In addition to Mother’s Day, the state of Minnesota also celebrates its 156th birthday today. A century and a half later, modern Minnesotans might take our inclusion to the Union for granted but when the proposal of Minnesotan statehood first hit the floors of the Congress in Washington DC, not everyone was onboard for the idea.

In 1857, many southern Senators were fearful of admitting new states that would be anti-slave. To preserve the delicate balance between free and slave states that then existed, several prominent Senators spoke out against the admission of Minnesota. The following quotations are taken from a speech by Senator John B. Thompson of Kentucky given before Congress in that year:

“…I do not say, sir, that under no state of circumstances ought new States to be admitted into the Union; but I have been here long enough to see the effect of new States coming in. Whenever the State of Minnesota shall be admitted, we shall have in this body two additional voices against what I think are the best interested of the country. I am not, as a southern man, going to vote to help them to bludgeon us. I am not going to out in their hands the club with which to cleave down a brother. When they are admitted, they will, like all new States, be continually asking for public lands for schools, for alternate sections of land for roads, and we shall have propositions for light-houses, for harbors, and for lake defenses, and we shall be told about the adjacency of the Canada border and the necessity of protection.

When a Minnesota Senator lands here with all the pomp and circumstances of a bashaw of three tails, with the aristocratic gravity of an English chancellor of the exchequer he will open his budget, and unfold proposition after proposition…You will find, after admitting Minnesota, that like the name of many a Tommy in an old man’s will, the name of Minnesota, the youngest child, will occur oftener on the statue-book and the proceedings of this body than the name of the Lord God in the twentieth chapter of Exodus. Then Minnesota, like California, now the youngest State, will be presiding genius and divinity of the proceedings of Congress. I do not want representatives here from Minnesota for their votes or their power, or what they will do after they get here…

…Our action in regard to purchasing territory is somewhat curious. We do not more than half pay the Indians for their land; in fact, we cheat them out of it; and they are disappearing as the snow fades before the face of day. After having done that, you are to get up Territories and new States, and by all means sorts of artificial excitement force into them a population from all Europe – men that do not suit you or me, sir; and yet men to whom you propose to give land for nothing. More of these men at the port of New York every year than the whole number of the population of the State of Florida or the State of Arkansas.

I am against giving power to such people in this way. My notion of governing the Territories is that they ought to be governed by a pro-consul and pay tribute to Caesar…

Like boys that get too big for their breeches, they ought to have rigid discipline administered to them; they ought to be made to know their place, and constrained to keep it. We are told of there being two hundred thousand people in Minnesota. I do not care if there are five hundred thousand. They went there in the way I have stated, and I do not intended to go out of my way to give them power…

…the Constitution of the United States and their treaties under it being the supreme law of the land, this stipulation give the inhabitants of the ceded territory the rights to be protected in their property until they come to be admitted as States. While they are Territories; Minnesota, Nebraska, and Kansas are liable to have slaves taken there…

There is, Mr. President, a common popular error upon the subject immediately before us. I allude to the notion that we are bound peremptorily to admit a new State. What are the provisions of the treaty of cession? That until the ceded territory are admitted as States, the inhabitants shall have the immunities and rights of other citizens. A majority of the States at that time owned negroes, and their people had as much right to own a negro as I have to own a black horse or a black dog – a right never to be affected until they came into the Union as sovereign States. Is not this territory, covered by that provision, slave territory to all intents and purposes?

I do not believe in the notion that we are bound to admit a Territory as State when ever it applies. I know that one or two members of Congress, to whom I have spoken, asked me whether under the Constitution we were not forced to admit them? I say no. The Constitution provides: “New States may be admitted by the Congress into this Union; but no new State shall be formed or erected within the jurisdiction of any other State; not any State be formed by the junction of two or more States or parts of States; without the consent of the Legislatures of the States concerned, as well as Congress.” This notion seems to be entertained that when a Territory contains a certain number of people you must admit it as a State anyhow. I say it does not depend on the numerical amount of people there. I do not know whether they are Canadians, or Dutch or other refugees from Europe, vagrants and vagabonds and speculators from all parts of the earth. I know of no census which justified the statement that they are two hundred thousand people in Minnesota. I suppose it is like every other new country which is settled up.

A man goes there, seizes a favorable locality, lithographs a plan of a city, makes out harbors and roads, and sends a flying fraud all over the country; and then comes to Congress to get appropriates and get a new State made. The moment you admit a Senator from this State he will be – as most of these men are, (I say nothing about anybody personally,) arrogant assuming pretentious, Free-Soilish, and Democratic [Laughter] He will set himself up as the emblem of representative wisdom, like Pallas from the brain of Jove, full-grown and panoplied for armor and public plunder. He will ask for all manner of appropriations you can imagine. The territorial Delegates annoy us enough in the lobbies now, and I do not want to have Senators here from these places.

…I have said that I want no Minnesota Senators here. Minnesota is a Territory belonging to us, and we have the power to make all needful roles and regulations for it. Instead of taking into partnership and full fellowship all these outside Territories and lost people of God’s earth, I would say let us take them, if we must do it, and rule them as Great Britain rules Afghanistan or Hindostan.”