Excerpt from Iowa City: A Contribution to the Early History of Iowa Iowa City is interesting chiefly as the historical capital of Iowa. The object of this monograph, therefore, will be to deal with the history of Iowa City as a factor in the early history of Iowa. And under this treatment it is proposed to study the town in a two-fold aspect: as an organ of the state performing the functions of a capital, and as an organism illustrating the Character, manners and customs of pioneer life in Iowa. The period covered in these pages extends from the found ing of Iowa City in the year 1839 to the final removal of the capital to Des Moines in the year 1857. No previous attempt having been made to write the history of Iowa City, this monograph is necessarily the result of original investigation. Fortunately, however, inasmuch as Iowa City has always been the seat of the State Historical Society, there has drifted into the library of this society important material on the subject which otherwise would have been lost or carelessly destroyed. As to sources of information I have for the most part relied upon contemporaneous newspapers, letters, original manuscripts and miscellaneous papers. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.