Each generation takes the earth as trustees.
We ought to bequeath to posterity as many forests and orchards as we have exhausted and consumed.
– J. Sterling Morton


Every year on the last Friday of April, schoolchildren gather at Arbor Lodge State Historical Park in Nebraska City to celebrate Arbor Day. In the beautiful park, they learn the importance of trees and the history of Arbor Day, which began in 1872.

Julius Sterling Morton gained approval from the Nebraska State Board of Agriculture to realize his vision of creating a holiday promoting tree planting. More than 150 years of efforts have transformed Nebraska from a mostly treeless prairie to a landscape rich with trees. Morton fell short of his political ambitions, and even in his day he was a controversial, irascible figure, but his tree-planting advocacy inspired a still-thriving movement. 

 

An ambitious young man gazed at the view from the ferry on the Missouri River. Just beyond the rugged river shoreline stretched rolling hills, which faded into the great treeless plains of Nebraska Territory. It was Nov. 10, 1854. The rush was on. Earlier that year, the Kansas-Nebraska Act had opened the new territory to settlement claims. Nearby Omaha City was only four months old. Bellevue, an older but still rough-hewn settlement with dreams of becoming the territorial capital, was directly ahead.

Twenty-two-year-old J. Sterling Morton had grown up in Michigan hearing tales of westward American expansion and frontier leaders. Alongside Morton was his newlywed wife, Caroline Joy Morton, one year his junior. The two had met as young teenagers at a Michigan boarding school. After more schooling in separate locales and a seven-year engagement, they married in Detroit. They left for the Nebraska Territory that same day. They gave up the comforts of well-appointed family homes, city culture and pleasures for the unknown adventure ahead.

Morton was determined to make his mark. In Bellevue, he immediately entered the political fray. He passionately advocated for the settlement to become the territory’s first capital. Omaha won it, and Morton lost a race for a seat in the Territorial Legislature. These were the first of Morton’s many political defeats. He decided to move to a place that would use his talents. He and Caroline relocated to Nebraska City, where Morton became the editor of The Nebraska City News.

Passion for publishing ran in the Morton family. Morton’s grandfather, Abner Morton, founded the Detroit Free Press. His father, Julius, and uncle, Edward, published smaller papers. Morton contributed to the family papers and founded the first student newspaper at the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor. The Peninsular Quarterly featured articles, fiction, poetry and columns covering everything from foreign policy to musings on the state of higher education. “The great restless spirit of the times,” Morton wrote, “demands a literature responsive to it.”                

It wasn’t just the times that had a restless spirit. As a teenager at preparatory school, Morton’s teachers described him as “an eager, intelligent, mischievous, light-hearted boy,” but Morton had a starker recollection. In his words, he “achieved the enviable reputation of being so full of the Devil that the very pores of my skin were said to exude the essence of diabolism.” This orneriness emerged later at university in Ann Arbor, where he was the ringleader of the so-called Committee on Acoustics, a group of students whose primary mission was to silence the gigantic school bell that regulated their busy schedule. In his senior year, a public act of defiance led to his expulsion from school before he could graduate.

 

After the mortons left Bellevue for Nebraska City in the spring of 1855, they built their new home on a quarter-section west of town, a high point with a distant view of the river and its steamboats. In true pioneer style, it was a log cabin. Still, it was distinctive. They had furniture shipped in from St. Louis and Detroit. It was the first house from the Missouri River to the Rocky Mountains to sport a shingled roof. From their first days, the Mortons began planting trees around the site. In a feat of imagination, they called their home Arbor Lodge. It was the first of four houses that they’d build there, each larger and more ornate than its predecessor. Years later, Morton would joke that he should have called the houses “seed, bud, blossom, and fruit.”

The couple’s first son, Joy Sterling Morton, was born that fall in Detroit. His first name, Joy, honored Caroline’s roots. Born to Caroline Hayden Joy and Hiram Joy, young Caroline Joy had gone to live with David French and Cynthia Eldred French after her mother died. She became Caroline Joy French, until she married Morton.

Even as he turned Arbor Lodge into a working farm and churned out copy for the News, Morton was involving himself in territorial politics. Republican-leaning pioneers were swiftly building a majority in Nebraska’s settlements, which meant that Morton’s strongly conservative Democratic positions from the start belonged to a minority view. He once remarked: “It is oftentimes said [by Republicans] that here in Nebraska we can elect a yellow dog against the best man you have got in the Democratic party. I admit it; it is so, and the many yellow dogs who are in the places of trust . . . testify to the truth of the assertion.”

Morton won election to the Territorial Legislature after less than a year in Nebraska City, but it was a short-term lived victory. Because of his fervent opposition to territorial proposals to authorize wildcat banking and fiat currency, he lost his seat. In the face of popular support for such speculative projects, he insisted that “if there are fortunes to be made in Nebraska, they are to be acquired by frugality and persevering exertion alone.”

