The Portland daily press. [volume] (Portland, Me.) 1862-1921, 1878-09-04
MINNESOTA'S PROGRESS.
Senator Blaine's Address at the
Minneapolis Fair.
The Political Power and RespOn.
sibiyity OF Farmers.


over abundant harvests, and to view the b0untl-
full products of their state, is well calculated 10
inspire recollections that are OF interest beyond
the limits of the audience that now honor me
with their attention.
Near the borders of your state, on the banks
of the great river now flowing in our sight,
there resides man in the full vigor or an
honorable old age, long my acquaintance ana
my friend, whose career calls vlvldiy to nina
the wonderful progress of the Northwest. In
the last two years of General Jacks0n's Presi-
dency, George w. Jones was the delegate in
Congress from that vast area now forming the
states of Michigan, Wisconsin. Iowa and Min
nesota together with that part of the territory
Of Dakota north Of the Missouri River, and
east of the White Earth. In the last preceding
Federal census the total civilized population
of the entire territory of Michigan was less
than 80 000,-adveuturous men, standing on
the outposts Of civilization. and accepting and
oonquering the hardships of the frontier. There
were at that time-f0rty- three years ago-but
two newspapers of any kind whatever, pub
lished in the whole country of which l have
spoken. and not one of these west of Lake
Michigan. To-day the same country has eight
Senators, twenty.nine Representatives and one
Delegate in Congress; has railroads aggregat-
ing eleven thousand miles in length, and five
hundred millions in cost; has seventy
daily newspapers, and more than eleven hum
cities, larger than Philadelphia or New York
when the United States had taken It's second
census, and chosen its third President; has a
population as great, excluding the slaves of
that day, as that of the whole country which
defied Great Britain to a second contest in
1872; produces larger amount of breadstuffs
than the entire Union produced when General
Jones entered Congress; and contains more
wealth than was owned in the eighteen states
that divided their electoral votes between James
Madison and Dewitt Clinton for the Presi-
dency. Such facts as these may we'll cause us
to give thanks to God and a virtuous ancestry
for those blessings of liberty and good govern
ment which have made all this progress pos
sible.
-Geogrs phicaly, the State of Minnesota is a
land Of singular and SURPRISING interest. Lying
about equi-distant from the great oceans on the
east on the west, on the north and on the
south, her situation as compared with her sis
ter states is entirely peculiar, and in respect
is without parallel on any continent. Her
surface forms the central watershed of North
America, and not far from where we stand,
streams have their modest sources that finally
lose themselves in one direction through bud
sons Bay, in the Arctic waters; in another
through the chain of the great lakes in the
broad Atlantic; and third through the Mis-
sissippi River ia the Gulf of Mexico. To the
westward, nature has raised an insurmountable
barrier to the water course, but the invention
of man has overcome the obstacle, and through
the power of steam and over the road of iron
there is already projected and partly achieved
that great commercial highway to the Pacific,
foretold by LaSalle, when standing on the
banks of the st. Lawrence, by the rapids whose
the untrodden west, whittier he had already
turned his face, he pronounced to his doubling
compan ions the inspiring word, La Chine.
Viewed historically, that which now consti-
stitutes the State of Minnesota, has had as
many and as rapid changes in It's sovereignty
as any disputed territory in Europe-fought
over by armed hosts set in motion by the am
bition of kings or the jealousy of rival races of
men. This fair land was under the dominion
of France during the reigns of Louis XIV and
his great-grandson; had Iberville who led the
French colony to Louisiana for its first
Governor, and Bienville, who founded New
Orleans, for its second was pawned by the
Regent Orleans in his scheme with John Law
for creating value out of mo0nshine, and made,
with other territory, the basis of that vast
swindls in paper money projected by the
Mississippi Company, in which real estate in
Minnesota, in the uodisputed possession of the
savage and the wild beast, became the shadowy
foundation in Paris hundred and sixty years
ago, of far greater monetary credit than it
could have to-day in the same financial market
with all its improvements and its great in
trinsic value. Again, under the dominion 10
part of George Third of England. who was
compelled to yield his right to yonr soil by the
treaty of 1888, and to withdraw the last Red
coat by the treaty of 1895. Still farther, for
thirty-seven years all on the west side of your
dividing river, was attached to the crown of
Spain during the reigns of the third and
fourth Charles, and given up by the latter in
the year 1900 to France, when for period of
three brief years, the larger half of Minnesota
had Napoleon Bonaparte for its sovereign
ruler. The First Consul always did business
on basis of hard cash, and he transferred the
French possessions in America to the United
States for fifteen millions of dollars. Eighty
years before that time, John Law and his
speculative partner, the Duke of Orleans, had
made the same possessions the basis for an
issue of paper money amounting to nearly
three thousand million of francs. Some re-
Elections are naturally suggested by these facts,
which would perhaps not be entirely pertinent
to an address before an agricultural society.
