Jane Grey Swisshelm’s strong support of the abolition of slavery brought her into a conflict with Sylvanus Lowry, owner of the newspaper she edited, the St. Cloud Visiter. Lowry, a slave-holding southerner, tried to bribe her to stop printing anti-slavery opinions in the newspaper, but Swisshelm wouldn’t stop. Angered, Lowry sent men to trash Swisshelm’s office, throwing her printing press into the Mississippi River. Undaunted, Swisshelm rebuilt her business without Lowry. She established her own paper, the St. Cloud Democrat, and continued to fight slavery within its pages, until she left Minnesota at the end of the Civil War.