Minnesota

Construction was resumed with the season of 1859 by contractors willing and able to take bonds in pay, but by midsummer this plan ceased to work. One firm in July was obliged to put up $30,000 to raise $8000 in cash. Railroad building ceased, and Minnesota sat in ashes. The surprise and exasperation of the people can easily be imagined. The companies had not followed the course expected of them to complete and put in operation successive ten-mile stretches, but preferred to push the grading for many such stretches and postpone track-laying and other work of completion. This aroused a suspicion that they did not intend to complete any sections, but to secure their $10,000 per mile, a sum far in excess of the actual cost, and quit. This suspicion was intensified by rumors that the grading had been confined to discontinuous earthwork alone, on the level prairie where it could be cheaply done. These rumors had but slight foundation, but they were accepted as true and to this day there are those who believe them. When the legislature of 1860 met (there was no session in 1859), Governor Sibley in his retiring message informed that body that the four companies had graded 239.36 miles, and had received 2275 one thousand-dollar special state bonds in exchange for an equal amount of company bonds.

The legislature of 1858 has enough to answer for in proposing to the people the consummate folly of offering to sell bonds which they never meant to pay. Of the final act of their session (August 12) it cannot be charitably recorded that it was one of mere folly. As the end of their labors drew nigh in the dog days, it became known that there would be a residue of some $10,000 of money appropriated by Congress for territorial expenses. It seemed a pity not to keep that money in Minnesota. After a variety of proposals consuming much time had failed to receive concurrence, the two houses agreed to a compromise by which $6000 was appropriated for stationery and $3500 for postage, the members to share equally. Governor Sibley was obliged to give his official sanction to this division, because it was impossible in the last hour of the session to veto the general appropriation bill in which these items had place, but he took occasion to say that he gave a most reluctant consent to the grab.

The banking act passed by the legislature of 1858, on July 26, provided for the issue of circulating notes secured by deposits of public stocks of the United States, or of any state, up to ninety per cent. of the average value of such stock for six months in the New York market. On one of the last days of the session an amending act was passed injecting into the proper section of the bank act the words “or the State of Minnesota at their current value.” The intended operation of the clause was that bank-notes might be issued on the security of the special railroad bonds. To obtain a favorable rating by the state auditor a clique of operators traded among themselves in the bonds, in New York city, until they felt warranted in submitting affidavits that their value as ascertained in that market was ninety-five cents on the dollar. The auditor of the state thereupon issued some $600,000 in notes to fifteen banks depositing the special railroad bonds. On January 1, 1861, he was obliged to report that seven of them had failed, and that he had sold their bonds. In one case he got seventy cents; in six others, prices ranging from thirty-five cents down to sixteen and a quarter cents.

The Sioux chiefs were so much excited with the money elements of their treaties of 1851 that they probably did not know what they were about when, in the summer of 1852, they assented to that amendment proposed by the Senate canceling the reservation of homes for the tribes on the upper Minnesota and authorizing the President to remove them from the ceded territory. It was, however, deemed best to move the people on to the designated areas, and they were so moved in the season of 1853. It soon came to their knowledge that they were only temporarily encamped there, and must presently move on to some unknown country. Their sorrow and exasperation were intense, and did not abate until they were assured in the following summer that the Great Father, as authorized by Congress, would permit them to remain where they were. They did remain in the sense of maintaining their principal villages on the reserve, but they constantly wandered in bands either toward their old homes or out on the prairies to the west, where buffalo still fed in countless herds. Their agents were much occupied in recalling these vagrants and in chasing the white whiskey sellers who infested the boundaries of the reserve. In 1857 Joseph R. Brown, that notable character whose career intersects the line of our narrative at many points, was appointed Sioux agent. As he was the father of many children born of his Sisseton wife, and had lived and traded among the Sioux for many years, he possessed an influence and a knowledge of Indian character equaled by few. He had no belief that the Indian could be transformed by religion or education in the twinkling of an eye into a fully civilized man, but he knew that he could be induced to take on the beginnings of civilization. His simple plan was to get the savages to live in houses, adopt white man’s dress, and do a little planting. In two years he had two hundred men, mostly heads of families, located on eighty-acre farms. They had disused the blanket, put on white man’s clothes, and, most notable of all, had had their hair cut short. His “farmer Indians” numbered seven hundred. This was not a large proportion of the seven thousand “annuity Sioux,” but the northern superintendent of Indian affairs prophesied that in three years the “farmer Indians” would outnumber the “blanket Indians.” The farmers, he reported, had given up their feasts and dances and were living as a “law-abiding, quiet, and sober people.” In this reform Agent Brown was assisted by the missionaries, under the leadership of Drs. Williamson and Riggs, who had followed the Sioux to their reservations. The former had organized a society of ambitious young Sioux, under the title of the “Hazlewood republic,” the object of which was to encourage respect for law and to teach the art of government. On the accession of the Republicans to power at the seat of government in 1861, Agent Brown’s place was needed to reward a laborer in the Republican vineyard, utterly inexperienced in the duties. It is perfectly safe to say that had Brown been left alone there would have been no “Sioux outbreak.” When the treaties of cession were negotiated in 1851, the proposed reservations seemed very far away and very ample. The Sioux had hardly got settled before the white man appeared with his whiskey jug and began taking up preëmptions on the neighboring lands. It did not take these adventurers long to discover that the Indians had more land than they needed. Moved by their representations the Minnesota legislature of 1858 adopted a joint resolution instructing her delegation in Congress to secure the reduction of the reservation and the opening of the excluded areas to settlement. In the summer of that year delegations of chiefs of the upper and lower tribes were taken to Washington, where they were induced to consent, in separate treaties, to the sale to the government of all their lands (some eight hundred thousand acres) on the left (northeast) side of the Minnesota River.

