EDITOR'S PREFACE

THE ILLUSTRATED HISTORY OF NEBRASKA was projected in 1897, with J. Sterling Morton as editor-in-chief and Dr. George L. Miller associate editor. The plan of the work was arranged and projected emphasizing special features, such as portraits, biographical sketches and histories of churches and other societies under Mr. Morton's super

vision, and with the effective and enthusiastic aid of Dr. Miller; and a great number of portraits and biographies had been procured, when, a few months before Mr. Morton's lamented death, at his urgent solicitation, I consented to carry on his work as editor and in particular to prepare the history proper. His plan at that time was to confine this part of the work to a brief outline of the formal history of the territory and state, regarding the other parts as its principal feature. He intended that this work should be accomplished in a few months and that the history should be ready for publication early in the year 1902. From the first I held firmly the opinion that a comprehensive and systematic history was more desirable and would be more useful and of more permanent value than the proposed special features. Mr. C. S. Paine, managing editor, also shared my views. Everything, therefore, that Mr. Morton had planned for the history as editor-in-chief, and with a much larger scope, has been executed just as if he had lived, but in the regular or systematic history of the territory, which has constantly grown on our hands and is presented in this and the following volume, early subscribers to the work get as a reward for their possibly tedious waiting vastly more than Mr. Morton instructed me to give.

In a prospectus of the History, written when it was projected, Mr. Morton, in enthusiastically setting forth important features of a worthy work of that kind and its great importance, expressed a vivid appreciation of the great labor and expense involved in the undertaking, by reason of its magnitude and the fact that its field was as yet unexplored, and also of the illustrative value of a comprehensive system of biographical sketches:

"But as yet the story of those stirring times and the narrative of the first struggles between barbarism and civilization on these plains is unwritten. More than thirty years have elapsed since Nebraska ascended from territorial to state government and was transformed from a federal dependency to a sovereign member of the American Union. In all those years no faithful history of the commonwealth from its inception has been essayed and only a few meager sketches of its morning time and its pioneers have ever been published. The time and the opportunity for a history of Nebraska has arrived. It is our duty to gather together in good and enduring form all the stories and heroisms of the frontier territory and to truthfully portray the moral and mental strength of the courageous men and women who made it so strong and vigorous that it evolved the state.

“And then, uniting the forerunners of the frontier with the pioneers of the new state, this history shall demonstrate the self-reliance, the self-denial, and the self-respect which characterized and glorified those men and women who relinquished friends, relatives, and all the charms and associations of their dear homes in the East to become the forerunners of a new civilization on these plains. There is a universal demand for a credible history which shall give the youth of Nebraska a correct understanding of its founders, and the outcoming volumes will be alive with the individualities which have given power and force to the mental and material growth of the state. In almost every county there are men and women whose influence and labors have made them italicized forces in industrial and social progress. Many of these are of relatively recent citizenship, but

by their superior abilities and tireless energies they have impressed themselves ineffaceably upon the welfare and growth of their respective localities, and in fact upon the entire state. The biographies of such men and women not only make the history of a state-they construct and fashion the state itself.

"But besides truthfully portraying past achievements and present developments, we shall honestly endeavor to set forth the economic advantages of each county and town in the state of Nebraska. Soil, climate, water supply, clays for pottery and tiles and stone quarries wherever found will be accurately described, while the agricultural and horticultural advantages and possibilities of all will be equitably and plainly depicted. The present output of manufactured articles will be accredited to each community. The advantages of giving to the world in this substantial and permanent form a standard thesaurus of reference for Nebraska are too obvious to require elaboration.

"The editors and publishers realize that this historical work requires vast labor and research and the outlay of a very large sum of money. But they have faith in the pride of ancestry, pride of home, and pride of state which permeates Nebraska citizenship, and therefore enter upon the work with an exultant assurance of making it a marked and triumphant success."

I shall perhaps be charged with too frequent use of newspaper statement and comment. But I have followed that course deliberately, because the contemporary press furnishes a large part of our source material and because the press comment, discriminatingly judged by the reader, is the best illustrator and interpreter of the related facts and incidents. Mr. McMasters, it seems to me, has been at fault in so commonly basing his facts upon newspaper statements with mere foot-note reference to his authority. In avoiding this fault I have perhaps committed another in frequently giving the newspaper statement itself in the text. It is a great misfortune that, in addition to the loss of public records and other historical material, the territorial government neglected to preserve files of the newspapers, so that they are not completely connected, and only a few numbers of many of them are in existence at all. Mr. Alonzo D. Luce, territorial librarian, 1859-60, showed keen foresight and solicitude in relation to the preservation of newspapers, and prophesied the loss, which we now deplore, in the following lamentation:

"Many of the files of newspapers heretofore published in this Territory, which I have received from my predecessor, John H. Kellom, Esq., are in a mutilated condition, and I deem it prudent to recommend an appropriation to defray the expenses of binding them, and those which may accumulate during the coming year."

