Minnesota

The charter of the company provided that unless fifty miles of road should be completed within one year the franchise should be forfeited. An extension of time and certain modifications were necessary. A bill granting these was passed by sufficient majorities. Governor Gorman vetoed it in a message of great sharpness, closing with an insinuation that the “money-king” had had more than his share of influence. The houses by exact two thirds votes passed the bill over the executive veto. Mr. Sibley and his friends had to content themselves with a personal memorial to Congress, which his biographer declares to be unequaled “for fearless and burning exposure of wrong and perfidy, in the annals of any territory or state.” The company had been let to live, but it was obliged to apply to the next legislature (1856) for a further lease of life. This was accorded by good majorities in both houses. Again Governor Gorman interposed his objections, declaring it futile to extend the life of the corporation. A new bill, drawn in such manner as to obviate the executive criticisms, was passed by a close vote at the end of the session. The bill received the reluctant approval of the governor. Three successive legislatures having sustained the company’s charters, he acquiesced, with slight confidence, however, in its professions.

The company now made a second resort to the courts to establish its claim to the grant of June 29, 1854. One of its directors, having bought of the United States a piece of land in Dakota County, brought suit against the railroad company for trespass. The district and supreme courts of the territory gave judgment for the defendant company, holding that it had good title to the land grant and therefore was not guilty of the alleged trespass. Before entry of judgment, however, in the latter court, the case was removed to the United States District Court; and this tribunal also found for the defendant. The Supreme Court of the United States, on writ of error from below, in December, 1861, disposed of the case by deciding (two justices dissenting) that the act of Congress of June 29, 1854, vested in the Territory of Minnesota no more than a naked trust or power, which could be and was revoked by the repealing act. The territorial legislature had exceeded its power in attempting to vest title in fee simple in the railroad company.

It was in the period now in view that Minneapolis, which has become the largest Minnesota city, had its beginning. The military reservation of Fort Snelling as delimited by Major Plympton in 1839 comprised, as was guessed, about 50,000 acres. The surveys made in later times show nearly 35,000 acres. So soon as it became known that a treaty of cession would be exacted from the Sioux, it was believed by the neighboring residents that Fort Snelling would be abandoned and the reservation opened for settlement. In 1849, when the first attempt was made on the Sioux, Robert Smith of Alton, Illinois, a member of Congress, having a “pull” at Washington, got leave of the War Department to lease the government mill at the Falls of St. Anthony on the west side. Later this concession ripened into a purchase of a quarter section abutting on the cataract. In the next year John H. Stevens, acting for himself and another, had similar leave granted to occupy the river front above the Smith claim, on condition of operating a ferry, free to government, at the falls. In the next year, 1851, a number of citizens of St. Anthony, already a thriving village of some six hundred people, thought it would be well to establish inchoate claims on some of the beautiful terraces which lay in view from their homes, beyond the river. They accordingly crossed over, staked out quarter sections as well as possible in the absence of surveys, built claim shanties, and had some plowing done. Still another year later, 1852, when in midsummer the Sioux treaties and amendments had been ratified and it was evident that the Sioux must soon move towards the sunset, and that the military reservation would be given up and opened to settlement, there took place a wild rush of St. Anthony men across the stream to seize on the coveted lands. It was not long till the whole terrain of Minneapolis was covered with claims. The action of Congress ordering a survey of the reserve expedited these irregular preëmptions.

