Kansas Senator Samuel C. Pomeroy(January 3, 1816 – August 27, 1891)

Samuel C. Pomeroy was born in Massachusetts. When President Franklin Pierce signed the Kansas-Nebraska Act of 1854 into law, Pomeroy is reported to have said to the President:

“Your victory is but an adjournment of the question from the halls of legislation at Washington to the prairies of the freedom-loving West, and there, sir, we shall beat you.”

Like Charles Robinson, he would be chosen to be an agent of the New England Emigrant Aid Company in Kansas, arriving in September of 1854. Present in Lawrence in May of 1856, Pomeroy surrendered the town's armaments to the US Deputy Marshall as an attempt to prevent any violence from occurring. After the US Deputy Marshall left the scene, Douglas County Sheriff Samuel Jones enlisted the posse an carried out the Sack of Lawrence.

Later, Pomeroy would move from Lawrence to Atchison, Kansas where he would purchase the pro-slavery Squatter Sovereign newspaper. He turned it into a free-state newspaper.

When Kansas was admitted to the Union as the 34th State, Pomeroy would be elected by the state legislature, along with James H. Lane, as one of its first two Senators. After losing his bid for a third term as Kansas Senator, Pomeroy returned to his native state of Massachusetts.

 

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