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.2 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" I thank ye for the compliment," he said 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.

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

say a few words about the work of a fellow craftsman whose field of labor has lain for years almost contiguous to the one I had been cultivating, I accepted the invitation with eagerness; and I appear here tonight to give greetings from all true worshippers of the muse Clio to my companion in dusty tomes and antique documents, Dr. Folwell.

You are tonight not Colonel Folwell as your soldiers knew you; nor Professor Folwell as your students knew you; nor President Folwell as your faculty and the world have long known you; but Historian Folwell, who has told the story of the development of this great state of Minnesota for your own and future generations to read. We, your fellow craftsmen and fellow citizens, are gathered here tonight that we may honor ourselves by showing you our appreciation of this magnificent accomplishment.

The writing of a state history is not the easy job that it was in former years, when the average local history was the amateurish work of some retired lawyer or broken-down politician, who, out of his inner consciousness, with no thought of historical criticism, wove his web of narrative. The product of the modern scientific historian differs from such amateurish work as much as Milton's "Paradise Lost" differs from a sophomoric effusion in the Minnesota Daily. The easy days of history writing are no more. Clio makes greater demands upon her worshippers. They are now associated, so to speak, into an established church; to their goddess they have raised an altar at which they perform a solemn service, with genuflections and processionals, with oil and frankincense, occult ceremonies to inspire awe in the multitude; all is more or less esoteric in character; at least the uninitiated finds difficulty in making his way to the inner shrine. I mean by this symbolism that historians in their effort to make history a science have evolved a complex method of research that is highly technical in its processes and scientific in its spirit.

Within the inner circle of historians Dr. Folwell belongs. He has produced a work that maintains all the canons of historical scholarship. His mind is critical; hearsay and tradition do not satisfy it; the truth as found in contemporary narrative or document has laid the basis of his history. Information has been sought in every conceivable source. He has not neglected the monographs of other historians, but laboriously has he sought out their writings buried in hundreds of magazines, pro