The state’s politics weren’t falling in line with Morton’s vision, but his home was thriving. The Mortons welcomed their second son, Paul, in 1857. The year following was even busier. The family planted their orchards in earnest. That summer, President Buchanan appointed Morton as Secretary of the Territory of Nebraska – a role Morton served for three years. In the fall, the University of Michigan reversed its expulsion and granted Morton a diploma, and the Mortons’ third son, Mark, was born. In December, Morton became acting Governor of the Nebraska Territory until May 1859. He felt primed for greater political aspirations.

Morton seemed to have won a seat in Congress in 1860 by 14 votes. Then Governor Samuel W. Black, also a Democrat, certified the election results on Nov. 2, 1860. A few days later, in a race among four candidates, Abraham Lincoln was elected as the 16th president.

President James Buchanan’s administration had by then lost any sense of control. Southern states openly agitated for secession. Northerners were furious. Nebraska City was a microcosm of these fractures. Situated across the river from anti-slavery Iowa and just upriver from Missouri and its slaveholders, the growing settlement was constantly exposed to elements of slavery, including the occasional slave auction, slave hunters, the Underground Railroad network, and even several visits by abolitionist John Brown.

With the nation veering closer to civil war that fall, Democratic candidates like Morton were increasingly seen in Northern states as pro-slavery traitors out to divide the union. Indeed, Morton was supportive of slavery if its continued existence could keep the nation together.

Governor Black resigned in February 1861, a month before Lincoln took office. Morton again served as acting governor from February until March. On April 12, the Confederates attacked Fort Sumter in Charleston, South Carolina, beginning the American Civil War. Less than two weeks later, Black undertook his final political act for Nebraska before returning home to Pennsylvania to fight for the Union. Under oath, Black testified that the votes securing Morton the victory were fraudulent. He revoked Morton’s congressional win and certified Morton’s opponent,
Republican Samuel G. Daily, who claimed the seat.

 

Morton retreated to Arbor Lodge. He was opposed to secession, but burned with contempt for the Republican party, Lincoln, and the Emancipation Proclamation of 1862, which declared all enslaved people were free. During the war, Morton served as an officer in the Nebraska City Cavalry, which was organized to help protect settlers during the war, and turned his efforts to his land. The Mortons’ youngest son, Carl, was born in February 1865. By the war’s end that spring, between 620,000 and 750,000 soldiers had died.

Morton had just turned 33, and he was going back into the news business. He remade the paper into a voice of the Nebraska Democrats. He frequently editorialized against voting rights and economic assistance for formerly enslaved people. When Morton had first traveled to the newly formed Nebraska Territory in 1854, its creation was based upon the principle of popular sovereignty – letting states decide whether to allow slavery or not. The new question was whether Nebraska should adopt equal suffrage in its application for statehood. (Morton was an adamant no.) The original 1866 Nebraska constitution submitted to Congress limited voting rights to white males. Congress said Nebraska couldn’t be admitted as state unless Black men were also allowed to vote. Nebraska conceded and became a state in March 1867. Its new motto? “Equality Before the Law.”

Morton’s views on race and states’ rights hadn’t prevailed. But his views on conservation and tree planting would soon start a nationwide movement.

Newspaper readers who picked up the March 31, 1870, edition of the newspaper, discovered a Morton editorial using puritanical tones: “if the Bible had been written since 1840, the 10 Commandments would have contained the injunction: ‘Let all the dwellers upon the treeless plains, plant trees!’ ” Characteristic to Morton’s writing style that mixed the pious with the vulgar, a few lines later the editorial read: “whosoever lives upon a prairie farm in Nebraska and fails to put out groves of timber is a jackass.”

Trees protected the soil, created shade, served as a windbreak and beautified the plains, Morton argued. Nebraska was no great American desert, as it had been considered. His own property’s orchards and shade trees offered tangible evidence that trees could thrive in Nebraska. Now Morton just needed to convince everyone else.

In 1872, Morton presented a proposal to the State Horticultural Society that the government should declare a holiday dedicated to the planting of trees. Nebraskans must “prepare for the great battle against the timberless prairies,” he proclaimed, so that “emerald banners shall wave in triumph upon every farm in the state.” The Board of Agriculture was enthusiastic about the idea, and even added prize money for encouragement.

On April 10, 1872, his vision of mass tree planting became an impressive reality. Although Morton’s shipment of 800 trees did not arrive in time for the festivities, the family of farmer J.D. Smith to the west of Lincoln planted over 35,000 trees that day, while Elder Taggart of Palmyra planted 20,000. They joined thousands of Nebraskans in gently placing over a million seedlings into the prairie sod on that first Arbor Day. Many sang patriotic
songs or religious hymns as they worked. It was no political
legacy, but for an older, wiser Morton, it was no less important.

