USA > Nebraska > Lancaster County > Lincoln > Lincoln, the capital city and Lancaster County, Nebraska, Volume I > Part 14
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To the counties north of the Platte were apportioned seven councilmen and fourteen representatives, and to the southern counties were given six councilmen and twelve representatives. The enumeration made next year showed that the four northern counties contained 2,065 inhabitants, and the four counties south of the Platte contained 2.944. Here was the beginning of the trouble, the inequitable apportionment of the legislative representation, by which the section of the state known thenceforth as the "South Platte" country, was arbitrarily placed in the minority in each branch of the legislature, though greatly preponderating in population and wealth.
It is a matter of tradition that there was no definite eastern boundary of the territory during the first legislative election. The candidates were often residents of Iowa, who had claims on the other side of the great river, whose name as well as birth right had been stolen by a lesser affluent of the Mississippi to the eastward,
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and were voted for in Pottawatamie, and Mills, and Fremont, as well as in Washington, Douglas and Cass. Sometimes the electors would form a camp for polling purposes on Nebraska soil, but where this was inconvenient it is rumored that they transacted the necessary business without leaving their Iowa homes, and merely dated their papers from the new commonwealth.
The governor's location was not disputed by that body, or the next. But when the third annual session of the Territorial Legislature opened in 1857 the trouble began immediately. The council still numbered seven from the north and six from the south, while the house had been increased to thirty-one members, sixteen from the north, and fifteen from the south. Douglas County absorbed twelve of the sixteen north Platte members. But her delegation was divided against itself. The memory of the lost chances that had stricken Bellevue with dry rot and had blighted the budding hopes of the Florentines, rankled in the bosoms of two representatives, one of whom hailed from the southern, and the other from the northern, extremity of the county. Youthful politicians wear out their hearts with the vain imagining that "to get even" is the chiefest end of statesmanship, and these united with the chafed warriors of the south in a raid on Omaha.
A bill was passed early in the session by both houses locating the seat of government "in the town of Douglas, in the County of Lancaster." It was a curious prophecy of the event ten years later. Stephen A. Douglas was then the rising star of the party that had been dominant for thirty-two out of the forty years last past. He was the idol of the democracy of the north, and was exhausting the resources of an acute and fertile intellect in plans for conciliating his southern brethern without losing his hold upon the affections of the north. He was certain to be a candidate for President, and if the party was united was certain of election. Three years later he and his cunningly devised statesmanship were swept away, his old townsman and hitherto almost unknown competitor, had supplanted him as the great popular leader, and ten years later gave the name to the capital of Nebraska.
Governor Izard, who had in the meantime relieved acting Governor Cuming of the burden of executive honors, promptly vetoed the bill. He explained in his message that it was a sudden movement of the enemies of Omaha, that the question had not been agitated by the people, that the alleged town of Douglas, in the County of Lancaster, was a mere figment of the legislative imagination, invented for the occasion and that its actual location in the county named was problematical, being as yet the football of factions within the faction that had passed the removal bill.
A year later, at a meeting of the fourth legislative assembly, the quarrel broke out afresh. Governor Izard had resigned, and Richardson, his successor, had not arrived, and Secretary Cuming was again in the chair. Nine days prior to the expiration of the session, on the 7th of January, a bill was introduced for the removal of the capital to Florence. The various tactical obstructions in the reach of the minority, engineered by such rising young statesmen as Dr. George L. Miller, president of the council, and A. J. Poppleton and J. Sterling Morton in the House, made it impossible to accomplish the object without strategy. The strategy resorted to was simple, but startling. On the morning of the 8th Mr. Donelan of Cass placidly rose in his place and moved "that we do now adjourn to meet at Florence tomorrow morning at the usual hour." Speaker -
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Decker, who was one of the removers, put the question from the chair, as though it was the most natural thing in the world to meet at Florence tomorrow morning ; and the motion prevailed, and the speaker and all but thirteen members of the house picked up their hats and left the chamber. The thirteen hield the fort, elected Morton speaker pro tem, and gallantly effected an adjournment to meet again on the morrow at the old stand.
