In September, 1884, Cyrus Northrop, resigning his professorship in Yale College, assumed the presidency of the state university, bringing to the office large knowledge, a ripe experience in education and public affairs, and a remarkable gift for gaining effective support for reasonable measures. The president of the university and the state superintendent of schools being the two working members of the high school board, such effective operation was given to the “act for the encouragement of higher education” that high schools in large numbers heartily took up the desired duty and presently began feeding the university with students fitted for college work. The university was thus enabled in 1890 to drop the last of its preparatory classes.
Whatever may have been whispered in political circles, it was general public expectation that when the legislature of 1883 should come to the election of a United States senator it would do nothing else than reëlect William Windom. He had resigned from the Senate in 1881 to accept a seat in Garfield’s cabinet, but had been reappointed by the governor after the death of that President. Mr. Windom felt so confident of his reëlection that he remained at his post of duty in Washington and did not come to St. Paul until after the discovery by his friends of an indifference, not to say an opposition, needing his personal attention. The Republican caucus gave him a unanimous nomination, but the absence of fifty members was ominous. The election went to the joint convention of the two houses. After sixteen days of balloting the choice went to another. The causes of this defeat of the best man of Minnesota for the place were various. An old political quarrel in the first congressional district was a cause of no little disaffection; that Mr. Windom had built a costly house in Washington, impliedly asserting a permanent hold on the senatorship, furnished excuse to some; the fact that he had been unwisely praised by admiring supporters alienated others. Intemperate censure of opponents by a leading newspaper favoring his reëlection doubtless compacted the opposition. Mr. Windom was himself convinced that a liberal use of money was the effective means of his defeat.
President Harrison called Mr. Windom into his cabinet as secretary of the treasury, for whose duties his industry, his large training in public affairs and matured judgment fitted him. His life was suddenly ended on January 29, 1890, by a paralytic stroke coming at the close of a speech at a banquet in New York city.
On the evening of November 7, 1884, citizens of St. Paul gave a banquet in honor of General Henry Hastings Sibley, first state governor, celebrating his arrival at Mendota fifty years before. For the long series of honors and compliments bestowed on this first citizen of Minnesota the reader must resort to his biographer. In 1888 the trustees of Princeton College conferred upon him the honorary degree of Doctor of Laws, in consideration of “high personal character, scholarly attainments, and eminent public service, civil, military, and educational.” General Sibley’s death did not occur until February 18, 1891.
CHAPTER XIX
A CHRONICLE OF RECENT EVENTS
With the close of Governor Hubbard’s administration, now twenty-one years ago, the connected story of Minnesota may properly end. Only after some lapse of years may the historian presume to view affairs with discrimination, selecting those of permanent significance from the trifling and transitory. He may, however, as a mere annalist, record such facts and events as seem to have more than momentary importance.
The governors of the state have been:—
| Name. | Party. | Dates. |
| Andrew R. McGill | Republican. | January 5, 1887, to January 9, 1889. |
| William R. Merriam | Republican. | January 9, 1889, to January 4, 1893. |
| Knute Nelson | Republican. | January 4, 1893, to January 31, 1895. |
| David M. Clough | Republican. | January 31, 1895, to January 2, 1899. |
| John Lind | Democrat. | January 2, 1899, to January 7, 1901. |
| Samuel R. Van Sant | Republican. | January 7, 1901, to January 4, 1905. |
| John A. Johnson | Democrat. | January 4, 1905, to |