At the close of the state campaign of 1859 Alexander Ramsey came to his own. He was elected governor by a majority which no one could question. At the same time the office of lieutenant-governor fell to Ignatius Donnelly, who for forty years was to be a conspicuous figure in Minnesota politics. This young gentleman had come to Minnesota from his home in Philadelphia in 1856, at the age of twenty-four. He had won no little applause in his native city by some public addresses, a volume of juvenile poems not without promise, and a number of published essays. Breaking out of the Democratic fold along with very many young men of the day, he threw himself heart and soul into the Republican cause. There was no man of his time, certainly not in Minnesota, who could more completely enchain an audience of citizens than Ignatius Donnelly. A speech in the Republican convention of 1859 won him an unexpected nomination, and his election followed. The inaugural message of Governor Ramsey to the Republican legislature which came in with him is a notable document. The persistence of hard times moved him to cut his own salary from $2500 to $1500 and to recommend corresponding reductions in those of state officials. By these and other retrenchments adopted by the legislature, the expenses of the state government were reduced by 49.3 per cent. Reminding the houses of the fact that the general government had already bestowed twelve millions of acres of public land and more (an area equal to that of Holland or Belgium), he exhorted them to the greatest diligence and fidelity in execution of their trust. In particular he urged that the school lands be safeguarded against premature sale, and that all purchase-money coming in from these should be paid into the state treasury to form a perpetual endowment. While his particular scheme was not adopted in detail, his principle was. A surviving contemporary opposed to him in politics has declared that had not Governor Ramsey stood like a rock against multifarious schemes for dissipating the school lands, Minnesota would not have a dollar of school fund to-day. That fund now amounts to nearly $20,000,000 and will be greatly increased in the future. For this great service the name of Alexander Ramsey should be remembered in Minnesota as long as the state survives.

The incoming legislature had for its most exciting duty that of electing a United States senator in the room of General James Shields, who had two years before drawn the short term. The choice fell on Morton S. Wilkinson of Stillwater, the pioneer attorney of that place. He had coöperated in organizing Republicanism in the territory and had attracted the attention of leaders outside, among them Seward and Lincoln.

