twenty-five, and with which he marched to Eureka to accomplish his purpose. On reaching this point, however, it was discovered that Brown had about seventy-five men well armed, besides the eleven negroes, and not deeming it safe to make an attack upon him, they commenced to retreat. One of the marshal's party named William Green lost a horse in the retreat, and three others, Dr. Hereford, Charles Deitman and Joseph McVey, volunteered to go back with him to Eureka to recover it. They were set upon by Brown's men when near that place and all taken prisoners, and are now in his camp. The marshal has sent to Fort Leavenworth for troops to assist him in arresting Brown, if possible, before his escape into Nebraska."
   But Siebert says that Brown had "a mere handful of men," and he states that, "at Holton a party of pursuers two or three times as large as Brown's company was dispersed in instant and ridiculous flight and four prisoners and five horses taken . . . Under an escort of seventeen 'Topeka boys' Brown pressed rapidly on to Nebraska City." When the fugitives reached Grinnell, Iowa, they were entertained by J. B. Grinnell in his own house.
   The democratic territorial newspapers were from the first hostile to anti-slavery sentiment and propaganda, and this hostility became bitter and almost violent when the republican press became aggressive against slavery. The Nebraska City News refers to the Omaha Republican as "our woolly neighbor" and "our African contemporary"; and, under the head "Dignified and Courteous Lying," in charging the Republican with the heinous offense of issuing a map of the gold regions which shows Fort Kearney as lying north of a line due west from Nebraska City while it is in fact a mile and a half south of that line, calls the Republican "an organ of the great moral and religious black republican party. It rolls up its ebony eyes from under its woolly eyebrows in pious horror, and shows a pair of white ivory teeth when we call things by their right name in our criticisms upon its party." Mr. Theodore H. Robertson, editor of the Nebraskian, in the course of a trip to the East in the spring of 1860, passed through Oberlin, Ohio, and in his paper he assailed that place as, "The plague spot of creation, the hotbed of fanaticism, the carbuncle upon Ohio, and the black stain upon her fairest escutcheon, where treason is taught as a virtue and where hideous murder is regarded as no crime, where abolitionism is taught from pulpit as more sacred than the gospel of Christ. In Oberlin, John Brown, the cruel murderer, the experienced and skillful horse-thief, is canonized as a holier person and better saint than the world ever before saw. The peculiar institution of Oberlin is nigger."
   The Nebraska Advertiser attacks Governor Black's veto of the slavery prohibition bill and quotes severe criticisms of the veto message by the Chicago Times, the Philadelphia Press, the Pittsburgh Post, and the Cincinnati Enquirer. The Times said: "In his message, the governor, Hon. Samuel W. Black, furnishes the legislature with a literary and legal production which is a weak, very weak, condensation of the other Black's famous argument. . . If slavery cannot be repealed or prohibited in Nebraska by the legislature because the constitution protects and guarantees security to it as property, how can Governor Black as a lawyer . . . maintain that the people of Nebraska, by a state convention, can displace and overrule the constitution of the United States?" The Press said: "The executive authority of the territory is vested in Colonel Samuel W. Black, of Pittsburg, who was appointed governor by Mr. Buchanan, and who, while always an ardent democrat, was at no very remote period, a warm advocate of the Wilmot proviso, and we believe the author of the resolution incorporated in the platform of the democratic state convention, adopted at Pittsburgh in 1849, in favor of the Wilmot proviso. In the campaign of 1856, Colonel Black was an earnest champion of the doctrine of popular sovereignty as then understood in our state: and few who heard his eloquent speeches at that time . . . . when he advocated the right of the people of the territories to control their 'domestic institutions,' with special reference to the slavery question, would have supposed that he entertained the slightest doubt about the power to decide whether sla-

very should or should not be tolerated among them." The Press made the same point as that made by the Times, that Governor Black imitated Attorney-General Jeremiah Black's argument, and that in citing the Louisiana treaty he proved too much, because if the people of the territory could not override the treaty in the passage of laws, neither could they do so in forming constitutions. The Pittsburgh Post, published at Black's old home, and the Cincinnati Enquirer both charged him with recreancy to the principle of popular sovereignty.
   The People's Press of Nebraska City, insisted that slavery was an issue: "Democracy has made this slave territory. In your own courts -- almost within the shadow of your own homes -- servile laborers are employed in places that should be open to the independent competition of the free laboring man of Otoe county." This republican organ also insisted that "the people have, and should exercise the power of sovereignty, of prohibiting slavery." The same paper said: "Leave it to the control and operation of those laws of nature upon which the democracy ask us to rely for the making of this a free state and Nebraska will inevitably be a slave state." The Press insisted that those who were able to buy or hire slaves would do so for the purpose of making them household servants, if nothing more. The wealthy complained that housekeepers were constantly annoyed by the overbearing and independent conduct of servants. The expression was common that, "If I were sure that I would be protected in holding slaves I would buy a man and woman to work around the house; and then if they did not do as I wanted them to I would make them." In the rapid, revolution and the slower evolution of our institutions and conditions, domestic service appears to remain in the same desperate status as it was when it impelled housekeepers to yearn even for domestic slavery as a remedy. A call for a democratic meeting in Nebraska City to ratify the nomination of General Estabrook as delegate to Congress said: "All who believe in the sovereignty of the people, who deny that the acts of the territorial legislature are subject to the regulations of congress, who are in favor of dedicating the free soil of Nebraska to free white men are invited to be present." At a democratic meeting at Nebraska City, held for the purpose of nominating delegates to the constitutional convention, a resolution asserting the constitutional right of the territorial legislature to establish, regulate, or prohibit slavery within territorial limits was laid on the table by a vote of 26 to 15, Governor Black's influence prevailing over squatter sovereignty, which was supported by Judge John F. Kinney. Stephen F. Nuckolls and Augustus F. Harvey sustained Black. A compromise was arranged by the adoption of the national platform of 1856, the Plattsmouth platform of 1859, and a resolution to the effect that Nebraska must be a free state. The county convention held subsequently could not elect delegates on account of filibustering on the part of the anti-Black men, and adjourned in confusion.
   Mr. Reynolds, editor of the News, said that he voted against the bill to abolish slavery when he was a member of the legislature because it had no legal existence in the territory, and because he was opposed to the monstrous doctrine that the constitution had carried it here. "Partly for spite, but mostly to get disunion into Democratic ranks, the Republican members of the last Nebraska Legislature attempted to abolish slavery in Nebraska"; and that was "an imaginary evil that had no sort of legal or practical existence; three or four persons only were held as slaves and these only ostensibly, by citizens of Nebraska City."
   Even far-off Nebraska signalled (sic) the approaching disruption of the democratic party. On the passage of the bill two of the leading democratic members explained their votes, but arrived at opposite conclusions from substantially the same premises. George W. Doane expressed his opinion that President Buchanan, in his late message, had seen fit to step far out of his way "to throw this agitating question upon the country and upon the democratic party; and if he can stand it to