A similar scene was transpiring in the council. Doctor Miller, in the chair, refused to put the motion to adjourn to Florence, and it was put by Reeves of Otoe, declared carried, and eight councilmen stalked out into the cold world and prepared themselves for an eternal exodus to the village up the river. As to this emigration Douglas County was again divided against herself. Bowen and Allen, the one representing Florence, and the other standing for that cruel Juno, Bellevue, whose lofty mind still was revolving some plan of vengeance for the judgment of Paris and her injured beauty, were the leaders in the race, and behind the twain marched Bradford and Reeves of Otoe, Kirkpatrick of Cass, Safford of Dodge, and Furnas of Nemaha.
Governor Richardson arrived about this time, to find two capitals and two legislatures in full blast, and himself the unwilling arbitrator of the war. He promptly refused to recognize the Florence legislature, though it had the majority of both houses. The forty days' limit of the session broke up both bodies, and they each adjourned, leaving the business of the session undone, and the territory without a code of criminal law, and thus ended the first and last attempt recorded in history to attach the removal of a seat of government to a motion to adjourn until tomorrow morning.
The consequence was an extra session not long after, in 1859, at which much business was done, and in which Mr. Daily of Nemaha introduced a bill to abolish slavery in the territory, but during which the capital agitation slumbered and slept.
Then there was an interregnum. The Civil war quenched sectional bicker- ings, and the ambitions of leaders had objects more alluring than the founding of cities. But the war came to an end, and when the last Territorial Legislature of 1867 met, the old question of unfair apportionment came to the front again. The population of the south Platte section had increased until it was about double that of the counties north of the troublesome stream. But the superior tactics of the Douglas County leaders held down its representation to such an extent that it had but seven of the thirteen councilmen, and twenty-one of the thirty-seven representatives. Two threads of policy had intertwisted to make the resistance to a reappointment, based upon actual population, sufficiently strong to overcome the justice supposed to be latent in the minds of statesmen.
The first was the fear entertained by Douglas County of the reopening of the capital agitation. The north Platte was now about a unit in favor of Omaha, as against a southern competitor. The second was a political consideration. A reapportionment meant a cutting down of the representation from Otoe as well as Douglas counties, both democratic strongholds. These counties, with the assistance of some lesser constituencies in the north of the Platte, which sent democratic delegations, were able to hold a very even balance in the Legislature against the republicans, though the latter had an unquestionable majority in the territory. Now that statehood was imminent, and there were two United States
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senators to be elected by a State Legislature soon to be called, in case President Johnson should fail in his plan of defeating our admission under the enabling act of 1864, it was of immense importance to stave off a reapportionment.
Hence for capital reasons the republicans from the north Platte, and the democrats from the south Platte, worked in harmony with Douglas County members in preserving a basis of representation in its original injustice. The usual bill for a new apportionment had been introduced and passed the Senate, and came to the llouse, but the four votes from Otoe County being solid against it, it was sleeping the sleep of the just. In the speaker's chair was William F. Chapin of Cass, an expert parliamentarian, cool, determined, watchful, and untiring. The session was drawing to a close, and it was Saturday; the term expired at 12 o'clock, midnight, on the following Monday, and as usual the results of pretty much all the toil and perspiration of the forty days depended upon a ready and rapid dispatch of business during the remaining hours of the session.
There was something sinister in the air. It was whispered about that morning that the reapportionment bill had at last a majority in case Deweese of Richard- son, who was absent on leave, should put in an appearance. A vote or two had been brought over from some of the northern districts, remote from Omaha, and anxious for republican domination. "Fun" was therefore expected. It came very soon after the roll was called in the opening of the session. The credentials of D. M. Rolfe of Otoe, who had not been in attendance during the session, but who was an anti-reapportionist, were called up, and it was moved that they be reported to a special committee. The ayes and nays were demanded. Pending roll call, it was moved that a call of the house be ordered. The call was ordered, and the doors closed. All the members answered to their names but Deweese of Richardson and Dorsey of Washington. Then the other side made a motion that further proceedings under the call be dispensed with. The ayes and nays were demanded, and there were seventeen ayes and sixteen nays. Speaker Chapin announced that he voted "no," and that being a tie, the motion was lost. An appeal was taken from the decision of the chair, and the vote resulted in another tie, and the appeal was declared lost. The rule is, that an affirmative proposition cannot be carried by a tie vote, but that all questions are decided in the negative. The usual form of putting the question by the speaker is, "Shall the decision of the chair stand as the judgment of the house?" The negative would be that it should not so stand. But in that case a decision of the chair is reversed by less than a majority of the members voting, which is of course absurd. It was a deadlock. The house still refused to suspend proceedings under the call, and there was no recourse except by revolution. The result was a curious demon- stration of the absurdity of manipulating a proposition by the use of misleading formulas so that the negative side of a question may appear to be in the affirmative.