This election disposed of, the houses addressed themselves to railroad matters. The state had turned out $2,275,000 of her “special” bonds, and had for them not a mile of railroad, but only some two hundred and forty miles of rather slovenly graded road-bed. Governor Ramsey, with the strong common sense which never failed him, urged the legislature to settle the business at once. Though he had a favorite plan, his concern was not for his own plan, but for any kind of a settlement. He warned the legislature that if the vexed question were not settled it would confuse politics and invite corruption. The bonds would be bought up for a song by speculators who would subsidize newspapers, shout repudiation, and pound on the doors of the legislature till that body would be forced by their sheer importunity to satisfy them. But that legislature had come from an exasperated people who believed in their hearts that the railroad companies, and politicians in league with them, had deceived and cheated them. They had never promised, in fact, to pay those bonds, and the takers of them knew that, and were estopped from demanding redemption out of the pockets of the people. The houses appointed a joint committee of sixteen on railroad grants and bonds. Six different reports came in from detachments of this committee. One member, Senator Mackubin of St. Paul, alone proposed the full payment of the bonds. The legislative bodies were as much divided as were their committeemen. All they could agree to after days of discussion was to hang the whole proceeding up by means of two constitutional amendments to be submitted to the electors. One of these was to expunge from the state constitution the amendment of April 15, 1858, authorizing the “five million loan”; the other, providing for a referendum to the electors of any law for paying off the outstanding special railroad bonds. The vote on the expunging amendment, on November 6, 1860, was: Yes, 19,308; no, 710. The vote on the other amendment differed but little. The ostrich had buried his head and eyes in the sand.

The land grant companies having completely defaulted in all their engagements, there remained for the governor to proceed as required by law to recover to the state the public lands conditionally made over to them. Foreclosure proceedings culminated in the sale to the state of all the franchises, rights of way, property, and privileges of each company for the sum of one thousand dollars. As the electors had by a constitutional amendment declared that the special railroad bonds were no obligations of the state, she was apparently the gainer by the rights of way and the grading done by the companies, but in fact the state was never more than a trustee of the lands. The loss of their properties did not, of course, work a dissolution of the railroad charters, and the companies, or their ghosts, still existed. When the legislature of 1861 was in session they had sufficient influence to persuade that body to give them another lease of life. They had gone down in the common ruin after brave efforts to execute their contracts. By separate acts passed March 4, the state released and restored to the four companies severally all their forfeited properties and assets, free from all claims and liens by the state, – this on certain conditions which did not seem hard. Each company was obligated to deposit a guarantee fund of ten thousand dollars, to begin building immediately, and to have ten miles of road in full operation by the end of the calendar year, and certain stipulated mileages in years following. In these Kalends of March there was no expectation that before the grass should be green on the Minnesota prairies a war cloud would have settled over them. It was no time to build railroads on borrowed money. One of the companies, the Minnesota and Pacific (germ of the Great Northern Railway), made its cash deposit and began work. Late in the season it ran the single locomotive, the William Crooks, which it had purchased, over the fourteen hundred feet of track laid from the St. Paul levee to a storage shed. Its ten thousand dollars were forfeit. All the companies having defaulted, the lands, rights of way, and properties reverted to the state.

The desire of the people for railroads did not and could not abate, and there were still adventurous persons willing to risk money for the great prizes lying in the land grants. In the winter of 1862 four new companies were organized, and to them the legislature turned over the grants and rights of way on liberal conditions. The St. Paul and Pacific Company succeeding to the Minnesota and Pacific, built from St. Paul to St. Anthony, and on October 14 advertised for regular business. In 1863 two companies built forty-six and one half miles, and in 1864 three built forty-three and one half miles. Meantime the special railroad bonds remained in the limbo to which the constitutional amendments of 1860 had relegated them.

Other acts of the legislature of 1860 of less importance, but still notable, were: One changing the existing system of county government by boards of supervisors, elected from the towns, to one of county commissioners, to be elected from districts; another providing for the registration of voters in all precincts; a third replacing the elective board of twelve regents created by territorial law with one of eight, five to be appointed by the governor and three ex officiis. The new board succeeded to a melancholy task.

The people of Minnesota had moderated their expectations of an abounding population, but they were still greatly disappointed when the census of 1860 footed up but 172,023 inhabitants, including 2369 Indians. The native born were 113,295, the foreign born 58,278. The great Scandinavian influx had hardly begun. Of the whole number of persons engaged in gainful occupations, 53,426, the farmers were 27,921, dwelling mostly in the river counties and those immediately in the rear. With her population so widely spread out on the land and that in its virgin fertility, Minnesota was not really poor, in spite of business stagnation, of a high interest rate (two per cent. a month), and of isolation from outside markets for half the year. This isolation was, however, mitigated by the completion of a line of telegraph to the cities at the head of navigation, so that “through” dispatches were regularly received in October, 1862. The office in St. Anthony was closed after a few months, and the business men of Minneapolis were obliged to subsidize that of their city.

