Library presentation focuses on
pre-1860 Nebraska
Author Jeff Barnes posited in his talk “Mad Queen of the Prairies: The Frenzied First Years of the Nebraska Territory” that the first five years of the Nebraska territory were anything but mild.
The history presentation by Friends of the Alice M. Farr Library and Humanities Nebraska, brought a packed crowd to the library April 18. Barnes is a former newspaper reporter and editor, trustee with the Nebraska State Historical Society, a former chairman of the Nebraska Hall of Fame and marketing director for the Durham Museum.
He has written several books on Great Plains and Nebraska history including one about Nebraskan monuments. It was research for that book, “Cut in Stone, Cast in Bronze: Nebraska’s Historical Markers and Monuments 1854-1967,” that led him to developing this presentation.
“I thought it’d be fun to share (some facts I found) with you about what a wild and crazy place this actually turned out to be here in Nebraska,” Barnes began.
He reported that the state that would be called “the Queen of the Prairies” by a Maryland newspaper and had a long road until it could even become a territory for colonization.
The borders of the state were part of the Louisiana, Missouri and Indian territory and was considered by the man who named the region, Secretary of War William Wilkins, to house a string of forts with local governments to help get troops to the Oregon Territory.
“We were (in 1844) still in a big fight with the United Kingdom over who was going to control this,” Barnes explained. “They wanted to make (Oregon) part of Canada down to California. We wanted to extend it deep into Canada.”
Wilkins stated what would later be titled the Platte River would be the central stream of the proposed territory and Congressman Steven A. Douglas, who would later run against and debate Abraham Lincoln during the 1860 election, proposed making Nebraska a territory. His first bill did not make it out of committee.
It would take several legislative sessions from 1844 to 1854 before Douglas presented his Nebraska-Kansas Act (now known as the Kansas-Nebraska Act) promised the two territories could choose to be slave or free states if it got passed.
While the much smaller territory of Kansas would be a battleground for pro- and anti-slavery forces, Nebraska was just anxious to get European settlers in at all, he said.
A few first governors
Before passage of the act, Missourians approached Chief of the Wyandot tribe William Walker to be the first governor.
“What they decided to do, since whites weren’t allowed to settle in the territory yet, they decided to cross the Missouri River into the Wyandot nation and convince him to stand for election of the Provisional Government of the Nebraska territory,” he explained. “They’re just saying we don’t need the federal government. We’re just gonna kind of declare ourselves that we got a government and they talked Walker into it.”
Walker, who could speak eight languages and wanted to preserve his tribe, accepted the proposal to be governor in Fort Leavenworth, in what is now Kansas. The governorship was in name only, however.
“Nobody was willing to jump the gun and say I’m going to settle down in the Nebraska Territory,” Barnes said.
In 1854, President Franklin Pierce first offered a governorship to William O. Butler, who declined, and then offered it to who would be the first official governor, Francis Burt from South Carolina. The long trip would be detrimental to the governor.
“(Burt and his company) had to make a week-long stay in St. Louis,” Barnes reported. “Burt had always suffered from digestive issues and he needed a week to recover.”
Burt arrived in October and then got severely sick in the Presbyterian Mission in Bellevue.
“He was in pretty bad shape,” Barnes explained. “He was not even ready to take the oath of office, so he needed a week to recuperate… (then) Burt was ready to take the oath of office, which he did. Unfortunately the poor guy died two days after getting in.”
Territorial secretary Thomas Cuming took over as acting governor, making the first prioirty to send Burt back to South Carolina. Eventually, Mark Izard would become governor in December, becoming the first governor to last more than two days, according to Barnes.
Battle for the capital
Instead of having a bloody fight over slavery like Kansas, the early legislature would be divided on whether the capital of the new territory would be north or south of the Platte River.
There were two big contenders for the capital. Bellevue had been established since the 1830s as a trading post with strong ties to Missouri and a had a more southern perspective. Omaha was across the river from Council Bluffs, Iowa, and had established a ferry between the two sides of river, taking a more northern view. Acting governor Cuming called for a census to establish where legislative districts were to be. It was a bit of a mess, according to Barnes.
“Even if you have clear boundaries on the map, you can’t tell if the southern border of Kansas or Nebraska from a sign. There weren’t any roads or fences,” he said. “Then he had a situation with people from Iowa, on census day, who would take the ferry across the river, get counted and go home.”
This “fluid” census, as Barnes called it, still had more population on the southern side than the north, but Cuming decided to even it out with “creative” county creation.
“Cuming was interested in preserving the northern counties and so even though the majority of districts had been in the south, they should have had most of the representation. Cuming says there were four counties on north and four counties on the south,” he said. “Most (legislative seats) went to northern counties and fewer went to southern counties. His rationale for that was ‘Well, we’re expecting a lot more people to settle in the north, so we have to be ready when they do.’”
Bellevue and Omaha got put in the same county, and Cuming made Omaha the capital. This prompted protest at the first legislative session in 1855.
“Big masses of people showed up. There was a large group from Bellevue dressed in red blankets like Indians would wear. They thought they could intimidate the legislature in getting the capital moved to Bellevue,” Barnes relayed.
The legislature was also filled with bribery and a lot of confusion after the first legislation session.
“There were all kinds of people who had been elected in the previous month for that, but there was a lot of dishonesty,” Barnes quipped. “There was three people showing up for the same seat, for example. I guess they have a firm belief that they got either elected or can talk their way into the office because there’s a lot of bribery going on.”
That did not stop the legislature from submitting bills from all corners of the settled territory.
“It was constantly a nonstop, never-ending battle for the capital,” Barnes said. “There were constant efforts to have it moved to Bellevue. There are people that got elected saying they’re going to move the capital in their communities.”
Some of the proposals were from legislators originally from Glenwood, Iowa, trying for nearby Plattsmouth who took bribes and then left. There were also separate proposals for a new town called Douglas, which included the site of the current capital in Lincoln.
The battle came to a head in 1858 when at the newly established territorial capital building in Omaha, legislators held their first session, a quick headcount establishing that southern counties had the votes for a new capital. However, someone found a procedure for a printing contract, opening up a filibuster that went on for days. The battle then turned physical.
“So people are getting very angry from south Platte counties and in fact the ringleader of the group, trying to take the gavel away from who was holding it at the time, (former speaker of the house) Hanscom hit him in the head and that’s when the legislature blew up.”
South Platte legislators escaped to Florence and made new laws to make the new capital Neapolis, but due to having to have laws passed in Omaha it got nullified on their return and their attempts to pass it again.
“It was a great compromise because it was so far north and actually located in time a northern county it should have appeased everybody on the north side,” Barnes said. “But out of principle they did not want to see it moved from Omaha.”