The house passed, but "No Thoroughfare" was written on the faces of the reapportionists. They said that until they had some assurance that a reapportion- ment bill would be passed before the adjournment, they would prevent the trans- action of any more business. Secretly they expected Deweese, who was rumored to be well enough to attend, and they waited for his appearance. But he did not come. The doorkeeper and the sergeant at arms had orders to let no man out,
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and when noontide passed and the shadows lengthened, the members sent for refreshments and lunched at their desks. The night came. Some of the refresh- ments had been of a very partisan character, and there was blood on the horizon. Many became hilarious, and the lobby was exceedingly noisy. From hilarity to pugnacity is a very short step. Arms and munitions of war were smuggled in during the evening by the outside friends of both sides, and it was pretty con- fidently whispered about that the conclusion was to be tried by force of revolvers.
A little after 10 o'clock, P. M. Augustus F. Harvey of Otoe rose and moved that Speaker Chapin be deposed, and that Doctor Abbott of Washington be elected to fill the vacancy. He then put the question to a viva voce vote, and declared the motion adopted and Doctor Abbott elected speaker of the house. The stalwart form of Mr. Parmalee, the fighting man of the faction, immediately lifted itself from a desk nearby, and advanced, with Doctor Abbott, toward the chair, backed up by Harvey and a procession of his friends. As he placed his foot upon the first step of the dais, Speaker Chapin suddenly unlimbered a Colt's navy duly cocked, and warned him briefly to the effect that the Pythagorean proposition that two bodies could not occupy the same place at the same time was a rule of the house. and would be enforced by the combined armament, at the command of the proper presiding officer. Daniel paused upon the brink of fate, and hesitated upon his next step. To hesitate was to be lost. The speaker announced that in accord- ance with the rules of the house in cases of great disorder, he declared the house adjourned until 9 o'clock Monday morning, and sprang for the door. The Omaha lobby had promised faithfully when the crisis came to guard that door, and permit no rebel from the south Platte to eseape. The first man to reach the door was said to be Kelley of Platte, who had joined the forces of the reapportionists, and it is a tradition that he leaped over the legislative stove to get there on time. The door was burst open, and before the volunteer guard could recover its equilibrium, the seceders had escaped and were out of the building, scattering to the four corners of the globe. But they had a rendezvous agreed upon in a secret place, and in half an hour they were safely entrenched and on guard against any sergeant-at-arms and posse that might be dispatched to return them to durance vile.
The Abbott house immediately organized, admitted Rolfe of Otoe to full membership, and proceeded to clear the docket of accumulated bills. Members of the lobby trooped in and voted the names of the absent, and everything pro- ceeded in an unanimous way that must have astonished the walls of the chamber, if they had ears and memory. About dawn, however, the situation began to lose its roseate hue and an adjournment was had until Monday morning.
Before that time arrived, the hopelessness of the situation dawned upon both factions. They perceived that nothing whatever would come of the deadlock. Neither party had a quorum. Deweese of Richardson could not be brought in to cast his vote for reapportionment, and by common consent a peace was con- cluded, and Monday was spent in an amicable settlement of the arrearages of routine business.
But this episode created a sensation all over the state, and intensified partisan and sectional feeling. The adjournment took place on the 18th of February, and two days later, on the 20th, the State Legislature chosen at the same time, under the enabling act, met at a call of Governor Saunders, to accept or reject the
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"fundamental condition" insisted on by Congress as a condition precedent to the admission of the state. The condition was that the word "white" in the con- stitution theretofore passed by the Legislature, and ratified by the people, should not be construed as debarring from the franchise any citizen of Nebraska, on account of color or race.
