Description
Important Law to Ferrymen - - The law passed at the last session of the General Assembly of Missouri in regard to the crossing of slaves by ferryman, over rivers, is very necessarily stringent, and, in effect, provides that "any person who is the keeper of a ferry across any river or water course in that state, who shall suffer or permit any slave to cross at his ferry, without a written consent or direction from the master or owner of said slave shall forfeit and pay to the owner of said slave a sum not exceeding the value of said slave, to be recovered in a civil action."
(Researcher's note: Cited 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
5/15/1855
