GOVERNOR JAMES E. BOYD.

1891-1893.

No man has reached the Governor's chair of Nebraska with more real pioneer experience than James E. Boyd. Nine years a citizen of Buffalo county as farmer and ranchman, at a time when warring tribes of Pawnees and Sioux claimed the same region as individual hunting ground, and only had a coerced respect for the Wood River settlement, on account of its near location to Fort Kearney, inured him thoroughly to the privations of a new and undeveloped region, a capricious climate and frequency of Indian alarms. During the same period he superintended a store for a time, at Kearney, and as a railroad contractor graded three hundred miles of Union Pacific track. Before the frontier experience, from 1856 to 1859, he had resided in Omaha as a carpenter and contractor, and when he returned in 1868 he entered at once into city improvements, and organized the Northwestern railroad to Blair, building it and acting as its president. In the meantime he was engaged in cattle grazing on the plains of western Nebraska and subsequently in Wyoming. Since 1872 he has been banker and pork packer on a large scale, employing as high as 170 men. Before his election as governor his legislative training was in the state legislature and in two different constitutional conventions. He was member of the board of aldermen for the city of Omaha, while as a presiding officer twice mayor of Omaha and president of the city board of trade, he had become familiar with the duties of an executive ruler.

Before the city of Omaha had outgrown her modest halls, he anticipated her coming wants with the beautiful and artistic Boyd opera house, and as soon as the flood tide of population demanded wider borders the "New Boyd" supplanted the old, as the beautiful edifice overshadows the cabin.

At the time of his election as governor he was fifty-six years

of age, having been born in Tyrone, Ireland, in 1834, whence he came to Ohio in 1844, and thence to Nebraska in 1856. Of state governors, the arrival of General Thayer in 1854 ante-dates him by two years, while Governor Furnas also claims 1856 as his advent; Butler 1858; Garber 1870, and Nance and Dawes 1870. Thayer and Dawes are of New England ancestry, Butler and Garber of Virginia, Boyd of Irish, Furnas of South Carolina, and Nance of French parentage. Furnas, Garber, and Dawes were born in Ohio, Boyd in Ireland, Thayer in Massachusetts, Butler in Indiana and Nance in Illinois. At the time of election Nance was thirty years of age, Butler and Dawes thirty-seven each, Garber forty-one, Furnas forty-eight, Boyd fifty-six and Thayer sixty-six.

In the campaign of 1890, the People's party or Independents, often called the Alliance, as most of them were members of the Farmer's Alliance, became a formidable rival of the old parties and elected a majority of the legislative members, while the democrats elected the governor and the Republicans the balance of the state officers. The Independents also elected two members to Congress and the Democrats one. As soon as the result of the 4th of November election was known, contests were commenced against the democratic candidate for governor and against the republican candidates for the other state offices. When the legislature convened on the 6th day of January, 1891, the Independents contended that no inauguration of officers should take place till contests were decided, and of course no canvass of votes in joint session and proclamation of the same be made before such final decision. After a conflict of authority between the newly elected speaker of the House, Hon. S. M. Elder, and the lieutenant governor, president of the senate, the chief justice of the supreme court caused a writ of mandamus to issue to Speaker Elder, commanding him to "open and publish the returns, and declare the persons shown by said returns to have the highest number of votes for each of said executive offices, duly elected." In this manner James E. Boyd was declared duly elected.

This mandate, of course, did not intend to annul the pending contest, but to place in power the "prima facie" elected officers subject to all future contingencies. Accordingly the 20th day of January, 1891, having been fixed for a joint meeting of both branches of the general assembly to count and declare the votes and election of officers, the contestees including Hon. James E. Boyd, the Hon. T. J. Majors, republican, elected as lieutenant governor, and the balance of the state officers, entered their protests against the legality of the joint assembly, in this, that the concurrent resolution ordering it was never presented to or signed by either the governor or lieutenant governor of the State. To settle the question of the legality of this joint convention, the supreme court was called upon to answer whether, when the governor and lieutenant governor were both contestees and, of course, personally interested in defeating the joint convention, was it necessary to ask their signatures to the resolution, to which the court gave an opinion that their signatures were necessary.

This decision having been delivered seven days after the time of the intended joint convention, and other complications arising, the contests were finally abandoned and the Hon. J. E. Boyd, who had superseded Gen. John M. Thayer, delivered his inaugural address Feb. 6th, 1891, one month after the beginning of the legislative session.

As this inaugural message was the first democratic utterance of the kind since state organization, it was subjected to close scrutiny and was warmly endorsed by the party and people generally, excepting those of his own party and others who were as honestly, intelligently and patriotically devoted to prohibition as he could be to its rejection. The characteristics of the message were directness, clearness and a critical examination of new themes and living issues. Brief in extent and breathing pure democracy, conciliatory in spirit and exceptional in style, to present it in fragments would do alike injustice to author and reader. But with positive assurance that the lavishly decorated vestibule is worthy of the beautiful structure it adorns, the