The State Legislature promptly ratified the "fundamental condition," and declared that white meant in their constitution any color whatever. Ten days later and the President's proclamation had been issued declaring Nebraska a state in the Union. The state officers were sworn in immediately after official notice had been given, and Governor Butler began at once to prepare his call for a special session of the Legislature to put the machinery of state in motion.
It was insisted upon by the leaders of the republican party in the south and west, that a reapportionment of members of the Legislature should be one of the objects of legislation enumerated in the call. This was bitterly opposed by many republicans in Douglas and other northern counties. It was also asked, this time by democrats, as well as republicans from Otoe, as well as from Cass and Richardson, and the southwestern counties, that a clause should be inserted making the location of the seat of government of the state one of the objects of the special session. The governor was averse to commencing his administration with a capital wrangle, but thought it would be good policy to make use of the suggestion, for the purpose of securing reapportionment, without a repetition of the bitter struggle of the winter. He therefore opened negotiations with the Douglas County delegation to the coming Legislature, and promised them that he would leave out the capital question, provided they would pledge themselves to sustain a reapportionment. They flatly refused. They claimed that the Legislature could not constitutionally reapportion the representation until after the next census, and as for capital removal, they were not brought up in the woods to be scared by an owl. The Otoe delegation, however, had changed its base. The senators had been elected and seated, and political consideration had lost their force with the democrats in that county. They wanted the capital removed south of the Platte, and they promised if the governor would "put that in" they would march right up and vote for apportionment.
His excellency had gone too far to retreat, and when his call was issued it embraced both capital removal and reapportionment, having consulted a dis- tinguished constitution constructor, Judge Jamison of Chicago, on the latter point, and obtained an elaborate opinion that it was not only in the power of the Legislature, but its bounden duty, under the constitution, to reapportion the representation at its first session.
The Legislature met on the 18th of May, and the lines were quickly drawn for the emergency. Reapportionment was a fixed fact, and after a few days spent in reconnoitering, a solid majority in both houses seemed likely to agree upon a scheme for capital location. Mr. Harvey who had led the assault upon reappor- tionment at the late session of the Territorial Legislature, was an active leader of his late antagonists for relocation. Party affiliations were ruptured all along the line, and the new lines were formed on a sectional basis. The bill was pre- pared with deliberation, much caucusing being required before it would satisfy the various elements in the movement, and it was introduced into both houses on the 4th of June. It was entitled "An act to provide for the location of the seat
South Tenth Street between N and M
Eleventh Street, looking north from (
CHOCKERT
North side of O Street between Ninth and Eleventh
South side of O Street between Eleventh and Twelfth
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By courtesy of G. R. Wolf of Lincoln State University
County Jail
SCENES IN LINCOLN IN 1875
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of government of the State of Nebraska and for the erection of public buildings thereat." It named the governor, David Butler, the secretary of state, Thomas P. Kennard, and the auditor, John Gillespie, commissioners, who should select, on or before July 15th, a date changed by a supplementary bill to September 1, 1867, from lands belonging to the state lying within the County of Seward. the south half of the counties of Saunders and Butler, and that portion of Lancaster County lying north of the south line of township nine, a suitable site of not less than 640 acres lying in one body, for a town, to have the same surveyed, and named "Lincoln," and declared the same the permanent seat of government of the state.
