Part 6 (1/2)
Under the influence of this great rush of immigration it is very natural that the prevailing idea should be that lands would greatly increase in value in the near future, and everybody became a speculator. Towns and cities sprang into existence like mushrooms in a night. Scarcely anyone was to be seen without a town-site map in his hands, the advantages and beauties of which fict.i.tious metropolis he was ready to present in the most eloquent terms. Everything useful was neglected, and speculation was rampant. There were no banks of issue, and all the money that was in the country was borrowed in the East. In order to make borrowing easy, the law placed no restrictions on the rate of interest, and the usual terms were three per cent per month, with the condition that if the princ.i.p.al was not paid at maturity, the interest should be increased to five per cent per month. Everybody was in debt on these ruinous terms; which, of course, could not last long before the inevitable explosion.
The price of lands, and especially town lots, increased rapidly, and attained fabulous rates; in fact, some real property in St. Paul sold in 1856 for more money than it has ever since brought.
THE PANIC OF 1857.
The bubble burst by the announcement of the failure of the Ohio Life Insurance and Trust Company, which reached St. Paul on Aug. 24, 1857.
The failure of this financial inst.i.tution precipitated a panic all over the country. It happened just on the recurrence of the twenty year period which has marked the pecuniary disasters of the country, beginning with 1837. Its effects on Minnesota were extremely disastrous.
The eastern creditors demanded their money, and the Minnesota debtors paid as long as a dollar remained in the country, and all means of borrowing more being cut off, a most remarkable condition of things resulted. Cities like St. Paul and St. Anthony, having a population of several thousands each, were absolutely without money to carry on the necessary commercial functions. A temporary remedy was soon discovered, by every merchant and shopkeeper issuing tickets marked ”Good for one dollar at my store,” and every fractional part of a dollar, down to five cents. This device tided the people for a while, but scarcely any business establishment in the territory weathered the storm, and many people who had considered themselves beyond the chance of disaster were left without resources of any kind and hopelessly bankrupt. The distress was great and universal, but it was bravely met, and finally overcome.
Dreadful as this affliction was to almost everyone in the territory, it turned out to be a blessing in disguise. It compelled the people to abandon speculation, and seek honest labor in the cultivation of the soil and the development of the splendid resources that generous nature had bestowed upon the country. Farms were opened by the thousands, everybody went to work, and in ten or a dozen years, Minnesota had a surplus of forty millions of bushels of wheat with which to supply the hungry world.
LAND t.i.tLES.
All the lands of Minnesota were the property of the United States, and t.i.tle to them could only be obtained through the regular methods of preemption, town-site entry, public sales, or private entries. One event occurred on Aug. 14, 1848, which ill.u.s.trates so clearly the way in which western men protect their rights that I will relate it. The recognized price of public lands was one dollar and a quarter per acre, and all pioneer settlers were willing to pay that sum, but when a public sale was made, any one could bid whatever he was willing to pay. Under the administration of President Polk, a public sale of lands was ordered to be made at the land office at St. Croix Falls, of lands lying partly in Minnesota and partly in Wisconsin. The lands advertised for sale included those embraced in St. Paul and St. Anthony. The settlers selected Henry H. Sibley as their trustee, to buy their lands for them, to be conveyed to them subsequently. It was a high offense under the United States laws to do any act that would tend to prevent persons bidding at the sales. Mr. Sibley appeared at the sale, and bid off every tract of land that was occupied by an actual settler at the price of $1.25 per acre. The general, in a paper he read before the Historical Society, says of this affair:
”I was selected by the actual settlers to bid off portions of the land for them, and when the hour for business arrived, my seat was universally surrounded by a number of men with huge bludgeons. What was meant by the proceeding, I could, of course, only surmise, but I would not have envied the fate of the individual who would have ventured to bid against me.”
It has always been a.s.sumed in the far West, and I think justly, that the pioneers who first settle the land and give it value should enjoy every advantage that flows from such priority, and the violation of laws that impede such opportunity is a very venial offense. So universal was the confidence reposed in Mr. Sibley, that many of the French settlers, the t.i.tle to whose lands became vested in him, by his purchase at this sale, insisted that it should remain in him, and he found it quite difficult in many cases to get them to accept deeds from him.
