But inasmuch as practical agriculture has completely dissipated the illusion, and the question of an admission to the Union been a fixed fact for twenty-four years, both theories may be passed over in silence. At the threshold of discussion we meet the following:

Nebraska has heretofore suffered from inconsiderate and nasty legislation, as well as from sudden and untimely repeal of a large portion of her laws. We have, however, just cause of congratulation that the code, both civil and criminal, adopted by the legislature of last year, is in full force and successful operation.

The recommendations relative to lands bearing the greater share of taxation, homestead exemption from sale for debt, prudent usury laws, the intelligent limitation of official fees, the enactment of laws to protect debtors and secure creditors in the sale of real estate under execution, were worthy of a sound lawyer and impartial judge. The brief allusion to the mistakes and calamities of the past was pungent and graphic:

It is a matter of bitter experience that the people of this Territory have been made to pass through the delusive days of high times and paper prices, and the consequent dark and gloomy night of low times and no prices.

By far the most notable message ever delivered, up to that date, in Nebraska closed, pure in morals and beautiful in style:

We may here turn to our past history as a territory, and find material for pleasant meditation. Individual faults and occasional infractions of the law are of course upon the record, but not a single page is darkened by the registry of a single outbreak among the people. Our growth in population and prosperity has been equal to the most sanguine expectation. Of agricultural supplies we already produce far more than we consume, and we may reasonably hope that but a few years will roll around before Nebraska will be as well known in the markets of the world as the oldest and largest grain growing states in the Republic.

A railroad to the Pacific Ocean is no longer a problem without a solution, and its construction and completion are but a question of time. These prairies will all be peopled from the great rivers to the mountains. The farm

house and the school house will decorate the plains, and
temples reared to the living God will resound with praise
from living and grateful hearts. This is the mighty and
majestic future to which we look almost with the assurance
of divine faith. Our fathers saw this and were glad. And
when this "goodly frame," without a parallel, this Union,
was first conceived, they trusted in Jehovah and were not
disappointed. They knew as we know that there is a
special providence in the fall of a sparrow, and in the
rise and fall of nations. That their fate, who have fallen,
may not be ours, and that our country may continue to rise
and increase in just power, in excellence and in virtue,
should be and will be, in all parts of it and in all times
to come, as in the times past, the invocation and prayer
of the patriot.

On the occasion of vetoing an act of incorporation, the gover nor said: "It is time that the spirit of incorporation should be subdued and checked. All special privileges and chartered rights conferred on a few, are so much taken away from the general privileges and unchartered rights of the many." As illustrative of the bungling way in which laws had been enacted, a committee reported: "That there was no law in existence in 1858 which authorized the levy and collection of territorial tax. The legislature of 1857, in attempting to adopt a revenue law, only adopted the enactment clause." As only four counties paid anything into the treasury in 1858, said amounts were recommended to be returned. There seeming to be no doubt that there were six slaves in Nebraska and had been formerly as many as thirteen, a bill was introduced and passed for the abolition of slavery in the territory, which was vetoed on the ground that slavery existed in the Louisiana purchase when we acquired it by the treaty, and could not be disposed of until the adoption of a state constitution. On the 4th day of December, 1860, the governor delivered his second and final annual message to the legislature, and proceeded at once to the vital questions in which the people were specially interested. Referring to the previous session, he said:

I urged then, as I urge now, the necessity of the law against usurious rates of interest. Better have no money

than buy it with the life blood of the needy and hard
pressed of the people.

In response to this utterance the rate of interest was placed at 10 per cent in case there was no agreement for another rate not exceeding 15 per cent. Of salaries he said:

It is perfectly well known that the income of several of the officers in the Territory is far greater than it should be, and that the territorial debt would be an easy burden if it were not for the issue of the warrants to satisfy the claims of public officers, whose fees in many cases are four times as much as their services are worth.

To remedy this evil, a most searching and comprehensive law was passed covering the whole range of fees and salaries. The territorial debt was stated at $52,960, with collectible resources amounting to $30,259. Contemplating the manner in which the public debt had increased from a small amount in five years to $50,000 his indignant language was:

Let the days of extravagance and enormous fees be numbered and cut short, and let a system of rigid and severe economy, suited to the times and our condition, be introduced and adopted, and that without detay.

