Minnesota Senate, 1861

Minnesota Senate, 1861The Minnesota Senate in 1861. Alexander Ramsey can be seen in the center and Thomas Galbraith in the lower right. 

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1862

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U.S. Government
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Key People

Alex Ramsey
Alexander Ramsey
galbraith
Thomas J. Galbraith
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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galbraith

Thomas J. Galbraith

"For what reason we have commenced this war I will tell you. It is on account of Major Galbraith."
Little Crow in a letter to Henry Sibley, 1862.
Thomas J. Galbraith was an American politician. In 1857, he signed the Republican version of the Minnesota State Constitution. In the wake of Lincoln’s election in November 1860, Republicans swept the federal jobs in the Northern Superintendency of Indian Affairs and the thirty-six-year-old Galbraith was appointed Sioux Agent. As an agent appointed by the U.S. government, he was charged with fulfilling treaty obligations to the Dakota and with enforcing Indian affairs code, including regulating the traders.
By the spring of 1862, fed up with the inefficiencies of the Indian system in which he was enmeshed, Galbraith resigned his post as Agent, then agreed to hold his resignation until after the annuity payment was made. Throughout the summer he tried to deal with an impossible situation. When annuity payments were delayed, he tried to convince the Dakota to accept greenbacks rather than the gold promised them. He kept the few government rations he had left locked in a warehouse at the Lower Agency and he tried to convince traders to extend more credit to Dakota clients for much-needed food.
On August 18, Galbraith and a group of Civil War recruits known as the Renville Rangers took off from the Upper Agency. Galbraith believed he would deliver the recruits to Fort Snelling, return to the reservation to make the annuity payment, then accept a leadership position in a Minnesota regiment as thanks for his recruiting efforts.
News of the outbreak of war overtook Galbraith and his recruits at St. Peter on August 19. The Renville Rangers changed course and marched to the aid of Fort Ridgely. Meanwhile, Galbraith’s wife, Henrietta, and their two children were being led to safety from their home at the Upper Agency by the Wahpeton Dakota leader Anpetutokeca (John Other Day). Galbraith helped defend Fort Ridgely and was wounded at the battle of Birch Coulee. After the war Galbraith was exonerated in two congressional investigations into allegations that his conduct at the Agency brought on the U.S.-Dakota War. Galbraith died in Cheyenne, Wyoming, in 1909.

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