Making Minnesota Territory, 1849-1858

Eight fictional "Day in the Life" essays, as well as more than 75 historical daguerreotypes, paintings, photographs, and curators'-choice artifacts, call up the sights, sounds, and surroundings of ordinary people living in tumultuous territorial times. An essay on surviving buildings and landscapes offers readers the opportunity to see and experience territorial Minnesota today.

In this lively collection of essays, historians reassess the events and meaning of Minnesota Territory 150 years after its creation. They describe how its birth in 1849 during the growing national conflict over slavery forever changed the lives of Minnesota's native and mixed-blood residents. Reinterpreting the rush to statehood in 1858, these writers offer fresh insights into the roles played by wildly optimistic territorial promoters and the no-holds-barred newspapers of the time.

This book originated as a special issue of Minnesota History, the quarterly of the Minnesota Historical Society. It is being published to mark the 150th anniversary of the territory.

"If earth has a Paradise, it is here."—Harriet E. Bishop, Minnesota Territory promoter and school teacher, 1847