The expectations of the squatters were so far met that on August 26, 1852, Congress authorized the “reduction” of the reserve, and the survey and sale of the excluded area. Two years passed before the surveys were completed and the lands advertised for sale. It was not desired that haste be made. On the completion of the surveyor’s work, the squatters formed a so-called “Equal Rights and Impartial Protection Claim Association of Hennepin County, M. T.,” the prime object of which was to adjust the numerous tracts of claimants to the lines of survey. This was effected by the action of an executive committee allowed to use discretion and guaranteed support. There was a second use for this organization. There was a considerable area east of the Mississippi left outside the boundary of the reduced reserve. This had been offered for sale in the usual subdivisions in September, 1854, at public auction. There was but one bidder, and he was surrounded by interested citizens who would have made it uncomfortable for any other person who might thoughtlessly inject a superfluous bid and mar the harmony of the occasion. The government got $1.25, the minimum price for wild lands, for property worth easily ten times that sum, and nobody’s conscience was strained. In anticipation of a public sale of the main portion of the reserved lands on which Minneapolis has been built, the claim association mentioned was prepared, by similar proceedings, to prevent any speculators (others than themselves) from depriving them of their rights by offering to pay value for the lands. But the plats were by some unknown influence held back in Washington and the sale was postponed. When Congress assembled in December, 1854, a strong delegation of claimants appeared in Washington and secured further postponement of the public sale. Delegate Rice took up their cause with vigor and presently obtained the passage of an act granting preëmption right to all who might comply with preëmption conditions. In the spring of 1855 the fortunate claimants proved up, and the government received $24,688.37 for 19,733.87 acres of land worth more than $200,000. There is a tradition, lacking support by particular facts, that military officers in the neighborhood profited by arrangements with squatters, who agreed to divide spoils in consideration of being left undisturbed on their claims. Citizens not having such arrangements were discouraged, and in some cases driven off by force.

The nucleus of Minneapolis was well crystallized in 1855. The United States land office was established, the first bridge over the Mississippi in all its length was built, the first town plat surveyed, and one hundred houses built. (In 1854 there were but twelve scattered claim shanties.) Seventeen stores and artisans’ shops in many lines sprang up. There was a hotel, a newspaper, and four organized churches. Minneapolis existed under town government till 1867, and in 1872 was united with St. Anthony, the latter city losing its historic name. The name Minneapolis is a variant on Min-ne-ha-polis, proposed by Charles Hoag. After this “reduction” of the Snelling reservation, its area covered 7916 acres, as shown by later surveys.

The story of the clandestine sale of the whole by Buchanan’s secretary of war in the spring of 1857, while abounding in incident, was too slight in its results to call for complete narration. It is probably not true that this sale was part of a scheme attributed to Floyd, to squander the military resources of the North in anticipation of a rebellion of the South. H. M. Rice interested himself in getting the necessary legislation and orders for the sale. The whole tract was sold for $90,000, of which one third was paid down. The purchaser defaulted on the remainder, and the government resumed possession at the outbreak of the Civil War. In 1872 the claims of the purchaser for his equity and rentals were adjusted by a board of military officers, which awarded him 6,394.80 acres, the government retaining 1,521.20 acres. It has been found necessary to repurchase some of the alienated land for the uses of the garrison.

In the winter of 1857 a bill to move the capital to St. Peter was passed in both houses of the legislature. Joseph Rolette of Pembina, chairman of the council committee on enrollment, absented himself with the bill till after the close of the session. The speaker signed a substituted copy, but the president of the council refused. Governor Gorman approved, but the Supreme Court held that no law had been passed.

CHAPTER VIII

TRANSITION TO STATEHOOD

In his message of January, 1853, Governor Ramsey had prophesied a population of more than half a million in ten years. Governor Gorman, in a message three years later, figuring on an increase of 114 per cent. in the previous year, advised the legislature that they might expect a population of 343,000 in two years, and 750,000 one year later.

In the course of that year the newspapers began to discuss the question of statehood, and when the legislature of 1857 assembled, Governor Gorman’s proposition to call a convention without awaiting the initiative of Congress received early consideration. A bill to provide for a census and a constitutional convention was passed by large majorities in both houses, but seems to have been lost by the enrolling committee of the council, and was not presented for executive approval. Pending action on this bill the houses passed a memorial to Congress praying for an enabling act. Delegate Rice, much too enterprising a politician to neglect his duty to constituents desirous of statehood, early in the session of 1857 had introduced a bill to enable the people of Minnesota to organize as a state and come into the Union. Besides a little pleasantry about the formation of a sixth state in part out of the old Northwest Territory, while the ordinance of 1787 had provided for five only, there was no opposition to the bill in the House. It found, however, a hard road to travel in the Senate. The ostensible ground of opposition was that the bill allowed white inhabitants of the territory, aliens and all, to vote for delegates to the convention. An amendment to confine the suffrage to citizens of the United States prevailed by a close vote on a late day in February. In this amendment it was known the House would not concur, and the opposition were content. A reconsideration was obtained, however, by the friends of the bill, and a long debate followed, in the course of which the actual ground of opposition was revealed. The “equilibrium of the Senate” was threatened, and might be destroyed by the senators the new state should elect. Regret was expressed that Iowa and Wisconsin had been admitted as states, and one senator revived a letter of Gouverneur Morris in which that statesman denied the right of Congress to admit new states on territory acquired after the adoption of the constitution.