THE FIRST NEWSPAPER.
Although the first message of the governor went a great way in introducing Minnesota to the world, she was particularly fortunate in the establishment of her first newspapers. The Stillwater convention of 1848, of which I have spoken, first suggested to Dr. A. Randall, who was an attache of Dr. Owen's geological corps, then engaged in a survey of this region by order of the government, the necessity of a newspaper for the new territory. He was possessed of the means and enterprise to accomplish the then rather difficult undertaking, and was promised ample support by leading men of the territory. He returned to his home in Cincinnati in the fall of 1848, intending to purchase the plant and start the paper that year, but the navigation of the rivers closed earlier than usual, and he was foiled in his attempt. He, however, set up his press in Cincinnati, and got out a number or two of his paper there. It was then called the ”_Minnesota Register_,” and appeared as of the date of April 27, 1849, and as printed in St. Paul. It was in fact printed in Cincinnati about two weeks earlier. It contained valuable articles from the pens of H. H. Sibley and Henry M. Rice. These articles, added to Mr. Randall's extensive knowledge of the country, made the first issue a great local success. It was the first Minnesota paper ever published, and bears date just one day ahead of the _Pioneer_, subsequently published by James M. Goodhue, which was actually printed in the territory. Dr. Randall did not carry out his intention, but was caught in the California vortex, and did not return to Minnesota.
James M. Goodhue of Lancaster, Wis., who was editing the _Wisconsin Herald_, when he heard of the organization of the new territory, immediately decided to start a paper in St. Paul, and as soon as navigation opened in the spring of 1849, he came up with his press and type. He met with many difficulties and obstructions, necessarily incident to a new place in a venture such as was his, but he succeeded in issuing the first number of his paper on the twenty-eighth day of April, 1849. His first inclination was to call his paper the ”_Epistle of St. Paul_,” but on sober reflection he was convinced that the name might shock the religious sensibilities of the community, especially as he did not possess many of the attributes of our patron saint, and he decided to call his paper ”_The Minnesota Pioneer_.”
In his first issue he speaks of his establishment of that day, as follows:
”We print and issue this number of the _Pioneer_ in a building through which out-of-doors is visible by more than five hundred apertures; and as for our type, it is not safe from being _pied_ on the galleys by the wind.” The rest can be imagined.
Mr. Goodhue was just the man to be the editor of the first paper of a frontier territory. He was energetic, enterprising, brilliant, bold and belligerent. He conducted the _Pioneer_ with great success and advantage to the territory until the year 1851, when he published an article on Judge Cooper, censuring him for absenteeism, which is a very good specimen of the editorial style of that day. He called the judge ”a sot,” ”a brute,” ”an a.s.s,” ”a profligate vagabond,” and closed his article in the following language:
”Feeling some resentment for the wrongs our territory has so long suffered by these men, pressing upon us like a dispensation of wrath,--a judgment--a curse--a plague, unequalled since Egypt went lousy,--we sat down to write this article with some bitterness, but our very gall is honey to what they deserve.”
In those fighting days, such an article could not fail to produce a personal collision. A brother of Judge Cooper resented the attack, and in the encounter between them, Goodhue was badly stabbed and Cooper was shot. Neither wound proved fatal at the time, but it was always a.s.serted by the friends of each combatant, and generally believed, that they both died from the effects of these wounds.
The original _Minnesota Pioneer_ still lives in the _Pioneer Press_ of to-day, which is published in St. Paul. It has been continued under several names and edited by different men, but has never been extinguished or lost its relation of lineal descendant from the original _Pioneer_.
Nothing tends to show the phenomenal growth of Minnesota more than the fact that this first newspaper, issued in 1849, has been followed by the publication of 579 papers, which is the number now issued in the state according to the last official list obtainable. They appear daily, weekly and monthly, in nearly all written languages, English, French, German, Swedish, Norwegian, Danish, Bohemian, and one in Icelandic, published in Lyon county.
BANKS.
With the first great increase in immigration business was necessarily enlarged, and banking facilities became a necessity. Dr. Charles W.