Minnesota

The closing year of Minnesota’s territorial existence was diversified by an Indian butchery, horrible indeed in its immediate incidents, but especially noteworthy for its contribution to later atrocities. For many years a renegade band of the Wah-pé-ku-te tribe of the Sioux had wandered in the Missouri valley under the leading of one Inkpaduta (Scarlet Point). In the spring of 1857 these Indians were hunting in northwestern Iowa, and on March 6 or 7 fell upon the little settlement of Spirit Lake in Henderson County, murdered some forty persons, as estimated, and carried four women into captivity. Marching on the little hamlet of Springfield, some fifteen miles to the north, in Martin County, Minnesota, they found but few victims, because a refugee from Spirit Lake had arrived before them. The news of these outrages did not reach Agent Flandrau at the Lower Sioux agency till the 18th. Upon his requisition, Captain Alexander Bee, commanding the little garrison at Fort Ridgely, with his company of infantry, led a lively but fruitless pursuit of Inkpaduta, who had gone off to the Missouri. It was well understood that so long as the miscreant held the four women, no punishment could be inflicted on him. In May two young annuity Sioux, who had been hunting westward, brought one of the women (Mrs. Markle) into the agency. They had bought her with their horses and guns, and asked $500 each as reward, which Agent Flandrau and Missionary Riggs paid, half in cash and half in a promissory bond of extraordinary character which the traders cashed. This generosity had its intended effect to call out volunteers for the rescue of the other captives. Two capable Christian Sioux were selected, furnished with transportation and plenty of Indian goods and sent out. After six days’ march they came upon the dead body of one of the women, and presently learned that another had been put to death. In a camp of Yanktons they found the fourth, Miss Gardiner, and bought her for two horses, seven blankets, two kegs of powder, a box of tobacco, and some trinkets. Only one half of the $10,000 appropriated by the Minnesota legislature was needed to cover the cost of these rescues.

The Indian authorities, local and national, now resolved to visit Inkpaduta with just punishment, and decided upon the plan of enlisting volunteers among the annuity Sioux to pursue and capture the scoundrel and his band. Few or none offered themselves. Summer came on and 5000 Indians had gathered about the agencies for the annual payment. A number of councils were held, in the course of which the agent threatened to withhold the payments until Inkpaduta had been brought in. This threat had some effect, but presents of blankets and provisions had more. At length, on the 22d of July, an expedition of 106 Indians and four half-breeds was started for the James River country. It returned August 3, bringing two women and a child as prisoners, but no Inkpaduta. In vain did Major Cullen, superintendent of Indian affairs for the territory, who had come to the Sioux agencies, insist that Inkpaduta should be brought in, and by the Indians themselves, and declare that there would be no payment of money, goods, or provisions till the murderers should be in his hands. The Sioux, although by this time on the verge of starvation, would not stir. They were sullen and defiant. A special agent sent from Washington advised the superintendent to make believe that the Indians had done all they could, and might therefore be paid off. It was late in September when the Indians got their money and goods and marched off to their fall hunts. They had had their way with the agents of the Great Father, and suspected that he was not so powerful as they had been told he was. He had not been able to run down Inkpaduta and his little band. What could he do against the great Sioux nation of many thousands?

The new constitution of Minnesota closed with a supplementary “schedule” of provisions temporary in nature. All territorial rights, actions, laws, prosecutions, and judgments were to remain in force until proper action under state authority. All territorial officers were to continue their duties until superseded by state authority. A referendum of the constitution was ordered for October 13 (1857), at which time all the officers designated by the constitution were to be elected under the existing territorial election law. Every free white male inhabitant of full age, who should have resided in the state for ten days before the election, was authorized to vote. Section four of the enabling act required the United States marshal, so soon as the convention should have decided in favor of statehood and admission, to take a census of the population. This was not completed during the life (forty-two days) of the convention. It being, therefore, impracticable to divide the state into congressional districts, it was made a single district. In the belief that the population must be near 250,000, provision was made for electing three representatives in Congress. The completed census yielded the disappointingly small total of 150,037. Governor Medary and two delegates were made a canvassing board.

