Hills of the lovely Susquehanna. The blue tops of the great Appalachian range filled his youthful eye. The story of William Penn had stamped its impress on the state, and Indian legends and Indian treaties were a part of the traditions of every Pennsylvania boy.

He had read, too, of the massacre of Wyoming, and his youthful imagination had been fired by Campbell's poetic description of that ruthless slaughter. He had thus inherited no love for the Indian character, and his pressing proffer to President Lincoln, to take all the responsibility of promptly hanging the convicted savages of 1862, must be interpreted in the light of the lurid. flames of Wyoming.

To understand fully one who has played so great a part in our dramatic history, we must, for the hour, live in those times, see what he saw, look into the faces of his remarkable co-partners, sympathize with his trials, and rejoice in his successes.

Alexander Ramsey was born near Harrisburg, Pa., September 8, 1815. His paternal ancestry were Scotch, and his mother of German origin, a racial combination difficult to excel. An orphan at ten, by the aid of a friendly relative he obtained a fair education, which was greatly enhanced by his strong love for reading and study. He subsequently became a carpenter by trade; he taught school, and studied law.

That he did not receive a complete collegiate education, I think, is happy for us all, for then he might have contented himself in filling a professor's chair,

and measured out his days in expounding the metres of Homer and Virgil. The self-taught American, like Franklin and Lincoln, most often develops the vigorous and broad life so useful to the nation. Nor was there ever a better illustration of the wholesome training of a young man in the great common school of experience and self-study, which is the nursery and stronghold of American democracy, than we have in the example of young Ramsey. He was one of those practical men who quickly avail themselves of the grand opportunities whose golden gates stand open, in this country, night and day.

He came upon the stage of active life when party strife was raging with unabated fury. The Whig and Democratic parties bitterly divided the American people. The questions about a bank, a tariff, and the distribution of the proceeds of the public lands, seem to us, at this distant day, to be trivial. But politics were intense, the excitement great, and all were politicians, even the women and children. As a matter of fact, it was not so much measures, as men, that agitated and divided the people.

Jackson and Clay were the illustrious leaders, and under their respective banners the contestants were marshalled in irreconcilable antagonism. Both leaders were men of consummate tact and management. Each held his followers as with hooks of steel. Clay was the captain of the Whigs, and his graceful manners and splendid eloquence held in thrall the aspiring young men of the day. Ramsey caught the contagion which the fervid

genius of Clay evoked. The Whig party was resplendent with talent, and in that atmosphere young Ramsey was matured.

The famous Harrisburg convention of 1840 met in his city. Harrison was nominated, and Clay was defeated. But the people rose as if en masse. Banners floated; the air was hot with acclamations; songs were sung, and even business was neglected. As upon an ocean wave, "Tippecanoe and Tyler, too," were floated into office.

A month later Harrison died. Tyler, like another Arnold, betrayed his party. Clay's heart was broken, and the Whig party was paralyzed. But the great commoner of Kentucky bore himself like a plumed knight. In the midst of these stormy times, Ramsey was rocked in the cradle of politics.

In 1840, he was secretary of the electoral college; in 1841 he was chief clerk of the House of Representatives; in 1842, he was elected to Congress, and served in the 28th and 29th Congresses. He was a substantial Whig member, social, cool, cautious, and given to practical business. He retired, voluntarily, from further service, after the close of the 29th Congress, while, singularly enough, Henry Hastings Sibley was just entering the 30th Congress as a delegate from that terra incognita, the territory of Minnesota.

Ramsey's career in Congress was signalized by his ardent support of the Wilmot Proviso, in its application to certain territories acquired as the result of the war

with Mexico. His seat was next to Wilmot's in the House, and, as a matter of fact, he wrote the proviso on his desk for Wilmot, which the latter offered. No less strange is the fact that Mr. Sibley opposed the application of the Wilmot Proviso to the territory of Minnesota in the very next Congress, as "wholly superfluous."

In 1848, Ramsey was made chairman of the Whig State Central Committee of Pennsylvania, and contributed largely to the election of Zachary Taylor, the last of the Whig presidents. When that gallant soldier was inaugurated, he at once tendered the governorship of Minnesota to Alexander Ramsey. His commission bears date, April 2, 1849.

The Whig party was now moribund, dying of slavery. Clay, too, was dying, and Webster had condoned with the Slave Power. The Fugitive Slave Law was the final bolt that slew the great army which Clay and Webster had organized. Thus it happened that the brilliant party which had won Alexander Ramsey's youthful love and devotion was waning and expiring when he made his advent into the Northwest.

On the 27th day of May, 1849, the new governor arrived at the scene of his official duties. With something of poetic fitness, he came, with his young wife, from Sibley's baronial home at Mendota, where they had been guests, in an Indian birch-bark canoe. On the first day

of June, 1849, he issued his official proclamation, declaring the territory duly organized.

Minnesota thus entered her kindergarten preparation for statehood. Then followed the detail necessary to the establishment of the machinery of the new government. This was the historic starting point of the new commonwealth. These important proceedings brought Ramsey face to face with the most remarkable body of men who ever graced a frontier, Sibley, Brown, the Rices, Olmsted, Morrison, Steele, McLeod, Stevens, Renville, Borup, Kittson, Bailly.

How, at the mention of their names, the dead arise, and life starts in the stalwart forms of these primeval kings of the wilderness! If New England parades, with pride, her Puritan ancestors, with equal veneration we point to the vigorous, intrepid and superb men, who stood sponsors to the birth of our commonwealth. They were no ignoble rivals in the race which was to be run. No stronger men ever colonized a new country. They possessed that restlessness that comes of ambition, and the audacity that comes of enterprise.

Far behind these empire-builders of the Northwest, there yet appeared in the twilight of our history, other majestic forms. We behold the saintly Allouez and Marquette, glorified by their sufferings. We see Le Sueur in the valley of the St. Peter, in his journey in pursuit of gold, shrouded in mystery and romance, as imaginary as that of Jason in pursuit of the Golden Fleece.

We contemplate the reign and wars of the great fur companies, those mighty lords of the lakes of the North. These all are the paladins of our history. Following