NAPOLEON B. GIDDINGS. 33rd Congress, 1855; Jan. 5 to Mar. 4. In order to "set up housekeeping" in accordance with the customs and manners of the elder sisterhood, a selection of an agent, in that behalf, was made on the 12th day of December, 1854. The student of history will remember that Napoleon Bonaparte was a prime factor in behalf of France in Mr. Jefferson's negotiations for Louisiana, and the reader of the annals of Nebraska notes the fact that Napoleon B. Giddings, of Missouri, was her first delegate in Congress. The election took place seven months from the date of the Organic Act of May 30th, 1854. Voting precincts had been designated at twelve places in eight counties adjacent to the Missouri River. Of 800 votes, Mr. Giddings received 377, which was a majority over any one candidate's vote, though a minority of the whole number cast. On the 5th day of January, 1855, just twenty-four days after the election, the Congressional Globe has the following entry: Mr. Phelps of Missouri announced that the Delegate from • Nebraska was present and desired to take the oath of office. Mr. Giddings thereupon presented himself at the bar of the House, and the Speaker administered to him the usual oath of office. The term for which he was elected was to expire on the ensuing 4th of March, within about two months. A few days before the advent of Mr. Giddings to the House, Mr. Mace of Indiana introduced a bill modifying the Kansas-Nebraska law, and re-enacting the Missouri Compromise act to protect Nebraska from slavery, and for the admission of Kansas as a free state, which failed to pass. Hon. Thomas Hart Benton of Missouri, formerly Senator, having to be absent for a few days, left a short speech to be read for him by a colleague, in which he deprecated the opening up of the slavery discussion on general principles, but especially for fear of retarding emigration, which was so desirable to aid and encourage the construction of a Pacific railroad. Admitting the border ruffianism of Missouri, he claimed it was the natural product of New England Colonization Societies, from which he had from the first anticipated evil. Bills were introduced by Mr. Giddings as follows: To establish post roads; to protect the proprietors of towns in their town sites; to establish land offices; and for surveying, marking, and opening roads. He offered amendments to establish an arsenal in Nebraska, and to allow $50,000 for public buildings. On the 31st day of January he wound up his legislative career by the delivery of his maiden speech. Mr. Giddings said: I wish to say a word or two in answer to the gentleman from Virginia in relation to the power of the governor in locating the seats of government in these territories. No such power is given to them. They are given the right to select the point at which the first legislature shall be convened; but after that it is left to the legislature to decide at what point the future capital shall be located. I hope the gentleman will not try to put restrictions on Kansas and Nebraska that have never been placed upon any other territories under the government of the United States. A very short speech of a very short term, and so passed the Napoleon of Nebraska from public observation, returning to his home in Savannah, Missouri. BIRD B. CHAPMAN. The second election for delegate to congress took place November 6, 1855, at which Bird B. Chapman received 380 votes and Hiram P. Bennet 292, according to the returns of the canvassing board. Mr. Bennet instituted a contest which resulted in the presentation of a resolution by the committee on elections declaring that Bird B. Chapman was not entitled to the seat.1 Each argued his side of the case before the committee, and in open session before the House of Representatives. In the house Mr. Stephens of Georgia specially championed the cause of the sitting member, while Washburn of Maine argued in favor of the contestant. It was a contest to reconcile serious irregularities and to eliminate from the count fraudulent votes. Of the two speeches in the house, Bennet's alone appears in the Globe. Mr. Bennet complained seriously that after the case had been closed before the committee, and each claimant had been so informed, ex parte testimony had been received and incorporated in the minority report: Mr. Speaker, I object to all ex parte testimony in the case, and I particularly object to the four ex parte affidavits upon which the minority report is based; and first, because it is ex parte; second, because it was never presented to the committee, only to the minority; and third, because it was not shown to me to exist till long after the majority report was printed. And again, because they were made by my political and personal enemies. And fourth, I object to these affidavits because they contain misrepresentations, prevarications, and falsehoods. My old enemy Sharp comes on here about the time the majority report was made; and after looking over all my printed testimony and the majority report, and conning it over three or four weeks, he fixes up a state of facts just sufficient to carry his friend, the sitting Nebraska contested election case, 1856; Cong. Globe, 33 Cong., 1st sess., 476-477, 630, 641, 970, 1011, 1055-1056, 1196, 1688-1690, 1692, 1711-1715, 1729. delegate, through, swears to it in a corner, and then takes The Hon. Geo. W. Jones, United States Senator from Iowa, having volunteered an endorsement of the veracity of Mr. Sharp, received the speaker's attention: It is true, this deponent was once a member of the Iowa legislature, and while there I believe he supported the election of the Hon. Geo. W. Jones to the senate. Mr. Speaker, one good turn deserves another, and the senator comes to the rescue of his former constituent. The contestant seems, from the record, to have been neither a novice in debate, nor timid in attacks. Having parried several thrusts from the keen rapier of the mercurial Stephens, he ex claimed in a tone of exultation, "Mr. Speaker, the gentleman from Georgia has not quite got me yet." Of the sitting delegate, Mr. Chapman, he said: The gentleman alluded to his residence in the Territory of Nebraska. Now, I know, Sir, that that is mere claptrap talk; but as he has alluded to it I will answer it. He says when he went to the Territory, thus and so. He went to the Territory the year that the territorial government was organized. He was a candidate for Congress before he got there. He happened to be beaten very badly at the election and the next day after the election he went home to Ohio, and we saw nothing more of him. Yes, we-the squatters of Nebraska-saw nothing more of him until thirty-five days before the election of a delegate last November, when he came back into the Territory. He had to be there forty days to entitle him to vote. He was not a voter, and did not vote at that election. Nevertheless, by getting all of the executive influence of the Territory in his favor he ran a pretty good race; but I beat him. That is, I beat him before the people, but he beat me before the canvassers-all of whom were my personal and political enemies. One word further in reference to this matter. For the purpose of serving a notice upon the sitting delegate, that I intended to take testimony to use in the contest for his seat, I inquired of him last January, in that lobby, where his residence was. In truth he did not know where it was; and I could not serve a notice at his residence in the Terri tory because he had none there. It will be shown, in my It is a source of regret that the speech of Mr. Chapman does not appear in the Globe, as there is no way to restore the oratorical equilibrium. On the final vote there were sixty-three members of the house in favor of unseating Chapman, and sixty-nine opposed-so the contest failed. A resolution finally closed the case, on the 25th of July, 1856, allowing the retiring contestant mileage and per diem up to date. The allusions to Mr. Chapman's citizenship are corroborated in Nebraska history. Hon. J. Sterling Morton is reported as saying of the first election for delegate in Congress, December 12, 1854: Even in that early morning hour of the county our people exhibited a wonderful liberality in bestowing their franchises upon persons who had no interests in common with them, and who have never since been identified with the material development of this section of the world. Mr. Giddings resided then, as now, in Savannah, Missouri. Mr. Chapman was a citizen of Ohio, and never gained a residence in Nebraska, while Mr. Johnson was a denizen of Council Bluffs, Iowa. But as there were not to exceed twenty-five domiciles in Pierce County (now Otoe) at that time, nor more than fifty beds, it was always a mystery, -except to Col. John Bouleware and family, who then kept a ferry across the Missouri River, where the 208 patriots came from who exercised a freeman's rights on that auspicious dawn in Otoe of the science of self government and the noble art of electioneering. In order to parry the point of this truthful charge, be it remembered that this was prior to legislation in Nebraska. Mr. Bennett had not only "come to stay," but was a member of the legislature from Otoe County in 1854 and again in 1859, and was justified in regarding Bird B. Chapman as a Bird of passage. |