THE DUAL ORIGIN OF MINNESOTA.*

BY SAMUEL M. DAVIS.

It is the purpose of this paper to trace the origin and source of the territory now comprised within the boundary of the state of Minnesota. This state occupies the unique position of being the only state in the Union which acquired its territory from the two largest accessions of land to the United States in the early history of this government. I refer to the cession of the Northwest Territory by Great Britain in 1783 and the Louisiana Purchase in 1803. About twenty-nine thousand square miles of territory, including all east of the Mississippi which is now comprised within the boundary of the state, originated in the cession by the treaty with Great Britain in 1783. The remaining part, about fifty-five thousand square miles, was secured from the territory originally purchased from France in 1803. It is my object to sketch the main features connecting these two great treaties of accession of territory, both in relation to the boundary of the territory acquired and also with reference to the government provided for them after the territory was acquired.

CESSION OF THE NORTHWEST TERRITORY.

The Revolutionary War, which began April 19th, 1775, was closed by three separate treaties of peace. The United States and France conducted simultaneous negotiations with different English Commissioners, with the understanding that the preliminaries should be signed the same day. Dr. Franklin wrote to Vergennes on the 29th of November, 1782, that the American articles were already agreed upon and that he hoped to lay a copy of them before his Excellency the following day.

*Read at the monthly meeting of the Executive Council, April 10, 1899.

The

They were duly communicated, with the exception of a single secret article, but the French diplomat was astonished and mortified to find that they were already signed and therefore binding so far as the commissioners could make them so. diplomatic game for despoiling the young republic of one half of her territorial heritage was effectually defeated. The French diplomatist reproved Franklin for the course which he and his associates had followed. Franklin replied as best he could, at the same time admitting that nothing more than a slight breach of politeness had been committed. The American people were at first disposed to censure the commissioners, but so anxious were all classes for peace and so much more favorable were the terms obtained than had been expected, that the expressions of dissatisfaction gave way to expressions of gratification and delight. The preamble to the treaty contained the saving clause that it should not go into effect until France and England came to an understanding, which fact Franklin diplomatically pressed upon the attention of the nettled Vergennes. The final treaty of peace between the United States and England was signed September 3rd, 1783. By this treaty Great Britain acknowledged the United States to be free, sovereign, and independent states, and relinquished all claims to the government, proprietary and territorial right of the same and every part thereof. The boundaries assigned proved to be more satisfactory than those which had been proposed in Congress in 1779.

It is not possible to divide among Benjamin Franklin, John Adams, and John Jay, the exact honor due each of saving the West to their country. To the man, however, who goes through the original documents, it would seem that we are not least indebted to John Jay for his distinguished services in this connection.

Great Britain's claim to the Northwest Territory was founded both on conquest and on the charters of the original colonies. Great Britain claimed not only all the land in the western country which was not expressly included in the charters and governments, and all the Mississippi, but also all such lands within them as remained ungranted by the king of Great Britain. England was slow to surrender so much of the Northwest as remained in her hands at the close of the Her refusal to surrender this territory was positive proof of the reluctance with which she consented to the north

war.

western boundaries. The boundaries negotiated by the treaty were much discussed and every proposition with reference to a different boundary had been considered. Mr. Adams tells us that one of these lines was the forty-fifth parallel north of the St. Lawrence river, and the other the line of the middle of the lakes. The British ministers, owing to their desire to give Canada a frontage on the four lakes, preferred the water boundary and chose the line which left the Northwest intact. Their decision was most fortunate for us. If the forty-fifth parallel had become the boundary, nearly half of Lakes Huron and Michigan and of the states of Michigan and Wisconsin, and a part of Minnesota, would have fallen to Great Britain. The boundaries finally decided upon were the middle of the chain of lakes on the north, and the Mississippi river on the west.

There is reason to think that England did not believe the young republic would be successful in maintaining an inde pendent government, and her tardy transfer of the Northwest Territory to the United States was caused by a determination to share in the expected spoil that would result from the failure of our early government. The fact is that neither England nor Spain looked upon the treaty at Paris as finally settling the destiny of the country west of the Alleghany mountains. The war of 1812 no doubt revived England's hopes of again recovering the Northwest; and the efforts of Tecumseh to stay the oncoming tide of white population, and Hull's surrender of the Michigan territory, fanned these hopes into a bright flame. Harrison's success on the Maumee, and Perry's victory on Lake Erie, finally dashed her hopes to the ground. Only three of the thirty-two years between 1783 and 1815 were years of open war, yet for one half of the whole time the British flag was flying on the American side of the boundary line. The final destiny of the Northwest was not assured in its fullest sense until the treaty of Ghent.

