At the time of the Little Big Horn campaign Dakota's Territorial Government had functioned for 15 years and was destined to continue 13 years longer. The Territory had been organized in 1861 and President Lincoln had appointed his family physician, Dr. William Jayne, first Governor. As first laid out the new Territory included the present States of North Dakota, South Dakota, Montana, and Wyoming, but after a series of changes it was reduced in 1882 to the area of the present Dakotas. Yankton, in the southern part of the Territory, was the capital city, and there the first legislature met in 1862. It was an assembly representative of every type in the Territory--all with great and varying ideas of how the ship of state was to be kept afloat. Thirteen members composed the house, while the senate or council had but nine. In attendance at the session for various reasons were Jim Somers, frontiersman, "armed like an arsenal"; Father Turner of New York; George Kingsbury, newspaperman; Dr. Walter Burleigh, later connected with the Indian Service and the Northern Pacific Railway; and Gen. T. C. Campbell. Territorial Dakota displayed no small interest in politics. Campaigns were periods of great excitement, with long parades of ardent supporters following the candidates, with cheering and shouting and bragging and fighting by office seekers and votaries alike. It took a brave man to campaign in those days. When Moses Armstrong ran for Congress on the Democratic ticket his friend, Gen. T. C. Campbell, invited him into his part of the Territory to speak. During the general's speech his hat was shot off, but his oratory did not falter. When it came Armstrong's turn to speak he hesitated about addressing such a boisterous crowd, but the general informed him that the time to do his praying was before he crossed the county line, not after. County seat removals were a prime source of political interest, and the cities in the Territory fought tooth and nail for the privileges of the county capital. Stuffing ballot boxes was not uncommon, and in many instances where removal was voted the defeated city would refuse to give up the county records, and guards would be posted against nocturnal raids of the courthouse vaults by citizens of the victorious town. When the Emmons County _Record_ defeated a plan to move the county seat from Williamsport in 1888, it took full advantage of its success. Beneath the decoration of a crowing cock heading the column, these headlines, typical of the county seat controversies, appeared in the _Record_ November 9 of that year: ELI