A.H.H. Stuart

A.H.H. Stuart, 1844-60“In this new home [the reservation], which is of comparatively small extent, they will be so concentrated as to be readily controlled and influenced for their real welfare. Farms will be there opened for them. Mills and schools established, and dwelling houses erected; and as gradually the white settlements close in around them, destroying game and rendering hunting life impossible, and as they will have within their own territory the means of living with very little labor on their part, the force of circumstances alone will compel their resorting to agriculture for subsistence…" -A.H.H. Stuart to Alexander Ramsey, August 6, 1851

Alexander Hugh Holmes Stuart served in President Millard Fillmore's cabinet as the Secretary of the Interior from 1850-53.  In that capacity, he wielded considerable influence over Indian affairs and conflicts on the American frontier.  A native of Virginia, Stuart became a powerful political figure in the Confederacy during the Civil War. 

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Key People

Alex Ramsey
Alexander Ramsey
Alex Ramsey

Alexander Ramsey

"Our course then is plain. The Sioux Indians of Minnesota must be exterminated or driven forever beyond the borders of Minnesota."

Alexander Ramsey to a special session of the Minnesota legislature, September 9, 1862

Alexander Ramsey was born September 8, 1815, at Hummelstown, Pennsylvania.

In 1849, Ramsey was appointed governor of Minnesota Territory by President Zachary Taylor. In this role, he also acted as the territory’s Indian superintendent. Aware that his political future depended on his ability to open lands west of the Mississippi River for white settlement, Ramsey teamed up with his friend Henry Sibley, a former fur trader who was also the territory's delegate to the U.S. Congress. Together with Luke Lea, U.S. Commissioner of Indian Affairs, they negotiated the treaties of 1851. Ramsey was investigated and acquitted by the U.S. Congress on allegations of fraud connected to the 1851 treaty negotiations.

During his political career, Ramsey held many offices in Minnesota and Washington, D.C.: territorial governor, mayor of St. Paul, state governor, U.S. senator, and Secretary of War under President Rutherford B. Hayes. He was also a shrewd businessman, and made a sizeable fortune in real estate. Ramsey was also the first president of the Minnesota Historical Society, a post he was holding when the U.S.-Dakota War broke out in 1862.

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