Samuel C. Pomeroy, one of the leaders of Kansas in the times of her free-state travail whose political ambition overleaped his sense of honor, was born in Southampton, Massachusetts, January 3, 1816. When a young man be became strongly imbued with antislavery sentiments. He happened to be present when President Pierce signed the Kansas-Nebraska bill, and is said to have remarked to the nation’s chief executive: “Your victory is but an adjournment of the question from the halls of legislation at Washington to the open prairies of the Freedom-loving West, and there, sir, we shall beat you.” So earnest was Mr. Pomeroy in the matter that in August, 1854, he started for Kansas with a colony of 200 emigrants pledged to the free-state cause. On September 6th they crossed the line at Kansas City, bound for Lawrence, but Pomeroy settled at Atchison. He spent much of his time canvassing the eastern states for the free-state cause in Kansas, and in 1861 was intrusted with a large fund raised for the sufferers by drought. Upon the admission of the state into the Union, in that year, he was elected to the United State Senate and re-elected in 1867. At the republican nominating convention for a third term, before which he was a candidate, Senator A. M. York of Montgumery County denounced Mr. Pomeroy for bribery, and turned over the $7,000 paid by the latter for his support, to the presiding officer. The result was that John J. Ingalls received the almost unaimous vote of the convention, and Mr. Pomeroy’s political aspirations were killed. He died at Whitinsville, Massachusetts, August 27, 1891.
