from Winona and La Crescent westward to the Missouri. On the other hand the leaders in the St. Paul region desired a Minnesota of diversified resourses and industries, stretching northward to the Canadian boundary but westward only to a line running from Canada southward along the Red River of the North to and through Lakes Traverse and Big Stone and thence to the Iowa line, and served by a system of railroads radiating out from St. Paul, the capital, and St. Anthony, the seat of the university. The story of the adoption of the Minnesota constitution and of the admission of the state to the Union is the dramatic unravelling of the plot the details of which are here only suggested.

The St. Paul region had all the advantages in the struggle, said Professor Anderson. The territorial organic act made St. Paul the capital. This little area was ideally located to be the railroad center of the proposed north and south state. Its chief citizen, Henry M. Rice, was the territorial delegate to Congress, was himself financially interested in St. Paul's prosperity and in making it a railroad center, and had the ear of the dominant party in Congress. He succeeded in getting Congress to pass an enabling act which divided Minnesota Territory by the north and south line sketched above and also in procuring a railroad land grant which made St. Paul the railroad center of the proposed state. Defeated in Washington, the southern Minnesota interests tried, early in 1857, with the aid of Governor Gorman, to forestall Rice's further success by immediately removing the capital to St. Peter; but they failed under the most exciting circumstances. In pursuance of the enabling act the members of the constitutional convention were elected on June 1, 1857, but the sectional cleavage and party bitterness created an atmosphere of such intense suspicion that the convention was split into two sections, Democratic and Republican. For seven weeks these bodies sat separately in opposite wings of the capitol at St. Paul. In the end they avoided further strife and possible bloodshed by agreeing to submit the same constitution to the people, though

two copies were made and each party signed its own copy. The Republicans and southern Minnesota had been defeated on almost every point. They lost in the boundary dispute, the location of the capital, the railroad land grant, and in practically everything else that they held dear, and they also lost the first state election. The Democrats even wrote most of the constitution. The Republicans succeeded, however, in writing into the constitution a very liberal amending clause, and from the time they took control of the state government in 1860 down to 1898, when the amending process was changed, they not only governed the state almost without break but they also wrote forty-six amendments into the constitution.

"Cleng Peerson and Norwegian Immigration" was the subject of the second paper, which was read by Professor Theodore C. Blegen of Hamline University. The beginnings of nineteenth century Norwegian immigration, he said, are associated with Cleng Peerson, who in 1821 and again in 1824 came to America as the "advance agent" of those Norwegians who in 1825 crossed the Atlantic to found a settlement or colony in western New York. In 1833 Peerson explored the Central West, and in the following year he guided the pioneer group of Norse settlers in the West to a site which he had selected in the fertile Fox River Valley in Illinois. During three decades, from 1821 to 1850, Cleng Peerson was active as an immigrant leader, stimulating immigration and founding new settlements; in 1838 and again in 1842, he returned to Norway as a conscious propagandist of the movement. By nature a restless searcher for new frontiers, he made his way, in 1849, to Texas, and the next year he led to the South a group of Illinois settlers. In Texas Peerson lived from 1850 until his death in 1865 at the age of eighty-three.

The basis of his study, said Professor Blegen, was evidence, gleaned from several Peerson letters and a number of official documents and newspaper sources, which throws new light

2 This paper is printed in full in the March, 1921, issue of the Mississippi Valley Historical Review.

on several much controverted points with regard both to Peerson himself and to the motives of the early emigration from Norway. While Peerson's eccentric personality and Peer Gynt nature have caused a haze of legend and uncertainty to envelop his name, unimpeachable documentary evidence proves that he was the pathfinder of the first group emigration from Norway to the United States, that he was the leader of the vanguard of the great Norwegian migration to the American West, and that his incessant travels, his reports of conditions, and his personal influence affected the course and gave impetus to the progress of the whole movement in the first twenty-five years of its history. In short, one must recognize in this curious leader of immigrants and restless follower of the frontier the trail-blazer of a population movement which, since 1825, has brought to America more than seven hundred thousand Norwegians.

