The printing press of the St. Cloud Visiter is destroyed by a mob. The paper's editor, Jane Grey Swisshelm, a feminist and abolitionist, had angered local businessman and slave owner Sylvanus B. Lowry. Swisshelm soon obtains a new press and prints the story of her press's destruction and the names of the culprits, which results in a libel case and the termination of the paper. A week later she begins publishing the St. Cloud Democrat, which she runs for eight years.