| 61 Charles B. Thompson was the first county judge of Monona County, Guy C. Barnum treasurer, Hugh Lytle clerk, and Homer C. Hoyt sheriff.
Though the county seat was never located there, the first business of the county was transacted at Preparation. The county was organized in 1854.
In August, 1860, Mr. Thompson published at St. Louis, Missouri, the first number of the Nachashlogian, in which he defended negro slavery on the grounds that "the negro race are descendants, by natural generation, from the Nachash, (which name is erroneously rendered 'serpent,' in the first verse of the third chapter of Genesis,) who was the instrument used by the Evil Spirit in effecting the fall of Adam, and who is shown to have a terrigenous soul and species of the human genera, inasmuch as he was created more wise than all the brute kingdom, but inferior to Adam. Hence his posterity, the negro race, are, jure divino, de facto the natural subjects and slaves of the white race, thus fully establishing the moral right of the white race, jure humano, either to make of negroes individual property, as they are in the Southern States, or public subjects,-to possess nominally freedom, as they do in the northern portion of the American Union, according as the citizens of any sovereign commonwealth may elect."
Whether there was a second number of the Nachashlogian published or not, we do not know. We have only No. 1.
So far as we know the majority of the people who accepted the claims of Mr. Thompson were honorable and upright. We have known many of them whose characters are above reproach for virtue and honesty. Like the followers of Mr. Strang they renounced polygamy, and unlike Mr. Strang they adhered to their integrity on this point. Mr. Thompson claimed to receive a revelation which is clear and specific in its denunciation. We extract the following:-
"And, behold, polygamy, or a plurality of wives, is an abomination before me, and is forever forbidden, in this my Holy Presbytery of Zion, saith the Lord Jehovah."-The Law and Covenants of Israel, pp. 184, 185.
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