Description
"For Sale" - - A very likely Negro Girl, 10 years old. Apply at this office. Feb. 18, 1856
(Researcher's note: From the Library of Congress, "Founded in Atchison, Kansas, the Squatter Sovereign was the shrillest, most widely read voice of Kansas proslavery opinion. Based on the principle of “squatter sovereignty,” which stated that the citizens of any state or territory should have the right to regulate their domestic institutions as they see fit, the first issue of the paper featured the tagline: “The Squatter claims the same sovereignty in the territories that he possessed in the states.”
The Squatter was first published on February 3, 1855, by Robert S. Kelley and John H. Stringfellow through the Atchison Town Company. The paper immediately endorsed the extension of slavery in Kansas and opposed the abolitionists arriving in the territory.
When the Squatter was sold to Robert McBratney, Franklin G. Adams, Samuel C. Pomeroy, and Thaddeus Hyatt in 1857, what had been the virulent voice of the proslavery faction in the territory became a free-state paper. Stringfellow and Kelley left Kansas and eventually served in the Confederate Army. When the paper came into the hands of John A. Martin in 1858, it was renamed Freedom’s Champion and, later the Atchison Daily Champion.)Date(s) of Creation
3/25/1856