The alien suffrage amendment, however, was rescinded, and the bill as it came from the House passed by a vote of 31 to 22; every negative vote came from south of Mason and Dixon’s line. It may be conjectured that the object of the Minnesota legislature in nursing along its bill to form a state government without an enabling act of Congress was to let Congress know that its action was not indispensable.

The enabling act as passed February 26, 1857, was in the form which had become traditional, and embodied the usual grants of public lands for schools, a university, and public buildings. The boundaries of the proposed state were those of the territory except that on the west, which was drawn in from the Missouri River to the line of the Red, thus reducing the area about one half. Revised computations give Minnesota 84,287 square miles, or about 54,000,000 acres.

The act provided for an election of delegates to a convention on the first Monday in June, under the existing election laws of the territory. An ambiguous clause authorizing the election of “two delegates for each representative,” according to the apportionment for representatives to the territorial legislature, ignoring councilors as such, became the occasion of trouble. The Minnesota legislature, in an act of May 23, appropriating $30,000 for the expenses of the convention, provided that each council district should have two delegates, and each representative district also two. The number of delegates was thus fixed at 108, instead of 68.

Governor Gorman on April 27 called a special session of the legislature to take any necessary action regarding the coming convention, and to dispose of a railroad land grant which Congress had made. This will engage attention later. Governor Gorman, however, did not officially survive to coöperate in the making of the state constitution. Mr. Rice, warmly attached to President Buchanan, who had come into office in March, would, it was well known, secure Governor Gorman’s early retirement to private life. They had not been of much comfort to one another in railroad and other matters. Governor Gorman resigned, and was succeeded by the Hon. Samuel Medary of Ohio, who had done good party service through his newspaper and otherwise. He was a gentleman of excellent character, but remained in Minnesota too short a time to identify or even acquaint himself with her people and interests.

The Whigs had never been strong in the territory, nor well organized. The “Moccasin Democracy” had become habituated to control, and expected indefinite enjoyment of official emoluments. The passage of the Kansas-Nebraska bill by Congress on May 26, 1854, rudely disturbed this pleasant dream. A new party of protest against the introduction and maintenance of African slavery in the territories, under active national protection, sprang into being. A Republican convention met in St. Paul, July 28, 1855, adopted a platform, and nominated candidates for territorial offices. It also nominated the leader of the movement, William R. Marshall, to succeed Mr. Rice as delegate to Congress. Mr. Rice had too many electors personally attached to himself to be beaten. It has been thought, however, that Marshall might have won but for a “prohibition” plank in the platform, which lost him the German vote. At the election of 1856 the Republicans obtained a working majority in the lower house of the legislature to meet in the following winter. As the day drew on for the election of delegates to the convention both parties were anxious about the result. The Democrats held on to the hope of recovering control; the Republicans were none too confident that they could hold their slight balance of power. The issue was declared by the leading Democratic newspaper to be “White Supremacy versus Nigger Equality.” The vote was unexpectedly light, and the results were not clearly decisive. In a few districts “councilor” delegates had been distinguished on the ballots from “representative” delegates; in most cases they had not. In the St. Anthony district the canvassing officer gave certificates of election to Republican candidates who had received fewer votes than the Democratic, on the ground that the Democratic ballots had not distinguished the nominees for councilor and representative delegates.