The conflict in national politics in 1860 was a hot and lively one, not merely between the two great parties, but within the separate ranks. The Democrats had not been so long out of power as to despair of a return. The Republicans had just begun to taste the sweets of office and its emoluments, and were fierce for more. The aspirants were inconveniently numerous and eager. In the caucuses and conventions they competed with almost brutal ardor for nominations, equivalent, in their happy anticipations, to elections. No sooner had the October elections resulted in a Republican triumph than aspirants for federal employment began weaving the combinations which should capture the Minnesota appointments. The friends of Governor Ramsey formed into one camp; the “land office clique” into another. The latter gained a temporary advantage, but did not succeed in their ultimate purpose of placing one of their number in the United States Senate when the next vacancy occurred. They also failed to get Governor Ramsey, his own logical successor, out of the way by a promotion to the headship of the Interior Department.

The Minnesota Democracy had been steadfast adherents to Senator Douglas, who had earned their support. The delegation to the Charleston convention of 1860, though not instructed, was presumed to be solid for the Illinois statesman. When Senator Rice and another separated and stood by Breckinridge, there were accusations of treason, bribery, and all the crimes in the political calendar. It ought to have been foreseen that Mr. Rice by temperament and interest would be attached to the conservative wing of the Democracy.

As the time for the state election of 1861 drew on, it was so apparent that Messrs. Ramsey and Donnelly would succeed themselves as governor and lieutenant-governor that only the slightest activity was manifested in the campaign. The total vote for governor on October 8 was 8048, of which Ramsey received 6997.

CHAPTER X

ARMING FOR THE CIVIL WAR

Governor Alexander Ramsey was in Washington on April 14, 1861, the day the Confederate colors were flown over the ruins of Fort Sumter in Charleston harbor. The attack on that work was an avowed act of war. Early that Sunday morning he hastened to the War Department to make a tender of one thousand Minnesota men for the national cause. The offer was put in writing at the request of Secretary Cameron, who was on the point of waiting on the President. Minnesota’s tender of a regiment was doubtless the first recorded. It was so promptly accepted that on the next day Governor Ramsey could so telegraph to St. Paul. On the 16th Lieutenant-Governor Donnelly issued the executive proclamation calling for volunteers to form a regiment of infantry to serve for three months. The principal effect of Governor Sibley’s ambitious militia organization already mentioned had been to stimulate the organization of independent volunteer companies in the larger towns and cities. These companies were the convenient nuclei of those which filled up the regiment. The arms of those independent companies were somewhat irregularly appropriated. Thirteen days after the proclamation, on April 29, ten companies nearly full were mustered into the service of the United States at Fort Snelling. Governor Ramsey, who was present at the muster, announced his appointments of field officers. Willis A. Gorman, former territorial governor, a regimental officer in the Mexican War, he placed in command. The vigor with which this experienced colonel established and enforced military routine was a surprise to his raw soldiery. They learned later the value of his discipline, which at the first they were disposed to be restive under. Early in May the state furnished black felt hats and black trousers. These, with the red shirts previously supplied, constituted their uniform. Drilling went vigorously on, diversified with sword and flag presentations and some feasting in the neighboring cities.

Some days after the muster, the War Department decided to accept no more regiments for three months, and gave to the men of the First Minnesota the option of enlisting for three years or taking their discharges. A considerable number, many of whom had been more patriotic than judicious, chose the latter alternative, but their places were immediately supplied, and a full regiment was mustered in for three years.