While the constitution was acceptable to all, the two parties put forth all possible effort to capture the offices. The canvass showed the vote on the ratification of the constitution to be: Yeas, 36,240; nays, 700. The Democrats obtained a majority of the legislators and nearly all the state and national officers. The candidates for the governorship were Sibley and Ramsey, the former winning by the slender majority of 240 in a total of 35,340. The claim was made that this majority was obtained by irregularities in making the returns, but there was no contest.

The schedule had fixed the early date of December 3 for the assemblage of the legislature, in the expectation shared by all that within a few days thereafter Congress would admit the new state to the Union, and her senators and representatives elect to their seats. A half year, however, was to run by during which Minnesota, as described by Governor Sibley, hung like the coffin of the prophet of Islam between the heavens and the earth. The legislature met, December 2, 1857, and in joint convention, by the close vote of 59 to 49, decided to recognize Mr. Medary as “governor.” In his message he recognized the body as a state legislature. Still there was doubt about the legal status of the houses, and there was little desire to undertake business which might turn out to be illegitimate. The Republican members entered formal protests against any legislation. There was, however, one bit of business which the Democratic majority felt could not be postponed; and that was the election of two United States senators. That was virtually settled in caucus. Henry M. Rice, as everybody expected, was nominated without opposition. The second place, for the short term, went, after several ballotings, to General James Shields, who was a newcomer and little known in Minnesota. He had served with distinction in the Mexican War, filled many offices in his former state of Illinois, and served a term in the Senate of the United States. It was a bitter pill for such Democratic wheel-horses as Sibley, Brown, and Gorman to swallow. Franklin Steele never forgave Rice for failing, as he claimed, to throw the election to him. Shields was everybody’s second choice, and the expectation was that his personal influence in Washington would procure many good things for the state.

President Buchanan, for reasons not apparent, did not transmit the Minnesota constitution – the Democratic version – to the Senate till near the middle of January, 1858. A fortnight later the bill to admit was reported from the committee on territories. The same kind of opposition now broke out as had impeded the progress of the Minnesota enabling act a twelvemonth before. Southern senators were loath to see a new Northern state come in, even with a Democratic delegation awaiting admission to both houses. They were also technical and persistent about holding to the traditional custom of admitting states alternately slave and free. It was the turn for a slave state to come in, and Kansas with her infamous “Lecompton” slave constitution was knocking at the door. To give the right of way to the “English bill” admitting Kansas, dilatory measures were successfully resorted to. A debate covering twenty-three pages of the “Congressional Globe” took place on the question whether the Senate would consider the Minnesota bill. That having been agreed to on the 24th of March, days of tedious wrangling followed upon objections raised by opponents. The election, it was argued, was void for frauds committed; aliens had been allowed to vote; the still incompleted census was farcical; some assistant marshals had destroyed the returns they should have given in; in some instances there was not one tenth as many people found in precincts as had voted. The right of the state to three, two, or even any representative in Congress was questioned. Minnesota was still a territory, and territories had no right to representation in the Senate or in the House, except by a delegate having no vote. There had been no legal convention, it was said, and no legitimate constitution had been adopted by the people. The debate went on till April 8, when, the English bill admitting Kansas having been put through the Senate, the opposition ceased and the Minnesota bill passed with but three dissenting votes, out of fifty-two. The palaver occupies nearly one hundred pages of the “Globe.” The bill now went to the House, and there the English bill stood in its way till the 4th of May. The pro-slavery opposition at once showed itself under cover of the same objections which had been so tediously debated in the Senate. There had been no proper convention, the election was void for frauds, the territorial legislature in session was presuming to act as a state legislature, and the like. In the course of a wrangle on the matter of alien voting, a Missouri member in a heated moment revealed the actual ground of the opposition. He said, “I warn gentlemen of the South of the consequences… The whole territories of the Union are rapidly filling up with foreigners. The great body of them are opposed to slavery. Mark my words; if you do it, another slave state will never be formed out of the territories of this Union.” There was also an attack on the bill from an unexpected quarter. John Sherman of Ohio introduced a substitute, annulling all proceedings so far had, and providing for a new convention in Minnesota. In his speech he declared there had been no convention, but only two mobs. The number of delegates had been unlawfully raised from 68 to 108. All proceedings under the enabling act, including the election of October 13, were void. A printed letter was circulated among Republican senators and representatives from which Mr. Sherman had evidently derived his allegations. This document came from a Minnesota Republican source and evidenced the desire for an entire new deal. There was ground for hope that in new elections the Republican party might overcome the slight Democratic pluralities. This move on the political chessboard had the effect to rally Democratic support to the pending bill for admission of Minnesota with her waiting delegation. A new election might change its complexion. On May 11 the bill was passed by the vote of 157 to 38. The next day it received the presidential approval, and Messrs. Rice and Shields, who had been living since December at their own charges, were sworn as senators.