 

Arbor Day soon captured the notice of other areas of the country. By 1884, 10 additional states had made it a holiday, and within 20 years every state but Delaware celebrated the occasion. Not surprisingly, Morton’s fame grew accordingly.

But tragedy interrupted the happiness of this conservation success. By Caroline’s 40s, she suffered from acute rheumatism and endured chronic pain. She had made a good life with her garden, her beloved music and her loving children, but she was
often left alone as Morton traveled in pursuit of his ambitions. In July of 1880, she suffered a fall, which began a downward spiral. By Christmas that year, she could barely walk. In March, she was bedridden.

Morton did everything he could, bringing doctors from as far away as Chicago. Nothing helped. She passed away with her husband and two of her sons by her side. She was 47 years old.

On her grave, Morton had inscribed, “Caroline French, wife of J. Sterling Morton and mother of Joy, Paul, Mark and Carl Morton.” Asked by a friend why he’d included the boys’ names, Morton said it was because he’d told his boys that if any one of them did something to dishonor her, he would chisel the son’s name from her tombstone.

 

The state democratic party convinced Morton to return to politics by running for governor in 1882. His nomination received widespread praise. As one newspaper put it: “There are no men who have risen, with all their opportunities, to eclipse the magic of his name or the brilliancy, power, or influence of his genius as a statesman.” “Even the Republicans,” added the Johnson County Journal, “acknowledge him to be the ablest man in either party in the State.”

But Morton’s renewed political ambitions continued to falter.

Nebraska was growing quickly, particularly with an influx of immigrants and Civil War veterans. Even so, what came to be known as the Gilded Age nationally often was marred on the Great Plains by regular droughts and economic panics. Republicans continued to dominate the state even as a political newcomer, William Jennings Bryan, was on the rise and by 1890 had begun to seize control of the state’s Democratic party.

Against this backdrop, Morton failed to win the governorship three times, and, in a fourth election, he failed to win a Senate seat.

Seeing an opportunity to snag a veteran Democrat, in 1893 President Grover Cleveland summoned Morton to Washington to serve as Secretary of Agriculture. Morton served with distinction in that role for four years, promoting agricultural reforms and tightening the department’s finances.

What capital gossips most cherished, however, was Morton’s willingness to create a spectacle. Expecting a hayseed from the uneducated hinterlands, Washingtonians were surprised to find that Morton was immediately the best-dressed cabinet member, even as he continually invoked colorful country language to disarm listeners. Referring to an upcoming cabinet meeting, he once wrote to the president’s private secretary that he intended “to yoke up the steers so as to arrive there in time, if I finish husking the corn, feeding the pigs, and milking the cows.”

He also made it known that as the Secretary of Agriculture, the horses drawing his carriage through the capital streets had a responsibility to be the most impressive in the city. His grandson, Sterling Morton III, recalled in 1937 that “if any other Cabinet member, if the President himself, turned out with sleeker horses, glossier harness, or shinier carriages, gloom settled over the stables of Agriculture.”

Morton returned home to his beloved Arbor Lodge in 1897. There, amid political commentary and invective, he spent his twilight years continuing to tout the importance of tree planting in a new publication, The Conservative. He never remarried after Caroline’s death.

After his youngest son, Carl, died from double pneumonia in January 1901, Morton traveled to escape the grief. That December, he gave a speech in Chicago, despite having what he described as a severe cold. The strain of the trip worsened it. He went to Mexico with his son Paul in February 1902, and he got even worse. By April, his family transported him to Lake Forest, Illinois, to his son Mark’s house, where he was seen by specialists. He fell unconscious and died on Sunday, April 27, a few days after his 70th birthday. His three surviving sons were with him.

A train draped with black crepe ran on the Chicago & Burlington tracks. Members of his family and close friends were aboard. It was met at the Nebraska City station by a military detachment, which accompanied the coffin to the city library. There he lay in state the rest of the morning.

Teachers brought their schoolchildren to say farewell. The detachment took him to Arbor Lodge for the service, and local businesses closed. In Lincoln, the Nebraska State Capitol was closed and the state flag lowered.

 

By the time his life’s journey came to an end, his legacy was assured. Arbor Day was by then not only observed across the country but had also become an international event, celebrated on various calendar dates across the globe.

The holiday is a lasting tribute to the life of J. Sterling Morton. There can be no doubt that he was controversial in his day. More recently, his outspoken views on slavery and Black voting rights have come under scrutiny. But above and beyond the controversies, Morton clearly had an impact on his adopted state and on the world beyond. The great treeless plains he first encountered coming to the area in 1854 have changed dramatically since that first Arbor Day in April 1872.

Perhaps it is fitting, then, that in commemorating his legacy we take to heart the closing that he offered in an 1884 Arbor Day address: “So every man, woman and child shall be able to say, on coming as I have come, towards the evening of life, in all sincerity and truth, ‘If you seek my monument, look around you!’ ”