Richard Jameson Morgan (1852-1906) was a pioneering American newspaperman, Congregationalist minister, lecturer, and author based in Florida, where he edited and published the Sub-Peninsula Sun and St. Petersburg Times (now Tampa Bay Times) newspapers. In 1902, Florida Magazine serialized his sci-fi novella that recounts the story - presented as fact - of J. Edward Barrington's 1890s sea passage through the Antarctic ice wall where he discovers The Iron Republic, an ultramodern and technologically advanced utopian society. "Either as fact or fiction, it is a rare story and presents an ideal of society and government that will make the average reader long to be a citizen of the newly discovered Iron Republic.".