This appeal of 1859 was, it seems, in vain, and so it was repeated in the next report with additional emphasis:

"I have experienced considerable difficulty in procuring the few broken files of newspapers which are now in my office, owing to the great irregularity and uncertainty of the mails in the Territory. I deem it advisable, therefore, to urge the passage of a law requiring each newspaper publisher in the Territory to furnish at the end of each volume of their publication, one complete copy or file of whatever journal they may publish, to the Librarian, who shall audit and approve any bill agreeing with their advertised rates, and draw upon the Auditor of the Territory for the issue of warrants to the full extent of said bill. When said copy of any journal is received, it can only be preserved by binding in a good and substantial manner. Hence, I again request you to urge upon the Legislative Assembly an appropriation to defray the expenses of binding all the files of newspapers now in my possession. By carefully preserving these diaries of the ever-fleeting present, can we alone hand down to our posterity the progressive history of our fair young Territory. Without these files of newspapers, biographers and historians may look in vain for data of past events, and the world will, however willing, be unable to look

'House Journal, 6th Ter. Sess., p. 28.

with an admiring eye upon the individual achievements of our philosophers and statesmen. Even the publications of the first Legislative Assembly are now nearly extinct, and soon, without some fostering hand to preserve them, we will have no record of the action of that honorable body. When I received the Library there was to be found not a single copy of either the Laws or Journals of the House of Representatives of the first session of the Legislative Assembly."

Obviously, in a state history, it is proper to record facts much more minutely than in a national, or more general work; and it is to be regretted that facts of our early history have been so meagerly preserved, and indeed so carelessly lost. The discovery and assimilation of additional detail material will be the work of students for many years. Fully conscious of the necessary imperfections of the history, I yet rejoice that I have at least been able to collect, preserve, and arrange in systematic, connected, and intelligible form the important facts, and to recite in regular sequence the story, of the beginning and early life of this great commonwealth, so that its citizens will no longer be compelled to regret, or be able to justify, ignorance of the history of their state because there is no means of acquiring any knowledge of it. Much of the material for this history was rapidly perishing; and I am conscious of having performed at least a timely and important public service in embalming in these pages such part of the precious and fugitive data as I have been able to gather. Thanks are due to those eminent specialists, Professors Charles E. Bessey, Erwin H. Barbour, Lawrence Bruner, and George A. Loveland, of the University of Nebraska, for their generous and very valuable contributions on the botany, geology, entomology, and meteorology of the state, to the gentlemen in charge of the State Historical Society for their generous. aid, to librarians and others in charge of documentary matter, and to the pioneers of the territory for their willing and valuable contributions of facts.

A history of Nebraska naturally involves some account of the Louisiana Purchase and the Kansas-Nebraska bill; but if my treatment of these topics seems of disproportionate length and particularity, it is, I think, justified by the fact that many of the Nebraska purchasers of the history live out of reach of libraries, and my object has been to furnish them, including country schools, with a tolerably complete, progressive account of the origin and political development of the vast and rich portion of the great Purchase out of which the state was deliminated.

For the comfort of the historian it is too soon to write history during the lifetime of the doers of many of the deeds recounted. A history involves at least incidental or partial biographies of its principal human actors, and Mr. Edmund Gosse has well observed that, "The biographer's anxiety should be, not how to avoid indiscretion, but how to be as indiscreet as possible within the boundaries of good taste and kind feeling." In this sense, in the interest of the whole work, it is possible that I have been occasionally indiscreet in the treatment of the personages of the history, but always, I hope and think, within the boundaries outlined by the competent critic I have cited. Another historical critic has lately expressed my own deductions from experience:

"If he can only make his reader also aware of what happened, and from what reasonable causes and after what fashion of occurrence, he will do well. Any such insight and hindsight and foresight as they attempt who would fain discover 'the meaning of history' would be nothing less than a complete mastery of life. It would carry along with it all science and all theology. It is the things that are told us in the sim

'House Journal, 7th Ter. Sess., p. 29.

"The Ethics of Biography, Cosmopolitan Magazine, July, 1903. 'Wm. Garrett Brown, Atlantic Monthly, November, 1903.

plest honesty, with whatever confessions of interest may be necessary, that help us most to understand the life about us; and I know not why the same thing should not be true of past life."

Again, excusing what to the severe critic may seem undue indulgence in detail and personalities, the same writer says:

"However considerable may be the practical uses of the knowledge of the past, I am persuaded that men do not, as a rule, give themselves to a study of it for any merely practical purpose whatever. It is rather from a grave curiosity that the historian sticks to his endless task."