The bill directed the commissioners, after the site had been surveyed, to offer the lots in each alternate block for sale to the highest bidder after thirty days' advertisement, having appraised the same, but that no lots should be sold for less than the appraised value. The first sale should be held for five successive days at Lincoln on the site, after which sale should be opened for the same duration, first at Nebraska City and next at Omaha. If a sufficient number of lots should not by this time be disposed of to defray the expenses of the selection and survey and to erect a building as described in the bill, further sales might be advertised and held in Plattsmouth and Brownville. All moneys derived from these sales, which should be for cash, should be deposited in the state treasury and there held by the treasurer as a state building fund. From the proceeds of these sales the commissioners should proceed to advertise for plans and contracts and cause to be erected a building suitable for executive offices and the accommodation of the two houses of the Legislature, that might be a part of a larger building to be completed in the future, the cost of which wing or part of a building should not exceed fifty thousand dollars. The bill passed the Senate on the 10th day of June. Those voting for it were Jesse T. Davis of Washington, James E. Doom and Lawson Sheldon of Cass, Oscar Holden of Johnson, Thomas J. Majors of Nemaha, William A. Presson of Richardson, and Mills S. Reeves and W. W. Wardell of Otoe. The noes were Harlan Baird of Dakota, Isaac S. Hascall and J. N. H. Patrick of Douglas, E. H. Rogers of Dodge, and Frank K. Freeman of Lincoln.
The House passed the bill two days later, under suspension of the rules, forwarding it to its third reading. As in the Senate, so in the House, the oppo- nents of the bill resorted to strategy for stampeding the friends of the measure, and offered numerous amendments to locate the capital or the university or the agricultural college at Nebraska City, or in the boundaries of Cass or Nemaha counties. But all amendments were steadily voted down by a solid phalanx. The gentlemen in the House voting "aye" on its final passage were David M. Ander- son, John B. Bennett, William H. Hicklin, Aug. F. Harvey and George W. Sroat of Otoe, J. R. Butler of Pawnee, John Cadman of Lancaster, E. L. Clark of Seward, W. F. Chapin, D. Cole, A. B. Fuller and Isaac Wiles of Cass, George Crowe, William Dailey, Louis Waldter and C. F. Haywood of Nemaha, J. M. Deweese, Gustavus Duerfeldt. T. J. Collins and J. T. Hoile of Richardson, Henry Morton of Dixon, Dean C. Slade and John A. Unthank of Washington, Oliver Townsend of Gage and George P. Tucker of Johnson-twenty-five.
The "noes" were O. W. Baltzley of Dakota, Henry Beebe of Dodge, George N. Crawford and A. W. Trumble of Sarpy, George W. Frost. Joel T. Griffin,
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Martin Dunham, J. M. Woolworth and Dan S. Parmalee of Douglas, and John A. Wallichs of Platte-ten.
It will be observed that several votes were cast for the bill from the northern counties. Tied up with the capital removal was a bill engineered by the secretary of state, Mr. Kennard, then a resident of Washington County, and Senator Davis, appropriating seventy-five sections of state internal improvement lands for the building of a railroad, now a part of the Fremont, Elkhorn & Missouri Valley Line running from the river near Blair to Fremont. It was then called the "North Nebraska Air Line." Another measure was also attached to these two to make the syndicate solid in Namaha, the only county that had sent up a remon- strance against the removal of the capital. It was a bill accepting for the state the tender of the Methodist Episcopal Seminary at Peru for a state normal school, and donating twenty sections of state lands for the endowment of the same. The three bills and the reapportionment bill received virtually the same sup- port in both houses and all passed about the same time.
The plans of the capital removers so far had not met with the determined resistance that had been anticipated, although the parliamentarians from Douglas and other counties had exhausted the resources of ordinary tactics at the com- mand of the minority. The fact was that for several months Omaha had been making such a rapid commercial growth, owing to the extension of the Union Pacific Railroad to the frontier and the incoming of the Chicago & Northwestern Road from Central lowa to Council Bluffs, that her business men had their hands full. Their ambition had expanded. The capital question was dwarfed by the prospect of becoming in the near future a great commercial metropolis. Real estate was going up like a rocket. Capitalists were crowding in every day, and the faces of the newcomers seen on the streets greatly outnumbered the familiar physiognomies of the old settlers of '54 and '60. What had Omaha to fear even if the Utopian scheme of founding "a city fifty miles from anywhere," as they called it, should succeed? It was too far away from the Union Pacific and the Missouri to be of any importance. The lobby was therefore conspicuous for its absence. There was more money to be made in a day in trading lots and securing railroad contracts than in a month of wrestling with the fads of rural legislators. Just at that time, it is due to historical truthfulness to say that Omaha cared little for the questions that were taking up the attention of the law- makers at the state house.
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