THE LIFE OF GOVERNOR BURT.

One of the strongest influences on the destiny of Nebraska was negative in character-the death of the first Governor of the Territory, Francis Burt. What his influence on the Territory would have been had he lived, and what it was in his death, were equal, but the two were in diametrical opposition. His life was full of interest, and his pathetic death proved a turning point in the history of Nebraska. Notwithstanding these facts, to-day he is less known by the people of this Commonwealth than any other Governor of the State or Territory.

This is the result of various causes. Naturally not many of our present citizens were acquainted with the first Governor of the Territory. Less than a fortnight on Nebraska soil, but little was known of him by the few thousands then in the Territory. His home was in one of the far South Atlantic States, a section which furnished but few emigrants who knew him before he was sent to the frontier Territory whose executive office he was not permitted to retain.

Francis Burt, Governor of Nebraska, first saw the light of day on the 13th of January, 1807, on his father's plantation in Edgefield District, South Carolina. He could trace his paternal ancestry back to the earliest settlers in Virginia. His father, also named Francis, after distinguishing himself in the Revolution as a colonial soldier, settled in Edgefield, and while engaged as a planter there, was several times chosen to represent his district in the state Senate. The mother of the future Governor was Katherine Miles, a lineal descendant of some French Huguenots who were driven to South Carolina by the per

secutions which followed the revocation of the Edict of Nantes. Of young Francis' five brothers, the eldest died in infancy; three chose medicine as their profession, and one the law. What became of his three sisters is not apparent.

While Frank, or the young Francis, was still at an early age, the Burt family removed to Pendleton, South Carolina and there the five boys took advantage of the educational opportunities offered by Pendleton Academy. Frank did not graduate, but seems to have been a diligent student subsequent to his scholastic career; for it was said of him that "Few men in the State had a better knowledge of the English language, or spoke it with more correctness or purity." When ripening into manhood, he developed a commanding figure; and yet there was blended with his dignity a grace of manner and the frankness and suavity which produce that attractive character called magnetic.

About the time he left school, he entered the office of Hon. Warren R. Davis as a law student, and there acquired the rudiments of the profession he had chosen. In 1831, he married the eldest daughter of George Abbot Hall of Charleston, an attractive, cultured woman, with a strong personality, well fitted to be the wife of a man like. Burt. This marriage was blessed with eight children.

Frank, the oldest son, died at an early age while a student in his father's office. Armistead, the second, named after a favorite brother of his father, adopted the profession of medicine. At the commencement of the civil war, he enlisted in the Confederate army, and lost an arm in one of the battles before Richmond. The third son, George Abbot, or Frank as he was called after the death of his older brother, is still engaged in farming. Four daughters married, Georgeana becoming Mrs. William H. Dawson; Harriet, Mrs. D. M. Young; Joanna, Mrs. George Roberts; and Mary, Mrs. William A. Johnston. Katherine never married, but devotes her life to

works of charity, and is known all over Georgia as "Sister Katherine," the head of an Episcopal home for orphaned girls, originally founded for daughters of Confederate veterans.

After practicing law in Pickens for five years, Burt returned to Pendleton, a beautifully situated town to which he was most tenderly attached by his early recollections. Burt seems to have been a natural leader of men. While in Pickens, he was chosen a member of the famous convention of 1832, and took an active part in formulating that short-lived doctrine of nullification, which created so much of a sensation at the time. He then was but twenty-five years of age, and for twenty years served almost uninterruptedly as a member of one branch or other of the state assembly. From 1847 to 1851, he edited the Pendleton Messenger, one of the old time Democratic weeklies, and his journalistic life doubtless widened his acquaintance and gave him much prominence and influence. In 1844, the legislature in joint session elected him state treasurer for a term of four years. He received eighty-eight votes out of a hundred on joint ballot, and four years after the termination of his occupancy of this office he sat as a delegate in the constitutional convention of 1852. This convention and its duties ended, his home district once more elected him representative; and it was while serving in this capacity that President Pierce, a month after his inauguration in 1853, offered Mr. Burt the position of Third Auditor of the Treasury. The proffer was accepted, and Burt's long official life in his native state was ended.

As Third Auditor of the Treasury, he was a decided success. The contemporary journals united in praising him alike for his efficiency, and for the frank fearlessness he displayed in the discharge of his duties. When he assumed the office, he found the department in a demoralized condition. The work had been badly neglected, and it was predicted that five years would be necessary to

complete what his predecessors had left unfinished. Although head of the bureau for less than a year and a half, at the time of his resignation to take up the duties of Governor of Nebraska Territory, he had accomplished all that those who preceded him had left undone. He had over a hundred clerks in his office, many of them his political opponents, but the energy he infused into his department made all his subordinates devotedly attached to him.

Auditor Burt's decisions on a number of fine legal questions presented to him while in the Treasury are said to have saved the government hundreds of thousands of dollars. One instance of his vigilance is recorded. In 1839, the Legislature of the Territory of Florida issued one hundred bonds of the value of $1,000 each, attested by the signature of the governor, the secretary, and the treasurer of the Territory. Five of these were stolen by an assistant quartermaster, and the Territorial officials issued five additional bonds to replace the ones feloniously taken. The thief forged the name of the Governor to the bonds, and negotiated them, the secretary and treasurer having already signed the stolen securities. Three years later, in 1842, the fact of the theft was made known to the Treasury department at Washington, and a close watch kept for the bonds for some time after Congress ordered the redemption of the issue, but gradually they were forgotten. Twelve years later, in the beginning of Burt's service as Auditor, a Banking house at New Orleans presented one of the bonds for payment. It was paid without question. Later, two Later, two more were offered, and when referred to the Third Auditor for approval, his suspicions were aroused. Correspondence with the Governor of Florida showed that the bonds in question actually were the ones stolen by Colonel Armstrong fifteen years before; their payment was refused, and the $2,000 principal and interest of the one previously redeemed were recovered of the Louisiana bank.

On the 2d of August, 1854, Burt was commissioned Governor of the newly organized Territory of Nebraska, and at once left for Pendleton to arrange his affairs for his absence in the West. Governor Burt was assigned a task which might have appalled a less resolute man, but it was with the highest feelings of hope that he left for his new post. At that time, the Territory of Nebraska comprised all of the present state of Nebraska, the western part of North Dakota, and South Dakota, the eastern part of Montana and Wyoming, and a small corner of Colorado: an immense jurisdiction, containing almost as many square miles as the two largest states in the Union. This vast expanse of territory was practically uninhabited save by Indians; less than three thousand whites living in the extreme southeastern corner. Of its interior, but little was known; a few explorers and hardy trappers and traders had traveled along the banks of the larger rivers, and had traced them to their mountain sources, but even they knew little of the resources of the prairies which stretched for hundreds of miles on either side of the rivers of this terra incognita. Travellers followed those who had gone before them, and relied on the frontier. military stations for protection from dangers they hardly knew, hurried along across the mountains where brighter prospects allured them.

Governor Burt was placed in a politically delicate position. A southerner, a strong states rights Democrat, sent to represent the general government in a northern Territory whose organization brought the two sections to the verge of a civil war, populated almost entirely by emigrants from those sections of the North where the triumph of the South in the Kansas and Nebraska Bill had annihilated the Democratic party, in a situation like this a man of less ability and tact would prove utterly incompetent.

As early as 1844, attempts had been made to secure the organization of the "Territory of the Platte" to contain a