The last paper of the program, by Professor John D. Hicks of Hamline University, was on "The Political Career of Ignatius Donnelly. Donnelly, said Professor Hicks, is known to literature as one of the ablest defenders of the theory that Bacon wrote Shakespeare, to archeology as a convincing expounder of the truth of Plato's Atlantis fable, to science as the author of a unique explanation of the geological formations of the drift age by contact of comets with the earth, and to American politics as the ardent advocate of practically every third party or reform organization that made its appearance between the close of the Civil War and the beginning of the twentieth century. He was one of that "border fringe of lunacy" of whom Theodore Roosevelt spoke — a convinced champion of every forward movement, but so utterly impractical as to be worse than useless in advancing the fortunes of even the most laudable reforms. From the date of his first appearance in politics in 1857 until the date of his death in

3 This paper was a condensation of a larger study with the same title which is to appear in the issue of the Mississippi Valley Historical Review for June-September, 1921.

1901, no campaign within the state of Minnesota was complete without Donnelly in the role of champion of some new and untried reform. Antimonopolist, Greenbacker, Democrat, Republican, and Populist in turn, he was supremely indifferent always to change of party or even of opinion, and consistent only in this that he always urged the success of those reforms and of that party which to his mind gave most promise of bettering the conditions of the ordinary man.

The business session of the society convened in the auditorium at 4:00 P. M. The principal business transacted, in addition to the presentation of reports of the treasurer and the superintendent, was the election of thirty life members of the society to serve as members of the executive council for the triennium 1921-24. The following were elected: Everett H. Bailey, John M. Bradford, the Reverend William Busch, Oliver Crosby, William W. Cutler, Frederic A. Fogg, Mrs. Charles E. Furness, Harold Harris, Frederick G. Ingersoll, Gideon S. Ives, William H. Lightner, Charles P. Noyes, Victor Robertson, Edward P. Sanborn, Charles Stees, Warren Upham, Olin D. Wheeler, and Edward B. Young of St. Paul; Clarence W. Alvord, Solon J. Buck, William W. Folwell, Guy Stanton Ford, Herschel V. Jones and Mrs. James T. Morris of Minneapolis; Lorin Cray of Mankato; Michael J. Dowling of Olivia; Burt W. Eaton of Rochester; Victor E. Lawson of Willmar; William A. McGonagle of Duluth; and Willis M. West of Grand Rapids.

At the close of the business session of the society, the new executive council, which includes six state officers, ex officio, in addition to the members elected, met in the superintendent's office and elected the following officers of the society for the triennium: Frederic A. Fogg, president; William W. Folwell, first vice president; Frederick G. Ingersoll, second vice president; Solon J. Buck, secretary; and Everett H. Bailey, treas

urer.

4 The substance of the superintendent's report is embodied in the Twenty-first Biennial Report of the society.

The most notable event of the meeting was the subscription dinner in honor of Dr. William W. Folwell, which was held in the reading room of the Historical Building at 6:00 P. M. The occasion of the dinner was the completion of the first volume of Dr. Folwell's History of Minnesota, then in press; and the attendance of over two hundred taxed the available space. The retiring president of the society, the Honorable Gideon S. Ives, presented as toastmaster the Honorable J. A. O. Preus, Governor of Minnesota, whose apt introductions of the speakers contributed to the interest of the occasion. The first toast was by Dr. Lotus D. Coffman, president of the University of Minnesota, who told of Dr. Folwell's service in promoting the development of high schools and building up a unified system of public education in the state. The next speaker was Professor Clarence W. Alvord, editor of the Mississippi Valley Historical Review, whose toast follows:

When it was proposed to me that on this most honorable occasion and in the presence of this notable assembly I make an after-dinner speech, my first inclination was to return the answer of the impecunious darky when asked to change a ten dollar bill for I am impecunious in the light and airy art of after-dinner speaking. Were I a statesman as Governor Preus is, or a university president as is Dr. Coffman, then by native ability and by long practice I should have become a master of this popular art. But instead of learning to speak to men after dinner, when smug satisfaction has prepared the mind to laughter at the most antique of jokes, unkind fate has forced me to associate with dusty tomes, illegible manuscripts, and antique documents, to make companions of men whose mortal remains have long since turned to dust and whose deeds, both good and ill, the kind hand of oblivion has covered with the deep forgetfulness of generations. Instead of serving new scandals after dinner, I have labored to revive old scandals and dress them up that they might be made palatable to the satiated taste of the modern reader.

"I thank ye for the compliment," he said

But when I learned that it was not the ordinary after-dinner speech that was expected from me, that I was being asked to