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Title: The Kansas Herald of Freedom
Description: An 1859 issue of the Herald of Freedom. The Herald of Freedom, a prominent Free-State newspaper, was first published in Lawrence, Kansas on October 21, 1854. The press was destroyed in the May 1856 Sacking of Lawrence, but it returned to print in November 1856.
Object Type: Newspaper Article
Date: March 26, 1859

Title: Squatter Sovereign
Description: The first issue of the Squatter Sovereign. The Squatter Sovereign, the most prominent of the proslavery newspapers in Kansas Territory, was first published in Atchison, Kansas in 1855. It printed some of the most inflammatory proslavery rhetoric in the territory, before ironically being purchased by the antislavery Samuel C. Pomeroy in March 1857. Pomeroy, an affiliate of the Massachusetts Emigrant Aid Society, turned the paper in favor of the Free-State cause before reselling it to John A. Martin, who renamed it Freedom's Champion.
Object Type: Newspaper Article
Date: February 3, 1855

Title: Description of Territorial Seal
Description: This is an excerpt from a newspaper article published in January 1855 by the Easton Argus in Easton, Pennsylvania. The article describes the Territorial Seal of Kansas, which was engraved by Robert Lovett of Philadelphia according to the design of Kansas Gov. Andrew Reeder. The article declares that the motto “is a beautiful allusion to the principle on which the Territory was organized, and consists of ‘Populi voce,’ thus translated—Born of the popular will.”
Object Type: Newspaper Article
Date: January 1855

Title: Letter From Judge Lecompte
Description: This September 13, 1856 newspaper article is an open letter from Judge Samuel Lecompte to James A. Stewart, a Maryland Congressman. In the letter, Lecompte defends himself against several charges; he denies that he packed the jury in a murder trial, that he was in possession of illegal whisky, that he misrepresented the crime of treason to a grand jury, and that he participated in a meeting of the Law and Order Party. He states that he is aware of threats to remove him from his post as Chief Justice of Kansas Territory, but he insists that he has been a fair and impartial judge.
Object Type: Newspaper Article
Date: September 13, 1856

Civil War on the Western Border: The Missouri-Kansas Conflict, 1854-1865