The question of boundaries was, by the treaty of Paris, settled upon paper; but the actual boundaries were, for a considerable length of time, undetermined. It was not a foregone conclusion that the West should be delivered to the United States. The retention of the Northwest by Great Britain would have been a serious mischance in case subsequent events had turned out differently. The longer one considers the question, the more will he discover reasons for congratu

lation that the logic of events gave us our proper boundaries at the close of the War of Independence,* and that we were not left to renew the struggle upon that question in after years with other European nations. The boundaries as determined by the diplomats at Paris, were, no doubt, fixed in good faith; but they had not only to be drawn upon paper, but also traced through vast wildernesses, uninhabited and unexplored. It was natural therefore that some of the lines were found impracticable. Some of the disputes that arose afterward had, however, other sources than ignorance of geography. A serious doubt arose as to the practicability of reaching the Mississippi by a due west line from the northwest point of the Lake of the Woods. Jay's treaty, in 1794, therefore provided that measures should be taken in concert to survey the upper Mississippi, and, in case the due west line was found impracticable, it was further provided that "the two parties

*Article 2 of the Treaty of Paris reads thus: "And that all disputes which might arise in future on the subject of the boundaries of the said United States may be prevented, it is hereby agreed and declared that the following are and shall be their boundaries, namely: From the northwest angle of Nova Scotia, namely, that angle which is formed by a line drawn due north from the source of St. Croix River to the Highlands; along the said Highlands, which divide those rivers that empty themselves into the River St. Lawrence from those which fall into the Atlantic Ocean, to the northwesternmost head of Connecticut River; thence down along the middle of that river to the forty-fifth degree of north latitude; from thence by a line due west on said latitude, until it strikes the River Iroquois or Cataraquy [that is, the St. Lawrence]; thence along the middle of said river into Lake Ontario, through the middle of said lake until it strikes the communication by water between that lake and Lake Erie; thence along the middle of said communication into Lake Erie, through the middle of said lake until it arrives at the water communication between that lake and Lake Huron; thence along the middle of said water communication into the Lake Huron; thence through the middle of said lake to the water communication between that_lake and Lake Superior; thence through Lake Superior northward of the Isles Royal and Phelipeaux, to the Long Lake; thence through the middle of said Long Lake, and the water communication between it and the Lake of the Woods, to the said Lake of the Woods; thence through the said lake to the most northwestern point thereof, and from thence on a due west course to the River Mississippi; thence by a line to be drawn along the middle of the said River Mississippi until it shall intersect the northernmost part of the thirty-first degree of north latitude. South. by a line to be drawn due east from the determination of the line last mentioned, in the latitude of thirty-one degrees north of the equator, to the middle of the River Apalachicola or Catahouche; thence along the middle thereof to its junction with the Flint River; thence straight to the head of St. Mary's River; and thence down along the middle of St. Mary's River to the Atlantic Ocean. East, by a line to be drawn along the middle of the River St. Croix, from its mouth in the Bay of Fundy to its source, and from its source directly north to the aforesaid Highlands, which divide the rivers that fall into the Atlantic Ocean from those which fall into the River St. Lawrence; comprehending all islands within twenty leagues of any part of the shores of the United States, and lying between lines to be drawn due east from the points where the aforesaid boundaries between Nova Scotia, on the one part, and East Florida, on the other, shall respectively touch the Bay of Fundy and the Atlantic Ocean; excepting such islands as now are, or heretofore have been, within the limits of the said province of Nova Scotia."

†The maps of the period put down the course of the river above the forty-fifth parallel as "the Mississippi by conjecture."

will thereupon proceed, by amicable negotiation, to regulate the boundary line in that quarter." This boundary was not fixed till more than twenty years later.

A convention was signed in London by the representatives of the two powers on May 12th, 1803, which contained arrangements for determining the boundary from the Lake of the Woods to the Mississippi. At about the same time the treaty for the cession of Louisiana to the United States was signed. When the London treaty came before the Senate the argument was made that the Louisiana Purchase would affect the line from the Lake of the Woods to the Mississippi. Accordingly the Senate struck out the article, and this caused the whole treaty to fall through. By the Louisiana Purchase we succeeded to all rights, as respects Louisiana, that had belonged to Spain or France, and this carried us north to the British possessions and west of the Mississippi river. On October 20th, 1818, the United States and England agreed to a convention which settled the Lake of the Woods controversy and established the boundary between the two countries as far as the Rocky mountains.*

The remaining boundary, from the intersection of the St. Lawrence and the forty-fifth parallel north to the foot of the St. Mary's river, was established in 1823, by a joint commission under the treaty of Ghent; and from the foot of the St. Mary's to the most northwestern point of the Lake of the Woods, by the Webster-Ashburton treaty in 1842.

The western boundary of the Northwest Territory was the Mississippi river to its source. All that part of Minnesota east of the Mississippi river was taken from the original Northwest Territory. From the source of the Mississippi river in Lake Itasca the line was drawn due north by 95 degrees and 12 minutes west longitude from Greenwich to a point known as the northwestern point of the Lake of the Woods. This line

*"It is agreed that a line drawn from the most northwestern point of the Lake of the Woods, along the forty-ninth parallel of north latitude, or, if the said point shall not be in the forty-ninth parallel of north latitude, then that a line drawn from the said point due north or south, as the case may be, until the said line shall intersect the said parallel of north latitude, and from the point of such intersection due west along and with the said parallel, shall be the line of demarcation between the territories of the United States and those of his Britannic Majesty. and that the said line shall form the northern boundary of the said territories of the United States, and the southern boundary of the territories of his Britannic Majesty, from the Lake of the Woods to the Stony Mountains."

This provision as to the boundary, together with the facts of geography, explains the singular projection of our northern boundary on the west side of the Lake of the Woods.