In the early morning of June 22 the regiment was paraded for the last time at Fort Snelling. Chaplain Edward D. Neill offered prayer, made an address, and gave the Hebrew benediction, “The Lord bless you and keep you,” etc. This over, the command embarked for Prairie du Chien, whence it proceeded by rail to Washington. On July 3 it was put into camp near Alexandria and attached to Franklin’s brigade of Heintzelman’s division of McDowell’s army. At the battle of Bull Run the First Minnesota was sent forward alone in support of Rickett’s battery to attack the position held by Jackson’s brigade without a single skirmisher in advance. The battery had barely unlimbered when all its horses were killed and cannoneers dispersed. The First Minnesota held its ground until forty-two men were killed and one hundred and eight wounded, the heaviest loss suffered by any regiment on the Union side. Thirty were missing, mostly prisoners, among whom were Surgeon Stewart and his assistant, Le Boutillier, who remained on the field attending the wounded. The regiment did not leave the field till ordered off, and marched “in perfect order” to Centreville. From that point to Alexandria its ranks were broken by the rabble of men and vehicles which thronged the road. In a compendious work it is impossible to follow in detail the career of this splendid regiment and those later sent out from Minnesota. It shared honorably in the operations of the Army of the Potomac in the season of 1862. At Antietam, holding its ground after both flanks had been uncovered, the First lost one hundred and forty-seven in killed and wounded. The company of Minnesota sharpshooters (the Second), added to the regiment after the battle of Fair Oaks, had twenty out of its forty-two men present shot down in that action.

After the organization of the First Regiment out of existing state militia, other militia companies remained over, equally desirous for a part in the war for the Union. When Governor Ramsey called for a second regiment on the 14th of June, 1861, the response was immediate. Before the end of July the Second Minnesota Infantry had been mustered in at Fort Snelling, uniformed and supplied. It received as commander Colonel Horatio P. Van Cleve, a graduate of the United States Military Academy, who had resigned from the regular army after some years of service. On October 14 the regiment left Fort Snelling, without patriotic exercises, for Louisville, Kentucky, where it joined Buell’s army. At Mill Springs it behaved with coolness and gallantry, suffering a loss of twelve killed and thirty-three wounded. The whole remaining season of 1862 was occupied with laborious marches between the Ohio and Tennessee rivers, with occasional minor engagements. It was present at Shiloh, Corinth, and Perrysville, where its losses were nominal.

The Third Minnesota Infantry was called for on September 18, before the Second had gone to the front. The companies were promptly recruited by aspirants to commissions, and the organization was complete by the middle of November. For its colonel Governor Ramsey selected Henry A. Lester of Winona, who had made a creditable record as a captain in the First Regiment. In a few months he brought the command to a high state of discipline, and by his personal qualities gained the complete confidence of officers and men. In April, 1862, the regiment was sent to Murfreesboro’, Tennessee, a point of some strategic importance, thirty miles southeast of Nashville, and was there in July when the Confederate cavalry leader Forrest was raiding thereabout to delay the movements of Buell. The covering force was a small brigade in two separate encampments. A Michigan infantry battalion of five companies and two cavalry troops were stationed to the east of the town, the Third Minnesota about a mile and a half northwest on the Nashville pike. No intrenchments seem to have been constructed. At an early hour of July 13 Forrest’s advance brushed away the cavalry outposts, captured the brigade commander in his quarters in the village, and fiercely attacked the Michigan men. It was not till noon, however, that he was able with his main force of more than one thousand men to compel their surrender. At the sound of the firing, Colonel Lester got his command under arms and placed them in a good position for defense not far from his camp, and there he held his men while the forenoon wore away with the sound of battle in his ears and the smoke rising from the burning warehouses in the town. The barest show of attack was made on his front, but Forrest in person led a considerable party around his flank to attack his camp, defended by Corporal Charles H. Green with twenty teamsters, convalescents, and cooks. It took three charges, Forrest leading the last, to rout and capture the little band. The gallant corporal died the same day, of his wounds. Soon after one o’clock P. M. the adjutant of the Michigan battalion came out from the town under flag of truce and safeguard to summon Colonel Lester to the presence of his colonel. In the interview which succeeded, the surrender of the Minnesota regiment was recommended. Returning to his command, Lester summoned his officers to a council. On an open vote the majority was for fighting. Two company commanders then left the council. The colonel, not content with the open vote, proposed a ballot. The result was five to surrender, three to fight. In the minority were Lieutenant-Colonel Griggs and Captain C. C. Andrews, both of whom became regimental commanders. It may be said in mitigation of the action of some of the company commanders voting for surrender, that as they held their offices by election they felt bound to act in a representative capacity and not according to their own judgment. The end of it was the unconditional surrender of the Third Minnesota without having been seriously attacked. The enlisted men were paroled and sent to Benton Barracks, St. Louis. The officers were paroled at Richmond after three months. On December 1 President Lincoln discharged dishonorably all those who had voted for the surrender.