Of all the mighty powers for good and evil, none can excel the newspaper. Take all the newspapers out of the world today and there would be chaos. Mankind would lie groping in the dark, and life itself would be a vain and empty thing. Newspapers are the arteries through which the lifeblood of the world runs. They carry to our firesides the continued story of civilization. Early in the history of Atchison county, before the schools and the churches, the newspaper appeared. It received a bounty of the original town company when that association, September 21, 1854, by a resolution, donated $400 to Robert Kelley and Dr. J. H. Stringfellow, to start a printing office, and it was then that the _Squatter Sovereign_ was conceived, and after a brief period of gestation, was born February 3, 1855. By a strange stroke of misfortune this first newspaper in the county stood for a wrong principle and preached bad doctrine, for it advocated human slavery. Yet it was a creature of environment, and reflected the prevailing sentiment of its constituency. It was fearless in its attitude and rabid in its utterances. It was a violent organ of hate and bitterness toward all Free State men, and in it appeared a constant flood of inflammatory comment directed against those who opposed slavery, and were determined that Kansas should be the land of the brave and the home of the free. But as the pro-slavery cause waned, the _Squatter Sovereign_ waned with it, and in the fall of 1857, when saner counsel and the feeling of brotherhood grew, the town company disposed of its interest in the _Squatter Sovereign_ to the New England Aid Society, of which S. C. Pomeroy was agent, and the paper then passed into the hands of Robert McBratney and Franklin G. Adams. Mr. Adams and Mr. McBratney were both Free Soilers, but they did not run the paper long. It was shortly sold to O. F. Short, who ran it until the following February, and on the twentieth day of that month, 1858. John A. Martin purchased the plant and changed the name of the paper to _Freedom’s Champion_. Under that name Colonel Martin made of his paper one of the leading Free State organs of the Territory. Always a brilliant editor, of courage and deep convictions, Colonel Martin during his whole career never performed a greater service than during the time he shouted the battle-cry of freedom through the columns of _Freedom’s Champion_, from 1858 to 1861. In September of the latter year, he laid aside his pen and took up his sword in defense of the principles he so stoutly advocated, and thus translated his words into deeds. When he went to the front he left the _Champion_ in charge of George J. Stebbins, who continued in charge until the fall of 1863, when it was leased to John J. Ingalls and Robert H. Horton. These two men afterwards became political rivals. Both were lawyers and both residents of Atchison for many years. Horton was a typical lawyer, smooth and tactful, who enjoyed a successful career in