EARLY HISTORY OF FRONTIER COUNTY NEBRASKA

EARLY HISTORY AND REMINISCENCE
OF
FRONTIER COUNTY
NEBRASKA

(5) On the first day of March, 1867, Nebraska was admitted into the Union. Through the mist of years the chronology of Nebraska has been handed down, tinged with romance as well as the sterner realities. The name itself possesses a mysterious charm. Young men who comprise the bone and sinew of the young State's 1,000,000 inhabitants have taken the land as they found it with scarcely an inquiry as to its origin. Misfortunes are long remembered. Perhaps they have a faint recollection of an Eastern home where kind friends busied themselves in providing things needed in a land sorely stricken with the plague of Egypt. Even youth born within Nebraska borders and educated in its boasted institutions of learning may have glanced at its history only hurriedly.

It is believed that over all this vast region once rested an immense lake, compared to which Lake Superior is a mere pond. Over the bottom of this lake were spread, through the changing scones of time, lacustrine deposits of soil five to two hundred feet deep. A small area on the north side of the State seems to have emerged first, for the soil is entirely gone from it. But it must have been at one time a tropic isle of marvelous luxuriance of vegetable and animal life. In the hardened clay of its low hills are to be found vast numbers of fossil animals that have no existence outside the tropics. Here were immense numbers of rhinoceroses, horned and hornless, some with two horns, and others with none. Here ranged the hippopotami and vast herds of carnivorous animals; here are found petrified turtles, one specimen perfectly preserved, being seven feet across. "It requires but little imagination," says Bishop Warren, "to cover the region of the mouth of the Niobrara with abundant forests through which meandered great rivers full of huge animals, while chattered the monkey, and flew the gorgeous bird of paradise above them." (6)

MAMMOTH

What picture shall we paint from these huge bores,
A Mammoth of the Pleocene age?
Vainly we'll ask the artist or the sage
Unless the poet's gift he freely owns:
For only poets truly can portray
That ancient beast in colors for Today.
Who else can place a heart in that huge frame
And 'round these naked bones a robe array?
Can others set that ancient heart aflame,
That it again may trumpet forth its love
For the vast herd now gathered far above?
--Boyd Perkin

Afterward the surrounding country, covered with the richest soil, arose above the water; the climate grew more severe, and the tropical animals and birds gave place to those of a colder climate. One race of men lived here and disappeared; another took their place, but they have passed away, leaving but little trace of their existence; a third, now known as the Indian, luxuriated in the abundant meat of the buffalo, but they are being pushed rapidly off the stage of time, and their labors will be as extinct as the two races that have sunk beneath these waves of land, "unwept, unhonored and unsung."

Nebraska was a part of the large unexplored country that was claimed by La Salle for the King of France and named Louisiana. It was said to be full of mines and richer in ingots than Peru. John C. Fremont crossed its borders and opened up a new world, California gold hunters trade a lasting path through its waving prairies, and the old trail made by the Mormons on their weary march to the city of saints is not yet obliterated. The origin of Nebraska had great influence upon the fate of our nation. The passage of the Kansas-Nebraska bill, in 1854, threw open the territory to slavery, gave birth to a party that was made up of Whigs, antislavery Democrats and free-soilers, known at first as anti-Nebraska men and later as Republicans. The antislavery branch of the know-nothing party opposed the extension of slavery. Thus did Nebraska, in its infancy figure in political history.

Nebraska being a portion of the Louisiana territory, divisions were made from time to time, resulting in the formation of (7) Missouri and Arkansas, between 1804 and 1854. In the latter year the Kansas-Nebraska bill became a law and defined Nebraska as that territory between 40 degrees and 49 degrees north latitude, the Missouri River on the east and the Rocky Mountains on the west. In 1863, the year before the question of statehood arose, the final boundaries were established. The enabling act was passed by Congress and approved April 22, 1861.

The bill gave Nebraska one representative in Congress, and granted large tracts of public lands for the purpose of endowing colleges and erecting public buildings necessary in forming a seat of government. It gave the people the right to formulate a constitution and that was to prohibit slavery. In 1866 the Territorial Legislature met and submitted a constitution to the popular vote; in June '66 the vote was cast, and declared accepted, by a small majority. This constitution was submitted to Congress with the hope of gaining admission.

An attempt was made to ingraft a clause prohibiting discrimination on account of color. The bill was passed without that clause, but the measure was not signed by President Johnson, and did not become a law at that session but when the next Congress assembled the measure was again called up before that body and passed. President Johnson vetoed the bill on January 29, 1867, and on February 8th it was taken up in the Senate and passed over the President's veto by a vote of 120 to 43 amid great applause from the floor and galleries.

The legislature was called in special session on February 20, 1867, by the territorial governor, Alvin Sanders, for the purpose of taking action upon the conditions imposed by Congress. The governor went before the legislature and presented a brief message informing that body that the constitution adopted by the people of the territory in June, 1866, restricted the elective franchise to "white male citizens." The condition imposed by Congress was that "this act shall not take effect except upon the fundamental condition that within the State of Nebraska there shall be no denial of the elective franchise, or of any other right, to any person by reason of race or color, excepting Indians not taxed." The joint convention adjourned and the Senate at once passed a bill assenting to the act of Congress admitting Nebraska into the Union. The House concurred immediately, and President Johnson issued his (8) proclamation announcing the admission or Nebraska into the union of States on March 1, 1867.

Geographically considered, the territory comprising the scene of our following History and Reminiscence, of local interest, is two hundred and twenty-five miles west of the Missouri river, seventy-two miles from Colorado and in the second tier of counties north from Kansas. It is in latitude 40 degrees 30 minutes, and in longitude 23 degrees west from Washington, the area of which is about the size of the state or Rhode Island.