The net result of all the excitement and speculation attending the various efforts to improve the river was failure and collapse. The State after expending immense sums abandoned the task in 1862. Worse still, complications arose over the extent of the grant from the Government, and left the people above the city a sorry heritage of costly litigation that continued till 1892 over the titles to their homes. The entire experiment was an instructive illustration of the futility of most of the attempts at "internal improvements" fostered by congressional land grants. In the summer of 1894 the river achieved notoriety in connection with the epidemic of "Commonweal Armies" that disturbed the public that year. One division, mobilized at San Francisco under a "General" Kelley, when it reached Council Bluffs was refused transportation by the Iowa railroads. The horde then marched overland, levying on communities for provisions, reaching Des Moines Sunday evening, April 29th. The citizens, in much trepidation, lodged the tramps in an abandoned stove factory. The people were frantic to pass them along, for their sojourn threatened plague, pilfering, and multitudinous evils. But the tramps refused to walk farther. The citizens were in despair. Finally some genius suggested that the army be floated down the river. The "General" agreed to evacuate the stove works when the fleet of flatboats was ready to launch. On May 9th, amid general rejoicing, Kelley and his army floated away. The _voyageurs_ reached the Mississippi only to suffer ignominious discomfiture. In ante-bellum days the subject of slavery made life and politics keenly interesting in Des Moines. Many stanch Southerners and not a few abolitionists generated an electrical atmosphere. The first resident Governor, James W. Grimes, who later brought Iowa fame in the United States Senate, spoke out strongly against the arrogance of the slaveholders and the border outrages. The city was on John Brown's "underground railway," and the spiriting of slaves through the town gave zest to public discussion. When Brown came through with the slaves he had captured in Missouri he stopped over night, February 16, 1859, with James C. Jordan, a State senator. The next day his ferriage was paid by the editor of the _State Register_, John Teesdale. One of Brown's most trusted companions, who died by his side when Lieutenant Robert E. Lee recaptured Harper's Ferry, was a Des Moines boy, Jeremiah G. Anderson, who had joined Brown's forces in Kansas in 1857. [Illustration GOVERNOR SAMUEL J. KIRKWOOD.]