The control of the convention would, it was maintained, depend on the action of the committee on credentials to be appointed by the presiding officer. To capture the “organization” became the object of each of the nearly balanced parties. It chanced that the enabling act had not specified the hour for the assemblage of the convention. The excited and suspicious leaders were unable to agree informally. To make sure of being on hand the Republican delegates repaired to the capitol late on the Sunday night preceding the first Monday in June, and remained there, as one of them phrased it, “to watch and pray for the Democratic brethren.” These did not appear till a few moments before twelve o’clock noon of the appointed day. Immediately upon their entrance in a body into the representatives’ hall Charles L. Chase, secretary of the territory and a delegate, proceeded to the speaker’s desk and called to order. At the same moment John W. North, a Republican delegate, designated by his colleagues, called to order. A motion to adjourn was made by Colonel Gorman, and the question was taken by Chase, who declared it carried. The Democrats left the hall to the Republicans, who proceeded to organize the convention. Fifty-six delegates presented credentials in proper form and took their oaths to support the constitution of the United States.

At noon of Tuesday the Democratic delegates assembled about the door of the hall, and, finding it occupied by citizens who refused to give them place, met in the adjacent council chamber and proceeded to organize the convention. Henry H. Sibley was made chairman, on motion of Joseph R. Brown, and later became president of the body. From that day till the close of their labors, August 28, the two conventions sat apart. St. Anthony was represented by six delegates in each, so that the whole number participating was one hundred and fourteen. Their proceedings, published in separate volumes, show a commendable diligence in business. An undue amount of time was given to oratory in defense of the legitimacy of the respective moieties.

As the delegates had for examples the constitutions of all the states carved out of the Northwest Territory, and in particular of the very recent ones of Wisconsin and Iowa, the task of framing the various articles was not burdensome. Most of them were adopted, with little or no debate, as reported from the standing committees. The Republicans refused by a two-thirds vote to tolerate negro suffrage. A proposition to submit to Congress the division of the existing territory by an east and west line on the latitude of 45° 15′, or 45° 30′, was much discussed in both bodies. It was so much favored by the Republicans that a change of three votes would have given it a majority. The Democrats, attached to St. Paul and strong in the northern counties, gave the scheme slight support.

The absurdity of the situation was apparent, but pride restrained both bodies from taking a first move towards coalescence. At length on the 8th of August Judge Sherburne, a member of the Democratic convention, highly respected by Republicans as well, proposed the appointment of conferees to report a plan of union. The venerable jurist saw his resolution indefinitely postponed, after a debate abounding in heroic rhetoric. Two days after, the Republicans passed a preamble and resolutions in the exact terms of those of Judge Sherburne and sent them to President Sibley. A select committee, headed by Gorman, advised that no communication could be entertained which questioned the legal status of the Democratic body. The report was unanimously adopted.

By this time the Republican delegates had found themselves at a certain disadvantage, from which relief was to many very desirable. The Democratic treasurer of the territory had refused to honor their pay accounts, and they were serving the public at their own expense. Doubtless from extraneous overtures made by them, the two bodies on the morning of August 18 adopted resolutions to appoint conferees. These were immediately named and began their duties. By this time all the necessary articles had been drafted, and as both bodies had drawn from the same sources the conference committee had an easy task. Those wrought out by the Democratic delegates, who were the older and more experienced men, were chiefly adopted. When Judge Sherburne on August 27 laid before the Democratic convention the report of the conferees, with the comforting assurance that it was composed of the Democratic material “almost altogether,” the chair was obliged to exercise no little firmness to restrain a turbulent opposition. A test vote showed a majority of more than three fourths for adoption. The final vote went over.

The next morning, August 28, both bodies agreed to the report without amendment. There was some resistance in the Republican end, but it gave way when a leader assured the dissentients that they had a dose to swallow, and they might as well shut their eyes and open their mouths and take it. Two copies were made of the one constitution thus agreed to, one of which was signed by the officers and members of each body respectively. The Republican manuscript remains in the state archives. Joseph R. Brown expressed the opinion that the split into two bodies had been economical. Had the convention met in one body, the orators by their revilings and vituperations would have prolonged the session till the end of the year and the expenses would have been doubled. Spite of the generous endeavor of this delegate, the Democrats refused to agree that the Republicans should draw their pay. A subsequent legislature provided for them. Both parties were quite content with the constitution; the Democrats for what they had conserved, the Republicans for germs of future development.

The boom period which culminated in 1857 was nowhere more exuberant than in Minnesota. The swelling tide of population of the previous two years had brought in a body of speculators who presently gorged themselves with the unearned increments of land and town lot values. The whole population caught the fever and bought for the expected rise. The country people found ready sale for produce in the growing towns, and the merchants profited by their prosperity. The resulting elation and extravagance were at no time more abounding than in the closing days of the constitutional convention.

