After the midsummer of 1863 matters were looking up in Minnesota. The victories of Vicksburg and Gettysburg gave hope of an early return of peace. Money was plentiful and prices were rising. Notwithstanding the homestead law, there was a market for well-situated public land. John S. Pillsbury of St. Anthony had been appointed to a vacancy in the board of regents in November of that year, and immediately applied his remarkable business talent to the university affairs. His conclusions were embodied in a bill introduced into the state senate of 1864, of which he was a member. Enacted into law March 4, the bill created a special board of three regents: John S. Pillsbury, Orlando C. Merriman, a lawyer of St. Anthony, and John Nicols, a merchant of St. Paul, also a state senator. This board was authorized to sell land to the amount of twelve thousand acres and use the proceeds in “extricating” the institution. Taking advantage of a time of general liquidation and scaling down, they bought in claims of many creditors at thirty-three per cent. of their face. The bondholders, satisfied at length that they had no recourse upon the state, moderated their demands and consented to “equitable terms” of adjustment. In this way a “great state” redeemed the bonds it had authorized by law, and canceled a body of debts pronounced by the regents of 1860 to be “honestly due.”
It took two years to accomplish this “extrication,” so that the legislature of 1867 was ready to make a small appropriation to renovate the building and open “a grammar and normal department.” It was not until October 7 of that year that the doors were opened, and thirty-one boys and girls were enrolled in the first term. The school being of academy grade, no objection was made to the admission of girls, but there was no intention to settle then the question of coeducation in the university. It was, however, thus settled.
The special board, having accomplished its purposes to the satisfaction of all concerned, recommended to the legislature of 1868 the transfer of control to a permanent board of regents. The act of February 18, 1868, passed in pursuance of this counsel, is the charter of the university, and has not been materially modified. The new board appointed by the governor with the consent of the senate properly contained the names of Pillsbury, Nicols, and Merriman. At the close of the school year of 1869 the regents resolved to open the “College of Science, Literature, and the Arts,” as the statute ambitiously named the academic department. Although there were but fourteen provisional freshmen and a hundred and fifty preparatory students, a president, eight professors, and one instructor were elected. The faculty thus constituted organized in September, and took up the work before them, mostly that of a fitting school.
The title of the charter of February 18, 1868, contained the clause, “and to establish an agricultural college therein.” The original act of 1851 creating the university named as one of its five departments that of agriculture, but on March 10, 1858, a separate “state agricultural college” was established and located at Glencoe in McLeod County. Minnesota’s share of the so-called Morrill land grant of 1862 for the benefit of colleges of agriculture and the mechanic arts was 120,000 acres. By an act approved March 2, 1865, the proceeds of this grant were applied and appropriated to the said agricultural college of Minnesota. What influences or interests prevailed to induce the people of McLeod County to consent to the merger of their institution with the university are not well known, but the legislature of 1868 decided on that policy, and inviolably appropriated the income of the Morrill land grant to the united institutions. The friends of the university were, of course, gratified over the return to the scheme of the original creative act of 1851 and the concentration of the state’s resources for the higher education. Governor Marshall had the satisfaction of seeing the University of Minnesota, in which he had been deeply interested from its statutory creation, at length fairly launched on a career of promise which he lived to see fulfilled. He had also the gratification of seeing the color line removed from the state constitution by the adoption, at the election of 1868, of an amendment expunging the word “white” out of the article on the elective franchise. A much needed revision of the laws of the state went into effect about the same time.
Ignatius Donnelly, who had been elected to Congress in 1862, had been accorded two reëlections. His diligence in business and readiness in debate had gained him influence in the House, and his campaign speeches had increased his popularity at home. To all appearance he was certain of a third reëlection in the fall of 1868, and among his admirers were those who suggested that the state and country would profit by his promotion to the Senate. Such propositions were not relished by the friends of Senator Ramsey, whose first term would be expiring in the following winter. Elimination of Mr. Donnelly thereupon became to them a desirable political object. It might not have been attained but for an error of Mr. Donnelly himself in a moment of perhaps excusable exasperation.
In the winter of 1868, in a letter to a constituent explaining why he had not pushed a certain railroad land grant bill, Mr. Donnelly stated that E. B. Washburne, member of Congress from Illinois, had repeatedly hindered his efforts to secure legislation for his state. Mr. Washburne replied through a St. Paul newspaper, April 10, 1868, attacking Mr. Donnelly’s personal character, and declaring him cowardly and mendacious. He represented him also as “whining like a schoolboy” over his disappointments. Thus assailed, Mr. Donnelly, on May 2, made on the floor of the House a consummate display of those powers of ridicule and invective of which he was master. Tolerated by the House because of its enjoyment of the play of rhetorical lightning, and perhaps because of a feeling that the speaker’s indignation had some just ground, the Minnesota member descended into an utterly indefensible tirade. It has ever since been traditional in Minnesota that that speech “cooked Donnelly’s goose.”
Washburne could only say in wrath that he would “make no reply to a member covered all over with crime and infamy, a man whose record is stained with every fraud, a man who has proved false alike to his friends, his constituents, his country, his religion, and his God.” Both gentlemen apologized for using unparliamentary language, and the special committee of the House reported that as neither had made charges affecting the action of the other as a representative, they might be left to settle personal difficulties outside. On his return to Minnesota after the close of the session, Mr. Donnelly gave expression to his sentiments towards the Washburn family in a series of speeches in which his peculiar gifts were displayed in the highest degree.
The friends of Senator Ramsey selected for their support, as successor to Mr. Donnelly, William D. Washburn, a younger brother of the representative from Illinois just mentioned, who had won for himself a place in their esteem for ability and character. When the hour for the convention came, Mr. Donnelly’s supporters “bolted,” and in a separate body put their idol in nomination. Seeing the regular convention so largely depleted, Mr. Washburn withdrew after the first ballot. General Lucius F. Hubbard also declined the honor of a candidacy; and it was only after assurances of active and substantial support that General C. C. Andrews was persuaded to enter the lists. The Democrats saw their opportunity in this split in the Republican ranks, and put in nomination and elected Eugene M. Wilson of Minneapolis, a gentleman whose character and services entitled him to their support. He served to the general satisfaction in the Forty-first Congress.
Mr. Donnelly now came out openly as a candidate for the senatorship, and he had reason to expect an election. On the eve of the Republican caucus, however, his muster roll contained but twenty-six names of those who could be depended on. Twenty-eight votes were necessary to nominate. Failing to secure absolute pledges of the two lacking votes, Mr. Donnelly advised his friends to give their support to Morton S. Wilkinson, who was willing to serve another term in the Senate. His hope was to give Mr. Ramsey a rest from senatorial labors. In that he was disappointed. Mr. Ramsey’s friends secured the adoption of a resolution to dispense with informal balloting, thus revealing their strength, but they were only able to give him the exact number of votes (twenty-eight) necessary to a choice. The election followed as a matter of course, and Mr. Ramsey continued in a senatorial career creditable to himself and serviceable to the state and nation. Mr. Donnelly did not at once renounce the colors of the Republican party, but he was ever after a free lance in politics. He was repeatedly elected to the state legislature.