The History of Minnesota and Tales of the Frontier

by Charles E. Flandrau

When the general returned from the Mexican War to Illinois, he was exceedingly popular. He was made commissioner of the general land office of the United States and judge of the supreme court of the State of Illinois, and was subsequently elected to the senate of the United States; but when he was about to take his seat he ran up against the snag that is found in section 3 of article I of the constitution of the United States, which provides that a senator must have been a citizen of the United States for nine years before election, and it appeared that the general fell short of the requisite period. The consequence was that he was rejected, and he had to return to his state. But the citizens of Illinois wanted him to represent them in the senate, and as soon as he attained the proper citizenship they returned him, and he was admitted and served his full term. The general found out that his chances for reelection were not flattering, and as Minnesota was about applying for admission as a state in the Union, he decided to emigrate to that territory. What his motives were I, of course, cannot say, but as I was watching closely political events, I concluded that he had in view an election to the senate from the new State of Minnesota, and I kept my eye on his movements.

It was soon announced that the general had located the land warrant awarded to him for his services in the Mexican War, on a quarter section of land in the neighborhood of Faribault, in Rice county, in this territory, and that he intended to settle upon it. There was a little buncombe added to this announcement, to the effect that this was the first case in the history of America where a general officer had settled in person upon the land donated to him as a reward for the services he had rendered and the blood he had shed for his adopted country. We always called the general's home "The blood-bought farm."

There was an election in our territory in 1856 or 1857, I forget which, for delegate to Congress. Henry M. Rice had received the nomination of the regular Democratic convention for the position, and General Gorman (then territorial governor), Henry H. Sibley and many other leading Democrats had deliberately bolted the judgment of the convention, and nominated David Olmsted for delegate. The fight was on hot. I, of course, was for Rice, the regular nominee. I then lived well up in the Minnesota valley, at Traverse des Sioux, and we were becoming a power in the territory in a political sense, and I looked forward to the arrival of such a prominent Democrat as General Shields in our midst as an event of major political importance. He soon landed at Hastings, on the Mississippi, with a complete outfit for a permanent settlement. A good story is told of his advent at Hastings. In those days of steamboating, all the belongings of an immigrant would be landed on the levee and his freight bill would be presented to him by what we called the mud clerk, and he would take an account of his stock and pay the freight. Legend reports that the general had five barrels of whisky among his paraphernalia, and when the first one was rolled ashore he seated himself upon it to watch the debarkation, and when the bill was presented he refused to pay it because he could see only four barrels, and demanded the fifth. The clerks got on to the joke, and pretended to search for the missing barrel until the last whistle blew, when they suggested to the general that he was occupying the disturbing element. Whether the contents of the barrel ever caused any other misunderstandings history fails to record.

As soon as the general was comfortably settled on the blood-bought farm I dispatched a courier across the country to him, informing him of the political situation, and imploring him to come out for the regular Democratic ticket; but he replied in a very diplomatic way that he was too new a comer to take any active part in the election, and declined. Tom Cowan, George Magruder and I, a trio which composed the leadership of the Democracy of the Minnesota valley, decided that the general should never go to the senate if we could prevent it, and it so happened that when the first legislature of the state assembled Tom Cowan was in the senate, but all our efforts to beat him failed, and Henry M. Rice and the general were elected to the United States Senate. It was hard to beat a man in those days who was a Democrat, an Irishman and a wounded soldier.

The only unlucky thing that the general ever encountered was the fact that he drew the short term when the lots were cast for the positions the new senators were to assume.

The general served out his term in the senate just about the time the Civil War broke out, and he tendered his services to the country, and became a general of volunteers. He was wounded in some battle, and I remember reading a general order announcing that he had sufficiently recovered to ride at the head of his brigade in a buggy. I took advantage of this singular position for a military commander, and impressed into the service of the state a splendid $2,000 team of trotters belonging to Harry Lamberton, with his buggy, and himself as driver, and rode comfortably in it until the end of the Indian war, at the head of my brigade.

The general was not long in discovering that the political wind had taken a Republican direction in Minnesota, which boded him no good. So he pulled up stakes and emigrated to Texas. There he felt the public pulse, and not finding any immediate indications that he would be chosen senator, and not having any pressing business in any other line, he emigrated to California. There he found a more favorable outlook, and almost as soon as he gained a residence in the state he was nominated for the United States Senate by the Democrats, and came within one or two votes of an election.

The general had always been a bachelor before going to California, but he surrendered to the charms of a lady of that state, and married. Not being willing to remain until the next senatorial election, he migrated to the State of Missouri, where he was very soon elected to congress by a substantial majority of about 3,000; but, it being in the reconstruction period, and he being a Democrat, the state board found no difficulty in counting him out, after which event very little was heard of the general for some years, when he appeared on the lecture platform, discoursing on Mexico. This venture was not much of a success, and the general was reputed to be quite broken up financially.

His next appearance was at Washington as a candidate for doorkeeper of the senate, which office, I believe, is one of both dignity and profit; but he did not succeed in getting it, and returned to Missouri, broken in fortune and spirit. It was just at this critical period in his career that his luck returned, and he became famous in a direction that no other man in the United States has ever reached. A vacancy occurred in the office of United States senator from Missouri, either by death or some other reason, and the governor bestowed the position upon the general, thus making him a member of the body of which he had so recently sought to become the doorkeeper, and conferring upon him the peculiar and conspicuous distinction of being the only man in the republic who ever represented three states in the senate of the United States.

The general died some years ago, and the state of his original adoption, Illinois, conferred the additional immortal honor upon his memory by placing his full-length statue in bronze in the old house of representatives at the capitol in Washington, which has become the American Pantheon, in which each state is permitted to commemorate in this way two of its most honored sons.