Minnesota, the North Star State

by William Watts Folwell

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.