The Senate bill, concurred in by the House, allowed Minnesota but two representatives. Three had been elected and had been waiting for five months to be seated. To eliminate one of these, lots were drawn, and George L. Becker, the best man of the three, was thrown out. The two who had drawn the long straws filed their credentials, and the House committee on elections informed the House that they had no knowledge of a third representative-elect from Minnesota. Two days of ineffective contention over the legitimacy of the elections of the lucky two, Messrs. William W. Phelps and James M. Cavanaugh, followed. The vote to admit stood 127 to 63. The records of debates and proceedings cover 225 columns of the “Globe,” of 1000 words each or thereabout.

During the months the Minnesota representatives had been on the anxious bench, the delegate, W. W. Kingsbury, who had been elected on Mr. Rice’s promotion to the Senate, had been comfortably occupying his seat in the House. When Messrs. Phelps and Cavanaugh were sworn in, Mr. Kingsbury did not vacate his seat, but claimed the right to represent that part of the Territory of Minnesota west of the Red River line excluded from the state. The Democratic majority of the committee on elections strongly recommended that the claim be allowed, the Republicans dissenting. The House decided that the portion of Minnesota excluded from the state was a district without government, and not entitled to representation in Congress. The admission of Minnesota wrought the dissolution of the territory, a decision exactly in the teeth of that by which Mr. Sibley had been recognized as a delegate from the rump of Wisconsin Territory in 1848.

So soon as Governor Medary had approved the bill for the election of senators he took his departure and devolved the executive upon Charles L. Chase, the secretary of the territory. Till the middle of winter the legislative bodies of 1857-58 were so uncertain about their legal status that they were chary of multiplying statutes. Then there was a change of opinion, and the members were encouraged to believe themselves true state legislators. Their confidence so stiffened that on the 1st of March they voted to submit to the electors an amendment to the constitution authorizing the state officers-elect to qualify on May 1, whether Congress should have admitted the state or not; and appointed April 15 proximo as the day for the election. It is probably true that railroad interests had to do with this change of heart. As already related, the four companies to which the great congressional land grant had been made over by the previous legislature had not been able to borrow a dollar by hypothecation of their inchoate properties. There were examples of state assistance in railroad building under like circumstances, by way of lending state credit. The Minnesota companies now asked the legislature for like aid. That body was willing enough, but there stood in the constitution adopted, but yet awaiting approval by Congress, a section forbidding in terms the loan of the credit of the state in aid of any individual, association, or corporation. But the constitution was still in the green tree; why not amend it for so worthy a purpose? Accordingly, the accommodating houses presently submitted a second amendment to the electors, to be voted on at the same time as the former. This amendment added to the section forbidding the loan of the state’s credit an exception, allowing such loan for the purpose of facilitating railroad construction, to the amount of five million dollars. Such was the beginning of the “five million loan” transaction, which was not closed till near the end of the century, and then in a manner not clearly honorable to the state. The two amendments were passed upon by the electors on the day appointed (April 15). That authorizing the state officers elect to enter upon their duties on May 1 received an “imposing majority,” the figures of which have not been found. The officers elect, however, wisely took no advantage of this provision, but awaited the admission of the state. The “five million loan” amendment was carried by the overwhelming majority of 25,023 to 6733. It was only, as alleged, a “loan of credit.” In no conceivable event, the people were assured, could they be taxed to pay in cash the debt nominated in the bonds to be issued.