introduce this agitation, I can." Mr. Doane denounced as heresy the President's contention that the people of the territories had no right to legislate upon the slavery question, and he voted for the bill to emphasize his dissent from that doctrine. William A. Little, who was elected judge of the supreme court at the first state election, but died before taking the office, was even more fiery than his colleague, Judge Doane, in his dissent from Buchanan's opinion:

    If we could actually see a black cloud rising in the south, and should a horde of slaves be precipitated upon our fair soil today, no one would vote quicker than I, to repel such an evil from the land. But where is the danger? Where is this dreaded African spectre that like Hamlet's ghost flits ever before the hallucinated vision of the supporters of this bill? Our soil is yet unstained with slavery; we are free, and surrounded with free soil; Iowa on the east, is free. Kansas on the south, is free, and is there danger on our northern and western borders?
   Sir, I too, like the gentleman from Burt, take issue with Mr. Buchanan. I believe congress has no power over the territories upon this question. But I shall not vote for what is now uncalled for. This bill had its origin in black republican buncombe. As a democrat, I shall not vote to honor their political caprices, and exercising common sense, I shall not vote to dispel a phantom. Sir, I vote "no" upon this bill.

   In the issue of June 30, 1860, the News relates that six negroes had deserted and escaped from Alexander Majors of Nebraska City. "We can hardly think that our city is infested with such misguided philanthropists as nigger thieves and abolitionists. This dirty work is doubtless left for the nasty abolitionists of Civil Bend and Tabor." The republican commissioners of Otoe county returned "these negro servants or persons as property and taxed them as such."
   In August, 1860, nineteen "niggers" were run through Nebraska City on the underground railroad and kept at a storehouse over night at Wyoming by the editor of the republican paper there. As we have already seen, the census of 1860 showed that there were eighty-one negroes in Nebraska, ten of whom were recorded as slaves. The Omaha Nebraskian of August 18, 1860, notes that the Falls City Broad Axe says that a cargo of six or more fugitive slaves passed through Salem, escorted by thirty or forty whites, armed to the teeth.
   The following resolutions were adopted by the democratic convention of Otoe county: "The democracy of Otoe county are in favor of making Nebraska a free state, and we will vote for no man as a candidate to the convention who will not pledge himself to vote for a clause in the constitution prohibiting slavery in the state of Nebraska." The Nebraska City News demanded a law excluding negroes and negro laborers from the territory of Nebraska: "Cannot this be kept sacred as a home for white men -- a field for white labor; or shall it be made, as Kansas is, an elysium for vagabond niggers? Will some of our Africanized journals give us their opinion upon-this question? Will the abolition sheets at Omaha, Brownville and Nebraska City state whether they are upon the side of white men or negroes? . . Do we of Nebraska want a population of niggers? Do the whites of Iowa want a population of niggers? Does anybody, except the blatant abolitionists, want the two races to intermingle, amalgamate. and die out, as all hybrids do? If yes! support the black republican abolitionized party now in power and you can have your desires." The same paper notes that no less than five or six "newly imported niggers," some escaped contrabands and some free, were in the city and offering to work for six dollars a month; and the laboring classes of the North are warned of the disastrous end of the emancipation schemes of the republicans which this incident indicates.
   The News referring to a bill just passed by the legislature striking out the word "white" from the school laws, observes: "The Nebraska legislature has enacted that nigger children shall attend school with white children and upon the same benches learn the same lessons. . . The high school building at Nebraska City is a magnificent edifice. Our people in paying taxes for its erection and sup-

ort may console themselves with the proud reflection that in its broad aisles and throughout its spacious halls, their own children may mingle freely with little niggers and enjoy the luxury of the aroma arising therefrom, untaxed." The Press had observed exultantly that "our high school building of which we are justly proud, was built on the broad principle of equity and no distinction on account of color"; whereupon the News retorted: "The attention of the Press man is called to the fact that a distinction on account of odor may yet be made by which both himself and the genuine nigger may be excluded."