The editorial concludes with an appeal to support the paper:
Few persons can know the expense and care requisite for a publication like this so far West. We feel that our Territory cannot support more than one or two papers. One of these must be at the Capital, and we shall endeavor to make this one worthy the support of all. We expect to receive pecuniary encouragement from men of all parties and all parts. After a few weeks, when we are better acquainted and our paper is better known, we shall ask for the assistance which will be due us from those whom we labor to benefit.
A Library of Congress bound volume contains an incomplete but substantial run of The Dakotian from April 1, 1862, to December 17, 1864, without any marks of provenance. In addition the Library owns a file of South Dakota's third newspaper, The Dakota Republican, beginning with volume 1, number 31, published at Vermillion on April 5, 1862. This newspaper has for its motto "Our Country If Right, If Wrong, God Forgive, But Our Country Still!" The Library's issue of April 12, 1862, is inscribed "Wm H James"—this would be William Hartford James of Dakota City, Nebr., who served as Acting Governor of Nebraska in 1871-1872—and some of its 1868 and 1869 issues are inscribed "Dept of State." All of these papers are accounted for in A Check List of American Newspapers in the Library of Congress (1901).
(The Dakotian)
From the year 1862 the Library also possesses four books printed at Yankton all bearing the imprint of Josiah C. Trask, Public Printer: Council Journal of the Legislative Assembly of the Territory of Dakota, to which is Prefixed a List of the Members and Officers of the Council, With Their Residence, Post-Office Address, Occupation, Age, &c.; House Journal of the Legislative Assembly of the Territory of Dakota, to which is Prefixed a List of the Members and Officers of the House ...; General Laws, and Memorials and Resolutions of the Territory of Dakota, Passed at the First Session of the Legislative Assembly, Commenced at the Town of Yankton, March 17, and Concluded May 15, 1862. To Which are Prefixed a Brief Description of the Territory and its Government, the Constitution of the United States, the Declaration of Independence, and the Act of Organizing the Territory; and Private Laws of the Territory of Dakota, Passed at the First Session of the Legislative Assembly....[125] Single copies of the Council and House journals were in the Library by 1877. The Library has four copies of the General Laws and Private Laws, bound together as issued; two copies are probably 19th-century accessions, the third came from the Department of Interior in 1900, and the fourth was transferred from an unspecified Government agency in 1925.
[124] See Douglas C. McMurtrie, The Beginnings of the Press in South Dakota (Iowa City, Iowa, 1933). On the disputed history of the Goodhue press, see M. W. Berthel, Horns of Thunder (St. Paul, 1948), p. 26, note 3.
[125] These are nos. 7, 9, 4, and 5, respectively, in Albert H. Allen's Dakota Imprints 1858-1889 (New York, 1947).