It was to be expected that, upon the anticipated retirement of Governor Miller, General William R. Marshall, the most prominent among the founders of the Republican party in Minnesota, who had added a highly honorable military career to his civil record, would be called to succeed. And he was; but not without opposition from other gentlemen who had also distinguished themselves in both civil and military duties. It took twenty-two ballotings in the Republican convention to secure his nomination. At the polls he met that veteran of Democracy, the Hon. Henry M. Rice, whose popularity, especially among “old Territorians,” was so great as to reduce his majority to less than 3600 in a total of 31,000 votes. He took office in January, 1866, and so commended himself by a judicious practical administration that his reËlection in the fall of the following year was but formally contested. Mr. Rice closed his political career with the campaign of 1865, which he survived for a quarter of a century.

Marshall’s double term was a period of recovery and repair after the exhaustion of the wars; and it was something more. Neither the people severally nor the state were heavily burdened with debt, and there was work for all and good prices for produce. Railroad building was continued on a scale of a few more than one hundred miles a year. In 1867 the line now known as the Iowa and Minnesota Division of the Chicago, Milwaukee and St. Paul Railroad, begun at both ends, was completed, and trains were put on from the Falls of St. Anthony to Prairie du Chien, whence rail connection eastward already existed. Minnesota was now in the great world all the year round. No important terminals were reached by additions to other lines, although seven hundred and sixty-six miles had been constructed by the close of the decade.

The development of the common schools of Minnesota was tardy. The act of 1851, providing for a state system, created the office of superintendent of public instruction, but attached only a nominal salary to it. Four persons were appointed in as many years, whose duties seem to have been confined to making formal annual reports. From 1856 to 1860 the office was virtually, if not technically, vacant. The legislature of 1860 devolved the duties upon the titular chancellor of the university, the Rev. Edward Duffield Neill, who held it till April 29, 1861, when he resigned to take the chaplaincy of the First Minnesota Infantry, leaving the office to a competitor for that position. In the legislative session of 1862 the school laws were revised and the secretary of state was made ex-officio state superintendent. This absurd arrangement continued for five years, against the advice of the two gentlemen who held the double office.

Governor Marshall informed the legislature of 1867 that the children of school age in the state were over a hundred thousand, and that the school fund had grown to nearly a million and a half. Upon his earnest recommendation the office of state superintendent was reËstablished, with a salary more than nominal, but inadequate. He appointed Mark H. Dunnell of Owatonna, a young lawyer who had been successful as a teacher in his native state of Maine.

Mr. Dunnell threw himself into his duties with great enthusiasm and industry. He gathered the teachers into “institutes” for pedagogical instruction and raised the standard of qualification for certificates. A state teachers’ association was organized to stimulate pride in the teaching profession and provide for interchange of ideas and experiences. It is notable that Mr. Dunnell as late as 1869 thought it necessary to argue in behalf of a public school system free from religious dogma or discipline. The organization of high schools in the leading towns had already discouraged the proprietors of numerous denominational academies and seminaries desirous of holding the secondary field.

In 1858 a bill had been worked through the first state legislature to establish three normal schools, one at Winona as soon as practicable after passage, the others at times to be later determined. This bill was fathered by Dr. John W. Ford of Winona, an enthusiast in the cause of professional education for teachers. So little was known in the longitude of Minnesota of what a “normal school” might be, that it is not strange that the friends of the bill got more credit in the newspapers and among the people for securing a state institution for each of three towns than for zeal in the cause of education. Six years passed before a beginning was made in the first state normal school at Winona, under the charge of William F. Phelps, an Oswego graduate. No man less confident of the righteousness of his cause, nor less willing to fight a bitter opposition, could have built up a school for teachers which has served as model for many others in Minnesota and other states. The second state normal school was opened in Mankato in 1868; the third in St. Cloud in the next year.

The “wing and extension” of the great building planned for the territorial regents of the university in 1856, and built in that year and the next, stood empty for ten years, except that at different times private teachers were allowed to hold their classes in some of the rooms. The legislature of 1858 authorized the regents to borrow $40,000 and issue ten per cent. bonds in evidence of debt. These securities were negotiated in New York after great effort and at a ruinous discount. The claim was later made that they could not have been disposed of at all had they not been improperly represented to be virtually bonds of the state. The proceeds released the regents from obligations which they had personally assumed and satisfied a portion of the creditors.

The Republican legislature of 1860 thought it time to oust the “old Democratic board” and install a new administration. The new “state board,” consisting of three members ex-officiis and five appointed, had nothing to report to the next session but a debt of $93,500, including $8000 of overdue interest. Their recommendation was that the land grant be turned over to the creditors, the campus and building being retained. An act of Congress of March 2, 1861, donating to the state the university lands “reserved” for the territorial university, rendered such action feasible.

Governor Ramsey could make no other suggestion to the legislature of 1862, and that body conferred the desired authority. In 1862 wild lands were a drug in the market. “Pine” would not go at four dollars an acre. The regents reported to the legislature of 1863 that the creditors were not disposed to accept “equitable terms.” That legislature did not formally dissolve the corporation, but ordered the regents to turn over to the state auditor, as state land commissioner, all the lands, buildings, and appurtenances. This was accordingly done, and the University of Minnesota existed only in supposition.

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.

In the fall of 1869 an effort was made to give Mr. Donnelly the regular nomination for the governorship. This was not opposed by the Ramsey leaders, who were willing to bring back into the fold so dangerous a rival. That effort, however, had but slight recognition in the nominating convention, which chose for the party candidate a gentleman as yet not widely known in state politics, the Hon. Horace Austin of St. Peter.

The removal of the state capital from St. Paul, which would have been accomplished in 1857 but for the high-handed exploit of Councilor Rolette, though frequently broached informally, was not seriously taken up by any legislature till 1869. A bill for removal to Kandiyohi County, on to land belonging to the state, was passed through both houses so easily and rapidly as to invite the surmise that the necessary votes had been secured in advance. Superfluous debate was shut out by the operation of the previous question. The vote in the house was 39 to 7, that in the senate 12 to 10; but the house could not muster enough votes to pass the bill over Governor Marshall’s veto. The veto message was moderate in tone; suggesting that it would be wise to hear from the people on the question, that there should be no haste about a final location of the capital, and that it was no time to expend a great sum of money on buildings.

Two years later a final proposal to remove the capital from St. Paul to the imagined city of Stanton met with a prompt indefinite postponement.