PREFACE.                                                            V
modest as obliging, and condescending as dignified, were among the
noblest products of Nature, in his constitution. The arching canopy of
heaven, the heaving waters of the lakes, Nature's vast solitudes, and the
great prairies of the West, were types, to him, of the Infinite and Ever-
present One, and their silent magic left upon him their undying impress.
Narrow, bigoted, unjust, unbenevolent, irreligious, ignoble, degraded,
untruthful, unsympathetic, he could never be.
His primacy is conceded. In his youth he was superlative among
the many Nimrods around him, "a mighty hunter before the Lord," a
"splendid shot," not surpassed by the Indian; a sportsman by birth,
loading the shoulders of his fleet barb with the game that skimmed the
sky, and chasing, with delight, not only through the air, but through
lines of living prairie fire, the buffalo and elk, the panther and the deer,
and camping at night, unmolested, where the red man roamed. He was-
the first judicial officer, and sole lawgiver over a domain extensive as-
the Empire of France, and where, to-day,—a half century gone by,—stand
the four great states of Iowa, Minnesota, and the two Dakotas, thronged
with millions of an industrious population, cultured and rich, shielded
by laws their wisdom has framed, and crowned with institutions their
liberality has reared. Their sky-pointing spires rise everywhere, and
glitter heavenward, in the glancing sunlight, where once the smoke of the
wigwam curled, and the savage war-whoop was the only Sabbath bell.
He was the first in a tenderer jurisdiction, the captured conqueror of
one whose personal attractions were, to him, a net of the sweetest entangle-
ment, and a wound whose pain was his pleasure. He was first as fore-
man of the first grand jury ever impaneled west of the Mississippi, in
what is now known as Minnesota, interpreting to a French jury the charge-
of a Saxon judge. He was the first delegate from Wisconsin Territory,
after Wisconsin was admitted as a state with diminished boundaries,
gaining by dint of sheer superiority his seat in Congress, and, after
powerful opposition, securing the passage of a bill organizing the Terri-
tory of Minnesota. He was the first delegate from the Territory of
Minnesota thus organized, and re-elected by the overwhelming voice ot
the people. He was first as president of the Democratic branch of the
convention met in troublous times to form the state constitution, its
guiding genius and its counselor. He was first as the first governor 01
the State of Minnesota he had done so much to found; the stalwart
champion of her honor and credit during the long struggle in which
both were sought by reckless politicians to be destroyed. He was
first as a state military officer, appointed by the governor, with the
powers of a general commanding the state troops, in the fateful hour of