On May 13 the mail or a private hand brought from La Crosse, Wisconsin, the telegraphic news of the admission of the state to the Union on the previous day. The documentary evidence came some days later, and on the 24th the state officers elected in October, 1857, took their oaths and proceeded to their duties. It lacked one week of nine years since Governor Ramsey proclaimed the beginning of the territorial government.

Three days after the state officers took up their duties there took place within an easy day’s drive of the capital the last serious encounter of the Sioux and Chippeways on Minnesota soil. The lower Sioux, who late in 1853 reluctantly retired to their reservations on the upper Minnesota, were wont to return in summer weather in straggling companies to their old homes. They were generally harmless, and the merchants got a little profit on their trade. Shakopee and his band of one hundred and fifty had early in the summer of 1858 come down and gone into camp near the town which bears his name. One of his braves, fishing in the river (the Minnesota) at an early hour, was fired upon. Shakopee’s men instantly recognized the sound as coming from a Chippeway gun. They gathered at Murphy’s Ferry and, presuming that the hostile shot came from one of some very small party, they let their women put thirty or forty of them across. They did not suspect that back on the timbered bluff a mile distant there lay in hiding one hundred and fifty or more Chippeway warriors who had sneaked down from Mille Lacs through the big woods east of Minnetonka. They were wary, however, and placed themselves in ambush in a narrow space between two lakelets. The Chippeways, out for scalps, with a boldness unusual among Indians, charged down from the bluff twice or more, without dislodging the Sioux. The day was not old when they gave up the effort and departed in haste for their homes, carrying their wounded and perhaps some dead. Four of their corpses were left to the cruel mercies of the Sioux, who scalped, beheaded, and otherwise mutilated them. Such was the so-called “Battle of Shakopee,” May 27, 1858.

CHAPTER IX

THE STRUGGLE FOR RAILROADS

On the 2d of June, 1858, the legislature, which had adjourned March 25, reassembled and listened to Governor Sibley’s inaugural address. He challenged investigation into the legality of his election, declaring that he would scorn to hold the position for a single hour if not legally chosen. He commended the schools and the university to the special care of the legislature, exhorting them to regard the donations of public lands to them as sacred. He advised the organization of the militia to the end that the state might protect herself from possible Indian outrages like that of Inkpaduta the year before. He warned the legislature to be careful in their action in regard to banks, which he declared to be a “necessary evil.” He deprecated the undue extension of federal interference in the affairs of the states, and, as might be expected from a friend and admirer of Mr. Douglas, pronounced in favor of squatter sovereignty in the territories. He took occasion to record his objection to frequent and trivial amendments to the state constitution, which should “ever remain beyond the reach of temporary and feverish excitement.” In no doubtful terms did the new executive give notice to the land grant railroad companies that he should hold them to a strict but reasonable conformity with their obligations. In this adjourned session the legislative bodies had no doubt about their true character as state organs. The senate had its constitutional president in the lieutenant-governor, William Holcombe, and there was a state governor to approve the acts of the houses. In the session, which lasted till August 12, a large body of statutes were enacted, many of them amendatory of territorial laws to suit new conditions. This legislature deserves praise for its diligence and appreciation of the needs of a growing state. Responding to the counsel of Governor Sibley, an elaborate militia law was passed. A provision for the organization of volunteer companies proved three years later to have been wisely planned. The cautions of the executive led the legislature to replace a banking act of many sections, passed by the same body in the previous March, by another more carefully drawn. Educational objects were not neglected. An agricultural college was established at Glencoe, a normal school at Winona, and the unlucky board of regents of the university were authorized to borrow $40,000 on twelve per cent. bonds. As if distrusting either the good faith or the ability of the four land grant railroad companies, the legislature placed on the statute book a stringent act instructing the governor how to proceed in case of default by any of them. The hopes of the people of Minnesota in this summer were centred on these land grant railroads. The panic of the previous year had impoverished many of the well-to-do, and left laborers and artisans without employment. Fortunately there was no lack of bread and meat at low prices, because they could not be got to outside markets. Money was scarce and “business” sluggish in the extreme. But there was hope. The building of the railroads would scatter large sums of money, immigrants would flow in, and the good times of ’56 would return.

