and on the 19th President Zachary Taylor appointed Alexander Ramsey of Pennsylvania the first territorial governor. The territorial boundaries extended to the Missouri river, including a greater part of the present North and South Dakota. The first territorial legislature met at St Paul on the 3rd of September following. By the Federal census of 1850 the territory had a population of 6077, most of whom lived east of the Mississippi, or along the Red river in the extreme north-west. Two treaties negotiated with the Sioux by Luke Lea, commissioner, and Governor Alexander Ramsey in 1851 opened to settlement the greater part of the land within the territory west of the Mississippi, and such an unparalleled rush to the new lands took place that a census taken in 1857 showed a population of 150,037. In July 1857 a convention chosen to form a state constitution was found on assembling to be so evenly divided between the Republican and Democratic parties that organization was impossible, and the members proceeded to their work in two separate bodies. By means of conference committees, however, identical constitutions were formed, which in the following October were adopted by an almost unanimous popular vote. The state was admitted to the Union with its present boundaries on the 12th of May 1858, and the federal census of 1860 showed that the population had increased to 172,023, despite the fact that the financial panic of 1857 had severely checked the state’s growth. Minnesota furnished more than 25,000 troops for the Federal armies during the Civil War. But even more pressing than the call of the nation was the need of defending her own homes against the uprisings of the Indians within her borders. The settlements bordering on the Indian reservations had experienced more or less trouble with the Sioux for several years, the most serious outbreak having occurred in March 1857, when Ink-pa-du-ta led his band to massacre the settlers at Spirit Lake. The absence of a large proportion of the able-bodied young settlers in the northern armies was taken advantage of by the Indians, and in the summer of 1862 there was delay in paying them their yearly allowance. Suddenly towards the end of August, as if by previous understanding (although nothing of the sort was ever proved), small bands of Sioux scattered along the frontier for 200 m. and began a systematic massacre of the white settlers. Beginning with the first outbreak at Acton, Meeker county (Aug. 17), the attacks continued with increasing fury (nearly 1000 whites losing their lives) until the 23rd of September, when hastily-raised volunteer forces under Colonel H. H. Sibley decisively defeated Little Crow, the principal leader of the Kaposia band, at Wood Lake. Three days later more than 2000 of the Indians were surrounded and captured, Little Crow with a few of his companions alone escaping beyond the Missouri. A military commission tried 425 of the captives for murder and rape, of whom 321 were found guilty and 303 were condemned to death. Of these 38 were hanged at Mankato on the 26th of December 1862. Little Crow and his followers kept up desultory raids from the Dakota country, during one of which in July 1863 he lost his life. Expeditions of Sibley in 1863, and General Alfred Sully (1821–1879) in 1864, eventually drove the hostile Indians beyond the Missouri and terminated the war, which in two years had cost upwards of a thousand lives of settlers and volunteers. The opening of the Chippewa lands in the north-west and the coming of peace marked the beginning of a new period of rapid growth, the Federal census of 1870 showing a population of 439,706, or a gain of 75·8% in five years. During the same half-decade railway construction, which had begun with the opening of the railway between St Paul and Minneapolis in 1862, reached a total of more than 1000 m. For a period of five years after the financial panic of 1873 the growth was comparatively slow, but in the succeeding two years the recuperation was rapid. During the decade, 1880–1890, more than 2300 m. of railway were completed and put in operation. In September 1894 disastrous forest fires, starting in the neighbourhood of Hinckley in Pine county, destroyed that village and several neighbouring towns, causing the death of 418 people, rendering 2200 others homeless, and devastating about 350 sq. m. of forest land, entailing a loss of more than $1,000,000. The state furnished four regiments (a total of 5313 officers and men) to the volunteer army during the Spanish-American War (1898), the service of the 13th Regiment for more than a year in the Philippines being particularly notable. In October 1898 there was an uprising of the Pillager band of Chippewa Indians at Leech Lake, which was quelled by the prompt action of Federal troops. Since the first state election, which was carried by the Democratic party, the state has been generally strongly Republican in politics; but the Republican candidate for governor was defeated in 1898 by a “fusion” of Democrats and Populists, and in 1904, 1906 and 1908 a Democratic governor, John Albert Johnson, was elected, very largely because of his personal popularity.