Furthermore, as William Roscoe Thayer has lately observed, "personality is coming again into the foreground of history. This involves a radical change in treatment, for persons must be described as alive and concrete, with individual flavor and surprises, and not as abstract and mechanical." And yet, in fact if not in purpose, the historian caters to curiosity to a better end. For, "We have reached the synthetic stage. History is going to be more and more a civilizing agent, for it will keep ever present the collective experience of mankind. Many false steps are now taken, many crazes distract the people, many wicked policies are ventured on by rulers, through ignorance or forgetfulness of the results of similar action in the past. History will serve not less as a corrective than as a discipline and as an inspiration."

This History is in the main a story of great accomplishment through great effort, inspired in some sort by great courage and high character, yet always hampered and often defeated by weakness and wickedness in private relations, but more particularly in public place. This story of the past should be a warning, a guide, and a stimulus in the present first general and apparently genuine struggle in this commonwealth for civic righteousness and economic equity.

While the principal object of the historian is to expose facts to the view and judgment of the readers themselves, yet it is necessary to comment and pass judgment upon given data in order to ascertain the real facts. Again Mr. Thayer: "The historian's business is to trace the sequence of cause and effect so that every event, every deed shall appear inevitable," but beyond this he can not go; for "until history can demonstrate the possible as clearly as the actual, it will never be a valid science. Before his

tory can be a science, men must possess the gift of prophecy. Chemistry is a science. because water will be composed of two molecules of hydrogen and one of oxygen until the earth drops into the sun; but the historian has to do with a chain of causation in which the chief elements-the human will and chance-are absolutely incomputable. Suppose Mirabeau had not died in 1791,-suppose Robespierre had been assassinated in 1792,-suppose a stray bullet had killed young Bonaparte at Toulon,-how would the course of events have been changed!"

Further comment of Mr. Brown more than justifies and excuses the amount of time given to the preparation of the present work:

"The fame of a historian is not to be won but by the longest of wooings. It is scarcely too much to say that no really great work in history was ever less than a life work. It is not alone in the erudition of his work, but in the entire quality of it that the sacrifice of his years will be found to have availed. Even for the uninstructed reader, careless of foot-notes, it will not have been made in vain."

The copious references in the foot-notes will be of great value to those who may seek additional knowledge on any of the topics of the text which are of more than passing

importance and interest, and in facilitating verification. The brief biographical sketches of the persons of note mentioned in the text, which also occur in the convenient form and position of foot-notes, will be found of great convenience and interest to both reader and student, and the portraits of the most important of these personages, and all well executed, are not only a very attractive feature of the work, but their procurement and preservation in the history is a rare achievement and one of inestimable value. This magnificent picture gallery comprises portraits of all of the territorial governors, five in number; all of the secretaries, three in number; all of the twelve judges of the territorial courts; all of the five delegates to Congress; nearly all of the members of the first legislature, every one obtainable, and many of the members of the second legislature; and a large number of the early settlers. It is doubtful that any other state has as nearly complete a set of the portraits of its pioneer public men as is contained in this Nebraska collection, for the reason that the special business of procuring them, for this history, was begun here much earlier than in other states.

It has required indefatigable and persistent effort to obtain this class of portraits and biographical data, and if the search for them had been postponed but a year or two, in many cases it would have been fruitless. Some day the people of Nebraska must become indebted to this History for the originals from which they will cause enlarged copies to be taken and hung in the public offices of the state and grouped in an appropriate public gallery which will no doubt be provided for them.

It is due to Messrs. Morton and Miller for me to say that the work of the text, or history proper, its faults and its foibles, which I fear may be many, and its fictions, which I trust are few, is my own, in conception and execution, and it has been done entirely free from outside dictation or suggestion, except where the latter has been invited.

The second volume treats fully of territorial banking, including the notorious wildcat banking, slavery in Nebraska, building the Union Pacific railroad, Mormons in Nebraska, territorial military history, the territorial industrial products and newspapers, and the early history of church denominations and fraternal organizations. This volume will also contain a comprehensive account or story of the Indian occupation of the Nebraska country, including the relations of the various tribes with one another and with the white settlers. This important topic will in the main cover new ground; for while much has been written about the characteristics and location of the tribes in question, no general related and connected account of them has yet been published. This account is based very largely upon the voluminous and minute reports of the local Indian agents and their superior officers in the Indian department, and is therefore characterized by originality and authenticity. This part of the work is separated from the more fundamental treatment of the Indian occupancy in the beginning of the first volume in accordance with the general expansion of the original plan of the History, under which there was not time or space for the more detailed treatment.

Lincoln, 1911.

ALBERT WATKINS.