May 11, 1858 - Minnesota Joins the Union

On this day in 1858, Minnesota became the 32nd state admitted into the Union. Then-President James Buchanan had received Minnesota’s application for statehood in January, but it became temporarily entangled with the issue of statehood for Kansas, a political hot potato because of the expansion of slavery.

Known as the “Land of 10,000 Lakes,” Minnesota is the northern terminus of traffic on the Mississippi River and the westernmost point of an inland waterway, flowing through the Great Lakes and, with the Saint Lawrence Seaway, to the Atlantic. The state’s name comes from a Dakota word for “sky-tinted water.”

The French claimed the region from the mid-1600s to the mid-1700s, developing a fur trade, but they ceded the lands east of the Mississippi to Britain. The United States acquired part of the area from the British under the Treaty of Paris in 1783 and the rest from the French under the Louisiana Purchase in 1803.

U.S. administration of the region began with passage of the Northwest Ordinance by the Continental Congress in 1787. The ordinance sets out the requirements for a territory to become a state.

Congress split the Minnesota Territory from the Iowa Territory in 1849. Between 1850 and 1857, Minnesota’s population rose from about 6,000 to more than 150,000, facilitating its successful application for statehood. As a state with much land suitable for homesteading, Minnesota proved particularly attractive to immigrants from Norway, Sweden and Finland.

From the 1820s on, Fort Snelling, where the Minnesota and Mississippi rivers meet, has protected the Twin Cities, Minneapolis and St. Paul.

During World War II, the War Department’s Military Intelligence Service Language School was at the fort. Some 300,000 soldiers were taught Japanese there.

It is now a national historic landmark.

SOURCE: U.S. LIBRARY OF CONGRESS