Page:History of Iowa From the Earliest Times to the Beginning of the Twentieth Century Volume 1.djvu/28



to the preponderance of evidence and the credibility of witnesses.

Having been a citizen of Iowa for more than half a century, and for a large portion of that period an active participant in political and other conflicts as an editor and legislator, I am well aware that it is difficult to exercise strict impartiality in recording events which, in times of great excitement during the Civil War and numerous heated political campaigns, aroused the passions and prejudices of the active participants. But the lapse of time and the cooler judgment coming with mature years has, I trust, eliminated prejudice and enabled me to deal justly with all.

Believing that one who has lived in the State during the period of development from a frontier region of wild prairies, stretching almost unbroken from the Mississippi to the Missouri, who has witnessed settlement from scattered log cabins along its water courses and among its native groves, with a population of less than two hundred thousand to more than two million two hundred thousand, who has known personally most of the public men who have framed its laws, founded its public institutions and shaped its policy—can better tell the story of the “building of the State,” than the profound scholar or deeply learned historian who has lived apart from its life, struggles, and conflicts, through which growth and development come to people or countries.

The pioneers who closely followed the retreating Indians laid the first foundations upon which the fabric of our commonwealth has been slowly reared. These rugged settlers led the way through hardships and privations, creating from nature's resources new homes where the rude log cabins crowded the vanishing wigwams farther westward. They first ventured upon the unsheltered prairies and turned over the sod of countless years' formation, which carpeted with grass and flowers a soil of