In his inaugural address of 1870 Governor Austin mentioned as a notorious fact the frequency with which county treasurers retired from office with much more wealth than they possessed at the time of their elections. To secure this office, caucuses and conventions were packed and votes secured by methods little short of outright bribery. But there was no response from the legislature. It was not till Governor Pillsbury’s second term that the legislature of 1878 yielded to his urgent recommendations and passed the act providing for a public examiner. It was made the duty of this officer to supervise the bookkeeping of all state banks and institutions and all state and county auditors and treasurers. He was authorized to prescribe correct and uniform methods of bookkeeping. He was required to visit all these institutions and officials without previous warning, and verify and inspect all the moneys, assets, and securities held by them respectively. His powers extended to railroad companies, so far as the exaction of gross-earnings taxes was concerned. The first appointee, Henry M. Knox, performed the duties with such intelligence and industry as to place the state under lasting obligations. In his last message (1881) Governor Pillsbury expressed his satisfaction over the operation of the law by saying: “No single act of legislation in this state has ever been productive of more good in purifying the public service than the creation of the office of public examiner.”
The penalty for homicide in the first degree had, from the beginning of organized government in Minnesota, been death without alternative. An act of March 5, 1868, laid on the trial jury the duty of deciding whether the convicted murderer should suffer death or imprisonment for life. Governor Davis in two messages strongly denounced this leaving the penalty for murder to the caprice of juries, citing a case in which one of three convicts equally guilty was put to death, while the others received a sentence of life imprisonment. A tragical incident brought the attention of a later legislature to the matter and caused a return to traditional policy. On September 6, 1876, eight men from Missouri, armed and mounted, rode into the village of Northfield in Rice County. Two of their number entered the bank and ordered Heywood, the cashier, to deliver the money. On his refusal they shot him dead and wounded his assistant. Securing a small amount of booty, the robbers passed out to find their companions engaged in a fusillade with citizens who had found arms and chosen points of vantage. One unarmed citizen had fallen, and two of the bandits had dropped dead from their horses. The survivors rode away with all possible speed, firing at citizens who showed themselves on the streets. After a pursuit of some days, four of the bandits were surrounded in a swamp near Mankato. One was killed and three brothers named Younger were captured. Two had evaded pursuit and escaped from the state. Upon arraignment the three Youngers pleaded guilty, and, as there was no occasion for a jury, received sentences of life imprisonment. They were model prisoners. One died in 1889, another committed suicide in 1902, and the third was pardoned in 1903.
The political campaign of 1878 in the third (the Minneapolis) district, was diversified by a personal contest of more than local interest. The Republican candidate for representative in Congress was William D. Washburn, who had been an aspirant in 1868, but declined the candidacy because of the great defection led by Ignatius Donnelly. The Democrats, doubtless according to an understanding, made no nomination, thus virtually throwing the party vote over to Mr. Donnelly, who had been named as the candidate of the Greenback Labor party. Ignoring national issues, Mr. Donnelly appeared as the champion of the Minnesota farmers oppressed by the railroads and the Minneapolis Millers’ Association. It was charged and widely credited that this organization was fixing the prices of wheat at every railroad station in the state. This it was doing by direct dictation to buyers, and also indirectly through the making of grades. There was in use for inspection and grading a small cylindrical vessel of brass with an attached scale beam, which the farmers were told could be so manipulated by a practiced hand that it would yield three grades of wheat from the same bag full. It was charged that the association buyers not only undergraded, but also reduced the prices for lower grades out of all just proportion. Mr. Donnelly never had a finer opportunity for the exercise of his unequaled powers of ridicule and invective. He denounced his opponent as the willing tool of the corporations and the Millers’ Association. He perambulated the district haranguing great crowds, whom he convulsed with scornful tirades upon “the swindling brass kittle.”
