Delegates to the State convention were elected May 14, 1889, and the convention met in Bismarck July 4 of that year. A parade in which Sitting Bull and other famous Indians participated was part of the entertainment afforded the delegates. Election to approve or disapprove the proposed constitution was held October 1, 1889, and as it was a certainty that the constitution would be accepted, legislators, State officials, and Congressmen were elected at the same time. President Harrison on November 2, 1889, declared North Dakota a State, and John Miller at the same moment became first Governor of North Dakota.
Hand in hand with the political development of the Territory had gone social and economic progress. By the time statehood was attained farmhouses and towns had broken up the barren loneliness of the prairies. Sod shanties, the pioneers' first homes, were being replaced by solid frame structures. Huge bonanza farms were employing hundreds of men and using advanced farming methods that had not yet been introduced on farms in the East (see Agriculture & Farm Life). Schools were being built in every community. Six years before statehood one private college had been established, and the University of North Dakota had opened its doors and was offering courses in the arts and sciences to ambitious pioneer youth.
POLICIES AND POLITICS SINCE STATEHOOD
When the constitutional convention for North Dakota completed its work on August 17, 1889, the product of its labors was a document six times as long as the Federal Constitution. Based upon a model constitution drawn up by Prof. James Bradley Thayer of the Harvard Law School, it contained extremely advanced and enlightened provisions, 217 sections included in 20 articles. To these have since been added 49 amendments.
The civic pattern adopted was very similar to that in force in the older States. The legislative branch in North Dakota consists of a bicameral legislature which meets in January each odd-numbered year. The executive branch is headed by the Governor, who is elected for a term of two years. He has the general veto power and authority to reject any item in an appropriation bill. The judicial department consists of a supreme court of five members, elected for 10-year terms; district courts, county courts, and justices of the peace. The State is divided into six judicial districts, each one under an elective district judge. County courts are courts of record concerned with such matters as probate and guardianship, but in counties having county courts of increased jurisdiction such courts have concurrent jurisdiction with district courts in certain cases.
The State is divided into counties whose administrative functions are carried out by boards of commissioners elected every two years. Any city or village of 500 population or more may choose either the commission form of government or the mayor and council type.
The framework of government is perhaps not very different from that in many other States. It is the legislation in North Dakota that has been anything but a copy of that in any sister State, and the outcome of some of her political experiments has often been of Nation-wide interest. The economy of the State is preponderantly rural, and the tendency has therefore been to try anything that seemed likely to help in the solution of the farmer's problems.
The legislature of the State of North Dakota met for the first time November 19, 1889. This session lasted 120 days, but the length of all subsequent sessions was fixed by the constitution at 60 days. The first men this State sent to the United States Senate were Gilbert Pierce of Fargo and Lyman Casey of Jamestown. H. C. Hansbrough of Devils Lake was the first Congressman. The supreme court had for its chief justice Guy C. H. Corliss, and Joseph M. Bartholomew and Alfred Wallin were associate justices.
In this first session the legislature instituted a department of agriculture for "the promotion of stock-breeding, agriculture, horticulture, manufactures and domestic arts." A school law enacted at this session was an enlightened and detailed piece of legislation. North Dakota had at the beginning of statehood a well-organized school system of 1,362 public schools with 1,741 teachers; a State university at Grand Forks; Catholic schools at Fargo, Grand Forks, and Bismarck; a Congregational college at Fargo; a Presbyterian college at Jamestown; and at Tower City a Baptist college, which, however, failed to survive.