Minnesota Admitted to the Union

Minnesota Admitted to the Union

On May 11, 1858, Minnesota became the 32nd state to join the Union. Before admission to statehood, the region had a rich history as the home of several Native American tribes, the scene of European explorers' and fur trappers' adventures, and an area that had attracted thousands of hopeful pioneers. As a state located in the heart of America's “breadbasket,” Minnesota continued to make important contributions to the history and strength of the nation.

Apart from the 14th-century Norsemen who, some have alleged, may have reached the area, Frenchmen, seeking fur pelts and a western passage through the North American continent, were the first Europeans to go to what is now called Minnesota. Pierre Ésprit Radisson and Médart Chouart, Sieur des Groseilliers, may have visited the region, possibly even as early as 1654 or 1655. Daniel Greysolon, Sieur Duluth (Dulhut), led a party to Minnesota in 1679 for the purpose of improving relations between the Chippewa and Sioux tribes who inhabited the region. On the western shore of Lake Superior, near the site of the city that today bears his name, Duluth held a council with the Sioux. Then, Duluth and his men continued inland to the Mille Lacs Sioux village, where he recorded that “on the second of July, 1679, I had the honor to set up the arms of His Majesty in the great village of Nadouecioux called Izatys, where no Frenchman had ever been, nor to the Songakitons and Quetbatons, distant 26 leagues from the first, where I also set up the arms of His Majesty in the same year 1679.” Duluth sent members of his expedition to probe the wilderness west of Mille Lacs, and they reported seeing a “great lake whose water is not good to drink.” However, the exact area they explored is unknown; perhaps they reached the Pacific Ocean or came upon the Great Salt Lake.

In 1680, Louis Hennepin, a Flemish priest sent by René-Robert Cavelier de La Salle, to explore the area of the upper Mississippi, discovered the Falls of St. Anthony. The adventures surrounding Hennepin's coming upon this great power source, which centuries later helped make Minneapolis the milling center of the United States, were recounted in the Description de la Louisiane, which was published in Paris in 1683. Whether Hennepin himself actually wrote this book is questionable, but there is no doubt that its tales about the Minnesota wilderness aroused great interest in Europe.

Meanwhile, French explorers and trappers continued to venture into the region of Minnesota. In 1700 Pierre Charles Le Sueur led a party up the Minnesota River to the Blue Earth River. There he built Fort L'Huillier, a small post that for two years was a lucrative fur-trading center.

Between 1701 and 1714 the War of the Spanish Succession occupied the energies of the French in both the Old and New Worlds. On the North American continent, the hostilities with England put a temporary end to explorations in the Northwest, and not until 1727 did the French again sponsor an expedition to that region. In that year, however, René Boucher de La Perrière, led a party into the area of the upper Mississippi. In September the expedition landed at the upper end of Minnesota's Lake Pepin, where Fort Beauharnois was built. The fortification, which included a number of buildings and a small chapel, might have served as a base for French explorations farther west. But La PerriŠre returned to Montreal in 1728, and shortly after his departure the soldiers at Beauharnois became involved in attacks and counterattacks against the Fox and Sioux tribes.

In 1731 Pierre Gaultier de Varennes de la Vérendrye led an expedition into Minnesota. The men in the Vérendrye party established Fort St. Pierre at the western end of Rainy Lake in 1731, and built the larger Fort St. Charles at Lake of the Woods in 1732. The latter fortification served as a base of operations for extensive French explorations in the Midwest during the decades that followed. Between 1756 and 1763, French and English forces again clashed, and the English victory in the French and Indian War cost France its empire in the New World. By a secret treaty, France in 1762 ceded the area west of the Mississippi to Spain, and by the Treaty of Paris of 1763 it surrendered Canada and its claims east of the Mississippi to England. These treaties technically divided control of Minnesota between Spain and England, but in practice the latter nation controlled the entire Minnesota region for the next 50 years, even though by the Treaty of Paris of 1783 England officially turned over its claim to eastern Minnesota to the new American nation, which made it part of the newly created Northwest Territory four years later.

During England's half-century of dominance of Minnesota, a thriving fur trade developed in the area. Independent traders were active in the Minnesota wilds at this time, but the North West Company, an organization of Montreal businessmen, conducted by far the most extensive operations in the area. Every year during the last decades of the 18th century, pelts worth tens of thousands of dollars were collected at Grand Portage, and from there sent to Montreal, where they were reshipped to Europe. As the center of the British fur trade, Grand Portage, located on the western shore of Lake Superior in northeastern Minnesota, has a place of great importance in the state's history. Accordingly, Grand Portage was declared a national monument in 1958.