The act of the Minnesota legislature of May 22, 1857, accepting the congressional land grant of March 5, provided, as anticipated by Congress, for the distribution of the lands to these four corporations: —

First, the Minnesota and Pacific Railroad Company, for building a main line from Stillwater through St. Anthony to Breckenridge and a “branch” from St. Anthony to St. Vincent.

Second, the Transit Railroad Company, to build from Winona by way of St. Peter to the Big Sioux River north of 45 degrees north latitude.

Third, the Root River and Southern Minnesota Railroad Company, for two lines; one from La Crescent to a junction with the Transit at Rochester; the other from St. Paul and St. Anthony via Minneapolis, up the Minnesota River, to Mankato and on to the mouth of the Big Sioux.

Fourth, the Minneapolis and Cedar Valley Railroad Company, for a line from Minneapolis by way of Mendota and Faribault to a point on the south line of the state, west of range 13.

The lands were to inure to the companies in installments of 120 sections, upon the completion of twenty-mile stretches of road for the running of regular trains. The constitutional amendment of April 15, 1858, had for a particular object the enabling of the companies to get each its first twenty miles built and receive its 120 sections (76,800 acres). The sale or hypothecation of this land would build an additional stretch, and so on. To make it the easier for the companies so to build, the amendment provided that when any ten-mile stretch should have been graded and made ready for ties and track, the company should receive $100,000 in the seven per cent. special Minnesota state railroad bonds authorized; and, when any ten-mile stretch so graded should be complete with rails and rolling stock, an additional like sum in bonds. Now these bonds were by no means a bonus; they were to be a “loan of credit,” according to the favorite phrase of the day. The companies on receiving them were obligated to pay the interest as it should accrue, and to redeem the principal when due. The most rigorous provisions were made in the amendment itself to secure these liquidations. The companies were required to pledge the net earnings of their several lines, to convey to the state by deed of trust the first 240 acres of land earned by construction, and to transfer to the state an amount of their own company bonds equal to that of the special state bonds delivered. These company bonds were to be secured by mortgages on all the properties and franchises of the companies. Human ingenuity, it was fancied, could exact no sounder guarantees. While the legislature was still in session in the midsummer of 1858, the companies let their contracts, and the dirt began to fly in a manner very cheering to citizens living along the surveyed lines, who boarded the hands and furnished forage, timber, and other supplies.

But there was trouble with the finances from the start. On August 4 Governor Sibley gave warning (why should it have been needed?) to the companies that he should hold them to a strict compliance with the obligations they had assumed. In particular he demanded that when they came to exchange their company bonds for the special state bonds they must secure to the state a prior lien on their properties and franchises. The companies balked at this, and by their attorneys applied to the supreme court of the state for a mandamus requiring the governor to issue them bonds without such priority. To obtain a construction of the law Governor Sibley waived objection to being governed by the court in a matter within his own official discretion. The mandamus issued. The text of the amendment of April 15 showed no requirement of priority, and the legislative journals show that efforts to inject such requirement had been vain. The state railroad bonds, issued to the companies as they severally completed their ten-mile stretches of grading, when placed upon the market did not go off like hot cakes. In form they were bonds of Minnesota acknowledging to owe and promising to pay dollars, signed, countersigned, and sealed like other bonds. The faith and credit of the state were pledged in the constitutional amendment to the payment of the interest and redemption of the principal. But the people understood that all this was mere form; the railroad companies, not the state, were to pay. The newspapers industriously circulated this idea. Sixty-seven members of the legislature who had voted for the issue of the bonds signed a published declaration that none of them would ever vote for a tax to pay them. When offered in the New York market they were not wanted, unless by speculative operators at a figure warranting risk. Governor Sibley’s personal representations in Wall Street did not increase confidence. He attributed his failure to factious interference of citizens and Republican newspapers.