may be pardoned, however, for the inference
that the resources of a great country" do not
afford sound and secure basis for an enlarged
paDer currency.
over the soil of Minnesota, are not more
striking or more strange than the rapid trans
formations OF its government since it came
under the sovereignty of the United States It
comes to us as forgotten history, when we
recall that the eastern half of your state was
claimed during the Revolutionary struggle as
part OF Virginia, by no less Governor than
Thomas Jefferson; when as part of the North
west Territory the gallant but unfortunate
Arthdr st. Clair was its chief executive; when
as part of Indiana, William Henry Harrison,
frontiersman, soldier, statesman, was made its
Governor at the age Of twenty-seven yea rs:
when as part of Illinois, the large-framed and
large-hearted Ninian Edwards ruled over it
appointed thereto by Madison, at the personal
request of "a young Senator named Clay" as
he is significantly styled in certain record;
when as part of Michigan Territory, Gen.
Lewis Cass was its efficient honorable, and
careful executive; when as part of Wisconsin
the chivalrous and courageous Henry Dodge
was It's popular Governor, and also its delegate
in Congress from one half its domain, while
his worthy and still living son as delegate at
the same time from Iowa, represented the
other half-a striking coincidence. rendered
meeting again in the National Senate from the
States which they had represented in the
House when territories.
Nor of the section of stat west Of the Mis-
sissppi does it read less strangely. as we recall
that when sold to the national government by
Napoleon Bonaparte, it became part of the or
gained territory of Louisiana, changed very
soon to Missouri, and had for long years as it's
Governor the brave, adventurous William
Clarke, who in company with Merriwether
Lewis, under the direction of President Jeffer-
son, made that extraordinary journey from
ocean to ocean-the first white men who cross
ed the continent on soil belonging to the United
States, leaving their names forever associated
with great achievement familiar to all who
have read the hardships and conquests of the
Lewis and Clarke expedition. Afterwards
Minnesota formed part of the magnificent and
rapidly growing territory of Iowa, which so
soon took on the statue of full-grown, vigor.
GUS commonwealth
Iowa and Wisconsin having been admitted
as states, their territorial remainders naturally
formed one government, and so, in 1849, the
territory OF Minnesota was organized. And
then, for the first time since our government
acquired Louisiana from France, with the ex-
ception Of a brief period under the old terri
torial organization of Michigan, and an equal |
ly brief one under that of Wisconsin, Mime |
sofa, on both sides of the Mississippi, was or
ganized under the same government. And |
that seems but yesterday. but the sowing of |
the next crop will mark full rounded thirty |
years since the organic act was passed by Con- |
gress, and President Zachary Taylor appointed |
Alexander Ramsey first governor of the new |
territory. And His Excellency is among you |
today, after enjoying the highest honors of |
your territory and your state, looking as fresh |
and as vigorous IS when in the administrations |
of John Tyler and James X. Polk he repre- |
sented Pennsylvania district in the Congress |
OF the United States He might pass still as |
young man if his luminous record, made in two |
states and in both branches of Congress, did |
not enable us to measure the ripe three score |
years that crown his honored head.
To trace the history and development Of |
fro,., ,koo o1n