Although the United States formally gained control of eastern Minnesota by the Treaty of Paris of 1783, and of western Minnesota by the Louisiana Purchase of 1803, the nation did not make any substantial efforts to exert its authority in the area until after the War of 1812. Then, realizing that American claims to the Midwest would be recognized only if the nation actually occupied the area, the United States built a series of frontier forts that would serve as defenses against foreign enemies. In 1819 a United States Army expedition, which was taken over by Colonel Josiah Snelling the following year, set out to build the first American fortification in Minnesota. Located at the juncture of the Minnesota and Mississippi Rivers on land that explorer Zebulon M. Pike had purchased in 1805 from the Sioux, the fort was virtually completed by 1822. Originally known as Fort St. Anthony, it was renamed Fort Snelling in 1825. As an “isle of safety” in the wilderness and as a center from which expeditions to explore, survey, and eventually settle the surrounding region went forth, Fort Snelling played a critical role in the growth of Minnesota.

Although the United States effectively removed the British presence from the upper Mississippi region in the years following the War of 1812, Minnesota did not attract American settlers for several decades. Instead, as had been the case during the periods of French and British dominance, most Europeans who visited Minnesota in the early 19th century were either explorers or fur trappers. Like their predecessors, these adventurers played an important part in Minnesota's history. The explorers conducted numerous expeditions into the Minnesota wilderness and eventually discovered Lake Itasca, the source of the Mississippi River, while the traders, most of whom were associated with John Jacob Astor's American Fur Company, reaped great profits from the pelts of the region.

Changes in fashion, which curtailed the demand for furs in the 1830s and 1840s, brought an end to the dominance of the trappers and explorers in Minnesota. In 1837, meanwhile, the American government negotiated treaties with the Sioux and Chippewa that extinguished the tribes' title to the triangle of land between the Mississippi and lower St. Croix Rivers. This opened the first wedge to permanent settlement, and within a few years the influx of migrants (which neighboring areas had already experienced) began to reach Minnesota. Lumberers followed the fur traders into the region. Minnesota became not only a major lumbering area, but also an important transportation center, first as the northern terminus of the growing traffic on the Mississippi River, and later as the western terminus of the inland waterway extending through the Great Lakes to points east. Ultimately, after the opening of the St. Lawrence Seaway in the 20th century, the inland water route would stretch all the way to the Atlantic Ocean, paralleling the path of the early fur traders.

With new interest in the region, the population of what would soon be the state of Minnesota mounted. By 1849 about 4,000 American settlers inhabited the area, and the towns of St. Paul and Stillwater counted 910 and 609 residents, respectively. During the 19th century, much of the area of present Minnesota was successively included in the jurisdictions of the Indiana, Illinois, Michigan, Wisconsin, and Iowa Territories. Michigan gained statehood in 1837, and Iowa in 1846. When Wisconsin was admitted to the Union in 1846, Minnesota's legal status was temporarily ambiguous. Faced with this situation, a convention that met at Stillwater on August 26, 1848, decided to send Henry Hastings Sibley as a delegate to the national Congress. Sibley asked Congress to form a new territory of Minnesota to serve the needs of the area's residents, and Congress complied on March 3, 1849.

In 1851, 1854, and 1855 the United States government concluded treaties with the Sioux and Chippewa that opened to settlement most of the area in Minnesota west of the Mississippi and about half the northern region of the territory. The opening of these rich lands resulted in a population boom of almost unprecedented dimensions. Between 1850 and 1857 Minnesota's population grew from 6,077 to 150,037, and countless farms and towns appeared across the expanse of the territory. The expansion of the railroads after the Civil War would account for further large gains.

Minnesota did not remain a territory for long. Its rapid growth quickly made it eligible for statehood, and on February 26, 1857, Congress approved an enabling act that empowered Minnesota officials to call a constitutional convention. The convention met on July 13, 1857, and by August 28, 1857, it had drawn up a state constitution. This document was approved in a popular referendum on October 13, 1857, and was submitted to President James Buchanan on January 6, 1858. In the nation's capital, Minnesota's application for admission to the Union became entangled with the more controversial issue of Kansas' statehood, so that several months passed before Congress finally approved the application on May 11, 1858, and Minnesota was admitted to the Union as the 32nd state.