His plea for an indirect bounty by which the growth of timber on the treeless prairies might be encouraged was promptly met by the passage of an act allowing a reduction of $50 on the valuation of real estate for every acre of cultivated fruit, forest or ornamental trees. On the supposition that "the relation of a Territory to the general government is peculiar, and one in many respects of entire dependence," he urged that Congress be called upon for aid for bridges and roads on the lines of western travel, and for emigrant hospitals, and an arsenal of repairs and supplies. No important interest of the home-seeker seemed to escape his attention. His confidence in the future of the Territory was reiterated:

A soil so rich and prolific, a climate for the most part of the year so pleasant, and at all seasons so full of health, was not meant for a waste place nor a wilderness. God has

written His decrees for her prosperity deep in the earth,
and developed His designs in the rejoicing harvests which
return in smiling abundance to them who, betimes, have
sown in tears.

With his eye upon the storm cloud in the sky of the Union, and his ear sensitive to the strains of discord, he came to his final appeal:

The suggestions of self interest and the loftiest patriot-
ism should combine to make the people of the Territories
faithful to the constitution and firm to their attachment
to the Union. When one is the subject of open and frequent
violation, and the other trembles on a sea of trouble,
every good and conscientious citizen will ask himself the
question, what can I do that my country may be saved?
You cannot shut your eyes, nor can I close mine, to the
fearful fact that this confederacy is shaken to the center
and vibrates with intense feeling to its farthest borders.
If it is not in our power to do something to bring back the
days of other years when peace prevailed, let us at least
do nothing towards making the present more gloomy and
the future, at best, but hopeless. Rather with one accord
let us invoke the God of all peace, for "even the wind and
the sea obey Him," that He will subdue the storm and quiet
every angry element of alienation and discord.

Up to the assembling of the legislature in 1860, the government officials had been members of the Democratic party, and those of them from slave states uniformly brought with them one or more slaves, claiming that slavery was national. During the first four or five years of territorial existence the antislavery sentiment of the people had been in restraint by the theory that it was better for the material interests of the new community that they should not antagonize the policy of the party in power. And as the repeal of the Missouri Compromise and the struggle to force slavery upon Kansas had threatened the life of the Union, it seemed nothing short of the Republican cyclone of 1860, which brought Mr. Lincoln into the White House, could consolidate the emigrants and check the domineering assumption of official dictators. But the make-up of this legislature proclaimed the emancipation of sentiment and the

dawn of a new political era. Of course there were at all times a few bold spirits, illustrating the fact that a true reformer must be in advance of his times.

On the 23d day of the session, in reply to the governor's message of censure, a committee of whom T. W. Tipton of Nemaha county was chairman, made the following report:

The select committee to which was referred the special
message from the governor, dated December the 16th, 1860,
calling the attention of this body to the fact that only seven-
teen working days of the session remained, and up to that
date he had received no bills for his official signature, have
had the same under consideration and beg leave to report:
First, that from a careful and thorough examination of a
standard almanac, his point in regard to the time is well
taken; and second, that the journal of the council appears
to sustain the second count in the indictment.
We are
happy to learn from his excellency that "I make this sug-
gestion in no spirit of complaint," for we are certain that
he has no cause of complaint, and had he complained we
would have handed his complaint over to a people who
have been cursed with too hasty, illadvised, and inconsider-
ate legation. But when he says as a reason for prompting
us to action, "Not on my own account alone, but for the
sake of the people, I request that you will endeavor to
hasten the public business," we desire to remind his excel-
lency that the same people whose will has been stricken
down at a previous session, by his veto, has sent us here
to own allegiance to no earthly power but themselves, and
our oaths of office, and further that we represent thousands
of freemen and hold our commissions from them, while he
holds his from the President of the United States. The
people are well aware that no legislature, a large portion
of whom hold for the first time, can in the short space of
twenty days, bring legislative order out of choas, and estab-
lish a judicious revenue system, construct an election law
that will guard the ballot box, equalize the fees of all publie
officers, reduce the burdens of taxation by thousands of
dollars, and place a future state on a broad and glorious
platform of constitutional liberty. But if it is a fact that
we have been by day and night laboring in this chamber
and committee rooms, in this behalf for 23 days, may we
not, when successful, return to our constituents in conscious
pride and triumph? In taking leave of this peculiar mes-
sage we concur in the propriety of the following language
of his excellency: "Nor do I assume any right to influence