Governors of Minnesota. | ||
| Territorial. | ||
| Alexander Ramsey | Whig | 1849–1853 |
| Willis Arnold Gorman | Democrat | 1853–1857 |
| Samuel Medary | „ | 1857–1858 |
| State. | ||
| Henry Hastings Sibley | Democrat | 1858–1860 |
| Alexander Ramsey | Republican | 1860–1863 |
| Henry A. Swift | „ | 1863–1864 |
| Stephen Miller | „ | 1864–1866 |
| William Rogerson Marshall | „ | 1866–1870 |
| Horace Austin | „ | 1870–1874 |
| Cushman Kellogg Davis | „ | 1874–1876 |
| John Sargent Pillsbury | „ | 1876–1882 |
| Lucius Fairchild Hubbard | „ | 1882–1887 |
| Andrew Ryan McGill | „ | 1887–1889 |
| William Rush Merriam | „ | 1889–1893 |
| Knute Nelson | „ | 1893–1895 |
| David Marston Clough | „ | 1895–1899 |
| John Lind | Democrat-Populist | 1899–1901 |
| Samuel R. Van Sant | Republican | 1901–1905 |
| John Albert Johnson | Democrat (died in office) | 1905–1909 |
| Adolph Olson Eberhart | Republican | 1909– |
Bibliography.—There is a well-arranged Bibliography of Minnesota by John Fletcher Williams in the Collections of the Minnesota Historical Society, vol. iii. (St Paul, 1880). Consult also Materials for the Future History of Minnesota, published by the State Historical Society (St Paul, 1856), and Isaac S. Bradley’s bibliography of Northwestern institutional history in the Proceedings of the Wisconsin State Historical Society (Madison, Wis., 1896). Of the many interesting and valuable narratives and descriptions of Minnesota in the early days, those especially worthy of mention are Beltrami’s La Découverte des sources des Mississippi et de la Rivière Sanglante (New Orleans, 1824) and the same author’s A Pilgrimage in Europe and America, leading to the Discovery of the Sources of the Mississippi and Bloody Rivers (2 vols., London, 1828); William H. Keating, Narrative of an Expedition to the Sources of the St Peter (Minnesota) River, Lake Winnepeek, Lake of the Woods, &c. . . .in 1823 (2 vols., London, 1825), an account of the explorations of Major Long; Henry R. Schoolcraft, Narrative of an Expedition through the Upper Mississippi to Itasca Lake in 1832 (New York, 1834); G. W. Featherstonhaugh, A Canoe Voyage up the Minnay Sotor (2 vols., London, 1847); Laurence Oliphant, Minnesota and the Far West (Edinburgh, 1855); and Frederika Bremer, The Homes of the New World: Impressions of America (2 vols., New York, 1864). For the territorial period consult also E. S. Seymour, Sketches of Minnesota, the New England of the West (New York, 1850); J. Wesley Bond, Minnesota and its Resources (New York, 1853); C. A. Andrews, Minnesota and Dacotah (Washington, 1857); and C. E. Flandreau, The History of Minnesota and Tales of the Frontier (St Paul, 1901). The Collections of the Minnesota State Historical Society contain much valuable material on the history of the state, notably E. D. Neill’s “French Voyageurs to Minnesota during the Seventeenth Century” (1872); E. D. Neill’s “Early French Forts” (1889); T. F. Moran’s “How Minnesota became a State” (1898); H. L. Moss’s “Last Days of Wisconsin Territory and Early Days of Minnesota Territory” (1898); C. E. Flandreau’s “Reminiscences of Minnesota during the Territorial Period” (1901); C. D. Gilfillan’s “Early Political History of Minnesota” (1901); and James H. Baker’s Lives of the Governors of Minnesota (1908). For the Sioux uprising consult Isaac V. D. Heard, History of the Sioux War and the Massacres of 1862 and 1863 (New York, 1864); Charles S. Bryant and Abel B. Murch, A History of the Great Massacre by the Sioux Indians in Minnesota (Cincinnati, 1864); and S. R. Foot, “The Sioux Indian War,” in Iowa Historical Record, vols. x. and xi. (1894–1895). Consult also Minnesota in the Civil and Indian Wars, 1861–1865 (2 vols., St Paul, 1890–1893). The best general account of the state’s history is W. W. Folwell’s Minnesota, the North Star State (Boston, 1908), in the “American Commonwealth series”; E. D. Neill’s Concise History of Minnesota (Minneapolis, 1887); and T. H. Kirk’s Illustrated History of Minnesota (St Paul, 1887) may also be consulted. For an account of the administration consult Frank L. McVey, The Government of Minnesota
