th of that month, for 
the purpose of complying with the conditions imposed by the act of 
Congress. The senate was composed of eight republicans and five democrats, 
and the house of representatives of thirty republicans and nine 
democrats.(4) Each of the houses at once introduced a bill accepting the 
conditions for admission prescribed by the act of Congress. In the senate 
the bill was referred after the second reading to a special committee 
consisting of Doom of Cass county, Hascall of Douglas, and Reeves of Otoe. 
Doom and Hascall reported, after a recess of ten minutes, in favor of the 
passage of the bill. Reeves moved to adjourn for a day so that he might 
have time to make a minority report; but the motion was defeated by a vote 
of 3 to 7. The bill then passed by a like vote, Freeman of Kearney county 
and Reeves and Wardell of Otoe county voting in the negative. When the 
senate bill was sent to the house it was at once read the requisite three 
times under suspension of the rules and passed by a vote of 20 to 6. Those 
voting in the negative were Crawford and Trumble of Sarpy county, Dunham 
of Douglas, and Graves, Harvey, and Rolfe of Otoe. On the 21st the houses 
agreed on a joint resolution to send a copy of the act to the president 
and also one to John M. Thayer, who had been elected United States 
senator, and then adjourned.

   J. Sterling Morton gave Mr. Hascall the credit for his vote as follows:

   Isaac S. Hascall, the only representative of the Douglas county 
democracy in the state senate, stood solitary and alone among democrats in 
the legislature in advocating and voting for the admission of state under 
the African conditions. We understand Mr. Hascall made a long speech in 
support of his position, which receives unusual favor with Mr. Presson, 
Mr. Doom, Mr. Rogers and other radicals. They ordered Mr. Hascall's speech 
published, wanted it spread on the journals immediately, and testified 
their approbation of it in every way possible. This is rather an ignoble 
distinction for Mr. Hascall as a democrat, and we are of the opinion that, 
however he himself may feel, the democracy of Douglas, who placed him in 
the senate, will not be very particularly flattered by it.

   Undue distinction was given to this speech of Hascall's by the pro-
state party because he was an acquisition from the enemy, just as there is 
always more joy, temporarily, in a political party, as there is said to be 
in heaven, over the one proselyte and deserter than over the ninety-and-
nine well-tried regulars or saints. The speaker undertook to give his 
cause character by ascribing respectability to its origin. The 
constitution, he said, was framed by nine members of the legislature -- of 
1866 -- five of whom were democrats, and,

(4. Nebraska Advertiser, Nov. 8, 1866.)

Page 392

in addition, William A. Little, who had been elected chief justice of the 
state supreme court, Judge William Kellogg, chief justice of the 
territorial supreme court, Hadley D. Johnson, Governor Alvin Saunders, 
General Experience Estabrook, and others, of Omaha, assisted by able men, 
without regard to party, from other parts of the territory. The democrats 
had not made statehood a party issue at their convention, and the 
republicans had declared in favor of it at their convention, and it had 
been ratified by voters of both parties. Leading republicans, including 
John M. Thayer and Governor Saunders, did not insist on impartial 
suffrage. After the first veto by the President, and before the passage of 
the conditional act, Congress provided for impartial suffrage in all the 
territories. Negro suffrage therefore already existed by positive law, and 
if the President had not vetoed the bill for admission under the white 
constitution, Nebraska would not have negro suffrage now.

   On the first of March, 1867, President Johnson issued a proclamation 
declaring that "the admission of the state into the Union is now 
complete." This proclamation, forced from the unwilling chief executive, 
was therefore an appropriate death warrant for territorial Nebraska. For, 
conceived in storm and born of strife, it has now died a violent death.

   The original Nebraska territory was bounded on the north by the 49th 
parallel of latitude -- the south boundary of the British possessions; on 
the east by the White river, from the 49th parallel south to the mouth of 
the river -- and thence southward by the Missouri river; on the south by 
the territory of Kansas, or the 40th parallel of latitude; on the west by 
"the summit of the Rocky mountains." The territory of Oregon (organized 
August 14, 1848), extending from the British line down to the 46th 
parallel of latitude; the territory of Washington (organized March 2, 
1853), extending from the southern line of Oregon down to the 42nd 
parallel of latitude; and the territory of Utah (organized September 9, 
1850), extending southward from the south boundary of Washington, came up 
to the Nebraska boundary on the west. The state of Iowa (organized 
December 28, 1846) and the territory of Minnesota (organized March 3, 
1849) lay adjacent to the entire eastern boundary of Nebraska territory. 
After the admission of Minnesota as a state, May 11, 1858, the territory 
between its western boudary and the eastern boundary of Nebraska remained 
unorganized until the formation of Dakota, March 2, 1861.

   The first change in the original territory of Nebraska was made by the 
organization of the territory of Colorado, February 21, 1861, which cut 
off all that part of the present state of Colorado north of the Kansas 
line and east of the Rocky mountains, and established longitude 25 degrees 
as the line betwen Nebraska and Colorado, from the 40th to the 41st 
parallel of latitude. The organic act of Dakota made the second change in 
the territory of Nebraska by cutting off all that part of it north of the 
Niobrara river, from its mouth to the point where it meets the 43rd 
paralled of latitude, and north of that parallel of latitude to the 
western boundary. The same act added to Nebraska territory that part of 
Washington and Utah lying between the 41st and 43d parallels of latitude, 
and east of the 33d degree of longitude, that is, a strip extending from 
this degree of longitude east to the original boundary of Nebraska at the 
summit of the Rocky mountains. The third change took place when the 
territory of Idaho was organized March 3, 1863. This territory came up to 
the 27th degree of longitude as its eastern boundary, which extended from 
the British line on the north to the Colorado line, or the 41st parallel 
of latitude, on the south; and it extended west to Oregon and Washington. 
Idaho took away the southwest corner of the original territory of Nebraska 
to the width of three degrees and cut off the west end of Nebraska as it 
had been extended when Dakota was organized, to the width of three degrees 
more, that is, the part between the 27th and the 33d degrees of longitude, 
The territory of Montana, coming south to the 46th parallel, was formed 
out of Idaho, May 26, 1864, and the, territory of Wyoming extending south 
from the Montana line to the 43d parallel, the present north boundary of 
Nebraska., was also formed out of Idaho, July 25, 1868. Idaho, as

Page 393

it was then left, was entirely west of the Rocky mountains and outside of 
the Louisiana Purchase, and Montana and Wyoming came into the Union as 
states in their original territorial form. The 27th degree of longitude -- 
104th from Greenwich -- has remained the extreme western boundary line of 
Nebraska ever since it was established by the organic act of Idaho in 
1863, and Nebraska came into the Union as a state in the form in which it 
was left by that act. By act of Congress March 28, 1882, the territory 
lying between the Missouri river and the Niobrara river, as far west as 
the mouth of the Keya Paha river, and as far north as the 43d parallel of 
latitude, was taken away from Dakota and added to Nebraska, thus 
constituting the 43rd parallel its continuous northern boundary. On the 
23d of October, 1890, the President of the United States declared by 
proclamation that the title or claim of the Ponca Indians to this strip of 
territory had been extinguished, and thereby jurisdiction over it was 
vested in the state of Nebraska.