It was the 24th of August when the failure of the Ohio Life Insurance and Trust Company of New York precipitated the liquidation of incredibly multiplied credits in the East. A week later the tardy mails brought the news to St. Paul, and nowhere in the country did the panic strike with greater violence. The little money, real and promissory, sank out of sight. Deposits ceasing, the banks suspended. Eastern exchange rose to ten per cent. Assignments, foreclosures, attachments, and executions made law practice the only profitable pursuit. The horde of speculators who had infested the towns and villages abandoned their holdings and made their escape. According to J. Fletcher Williams, the lamented historian of St. Paul, that city lost fifty per cent. of its population. From the crest of a high wave of fancied opulence, the new state was thus suddenly plunged into a deep trough of adversity and despondence; and it was a long day before she rose to the level of normal prosperity.

The keenest of all disappointments was the postponement of railroad building. A score or more of chartered companies could not borrow enough ready cash to pay for their surveys. A generous congressional act of 1857, engineered by Delegate Rice, had made the Minnesotians of all classes joyous. That act bestowed on the territory and expectant state a grant of public lands equal to nearly a ninth of its whole area, to aid in the building of railroads. It is probable that this benefaction was all the more willingly bestowed because the territory had three years before been deprived of a noble grant by no fault of her own. The act did not convey the lands to the state, but made the state a trustee for four different railroad “interests” each aspiring to build its portion of a system of roads coextensive with the state.

The legislature of 1857, in the extra session already mentioned, accepted the trust created by the congressional grant, recognized the four companies to construct each its part of the system, and pledged to each its allotted lands as they should be earned by the completion of successive twenty-mile stretches of road. With a bird in the bush the Minnesota people were childishly happy. They saw a thousand miles of railway as good as built, spreading population far and wide and carrying the produce of an empire to waiting markets.

It was a good fortune for the territory that the organic law gave it no power to run in debt. It was equally unfortunate that a corporation created by it could and did run in debt. In the same February of 1851 in which Delegate Sibley secured from Congress the reservation of the two townships of land to endow a university, the Minnesota legislature created the University of Minnesota, to be located at or near St. Anthony’s Falls. The act provided for a board of twelve regents to be elected by the legislature in joint session, in classes for six-year terms. The gentlemen immediately elected, among them Sibley, Ramsey, Rice, North, and Marshall, commanded, as they deserved, the confidence of the people. The board organized on the last day of May, 1851, and resolved to open a preparatory department as soon as possible. One of their number, Franklin Steele, gave a bunch of lots in St. Anthony’s Falls near the site of the well-known Winslow Hotel, later occupied by the Northwestern Industrial Exposition building; others subscribed money; and a few books were thrown in to be the nucleus of the library. In a wooden building 30 by 50 feet, two stories and a basement, the preparatory school was opened on November 26. It continued a useful existence till the close of 1854. By this time the regents, among whom there had been changes of personnel, became desirous to open the “university proper.” In that year they had located through competent experts several thousand acres of the lands reserved by Congress on the best pine in the Stillwater district. The lands they could not sell, but they did despoil them by selling the “stumpage,” and used the money as collected for university purposes. They bought the heart of the present campus, twenty-five acres, more or less, for $6000, paying cash $1000 and giving their notes for the remainder. The stumpage receipts were too small and came in too slowly to warrant large expenditures for development. On February 28, 1856, the legislature authorized the regents to borrow $15,000 on twelve per cent. bonds secured by mortgage on the campus; $5000 to pay the balance due on the campus, $10,000 for a building. In August of the same year the board, much deteriorated by a late election, voted by a majority of one to close a contract for a building to cost $49,000, to be completed within eighteen months. When a year later, almost to a day, the panic struck, the building was nearly complete and large sums were due the contractors. The sales of pine stopped and collections for previous sales ceased. The concern was bankrupt and so remained for nearly a decade. A paragraph of the state constitution, retained against no slight opposition, confirmed the location of the university and devolved all university lands and endowments then existing or to be thereafter granted on the “University of Minnesota.”