The “brass kittle campaign,” however, resulted simply in reducing the normal Republican majority of the district from 10,000 to 3003 votes. But Mr. Donnelly obtained a majority of nearly 500 of the country vote. When Congress met in December, 1879, Mr. Donnelly appeared as a contestant. He claimed that the count had gone against him by reason of illegal ballots, of bribery, and of the colonization of voters. The House committee on elections lingered long in their investigation, partly because it was diversified with an episode which for the time attracted more interest than the contest itself. A letter addressed to the chairman of the committee, Springer of Illinois, made him an offer of $5000 to keep Washburn in his seat. The authorship was later fixed by a special committee of investigation on one Finley, a friend of Donnelly. They did not find that Mr. Donnelly had inspired the letter or had known that it was to be written and sent. The alleged object, of course, was to so incense Springer against Mr. Washburn that he would immediately swing his committee for the innocent contestant.
Still it was a Democratic House, willing, according to abundant precedent, to seat its partisan contestant if any plausible explanation could be invented. On the last day of the session two reports came in from the committee on elections, each signed by five members. The committee had arrived at no conclusion. The House ordered the reports printed and recommitted, and that was the last ever heard of the contest. Mr. Washburn served out the term with great satisfaction to his constituents, and was accorded two reëlections by majorities which nobody had occasion to question.
Ignatius Donnelly thus closed his career in national politics. He appeared later in two or more state legislatures, and was editor of several short-lived weekly newspapers. In early life he had published a small volume of poems and some prose essays in which he gave assurance of literary ability. His occupation as statesman gone, he now turned to authorship. In the winter of 1880-81 he composed a geographical romance, entitled “Atlantis, the Lost Continent.” He dressed the ancient classical legend in such attractive garb as to interest a great body of readers, serious and other. Many editions have been published. This work was followed by another, similar in character, under the title of “Ragnarök.” The author elaborated the ingenious theory that the mantle of drift covering large portions of the northern hemisphere had been landed where it lies, when the earth at some time crossed the orbit of some great meteor. This fascinating book was also widely read. Mr. Donnelly next took up the study of a question which had already been among his recreations, that of the authorship of the plays and poems of Shakespeare. His “Great Cryptogram” of a thousand octavo pages contains the results of “an incalculable labor, reaching through many weary years.” In the first part of King Henry the Fourth, Mr. Donnelly professed to have discovered the key to an involved cipher showing that Francis Bacon, Nicholas Bacon’s son, had a mysterious connection with that work, although making no clear and direct claim to its authorship. There was a bewildering array of “root numbers” and “modifying numbers,” beyond the understanding of the wayfaring man. No hidden secrets were revealed by the ingenious and complicated computations, and no additions to historical knowledge were obtained. But Mr. Donnelly only claimed to have made a small beginning of a great work left to future investigators. The book, however, excited great interest among people concerned with the Bacon-Shakespeare controversy, and formed a notable addition to that literature. In 1889 the indefatigable author brought out a novel under the title “Cæsar’s Column,” being a graphic and horrible picture of the fancied results of the sway of an unbridled plutocracy in America. Published at a happy moment, the book was sold by hundreds of thousands of copies, not only in America but in translated versions in Europe. The first edition appeared under the name of Edmund Boisgilbert, and the author had no little difficulty in finding a publisher. In another novel, “Dr. Huguet,” the author appealed for a humaner treatment of people of color, but the public did not respond by buying largely. Later ephemeral volumes and pamphlets added nothing to the repute of a Minnesota author known wherever the English tongue was spoken.
The superintendent of public instruction during the Pillsbury administrations was the Rev. David Burt. Although his education was clerical and his educational experience brief, by a conscientious devotion to the novel duties he carried forward successfully the work of his predecessors. He did much to annul the chronic opposition to the normal schools, and justified the regents of the university in asking more liberal appropriations for buildings and appliances, in spite of the small numbers of its early graduating classes. He persuaded the legislature with no little persistence that the common school fund should be distributed to the districts according to the number of children attending, and not according to the census of those of school age.
The legislature of 1877, acting under an amendment to the constitution adopted two years before, extended to women the right to vote on all measures relating to schools, including the choice of school officers; and “to hold any office pertaining solely to the management of schools.” A later constitutional change extended this privilege to library officers and measures. It has been effectively exercised in but few instances.