The removal of the state capital from St. Paul, which would have been accomplished in 1857 but for the high-handed exploit of Councilor Rolette, though frequently broached informally, was not seriously taken up by any legislature till 1869. A bill for removal to Kandiyohi County, on to land belonging to the state, was passed through both houses so easily and rapidly as to invite the surmise that the necessary votes had been secured in advance. Superfluous debate was shut out by the operation of the previous question. The vote in the house was 39 to 7, that in the senate 12 to 10; but the house could not muster enough votes to pass the bill over Governor Marshall’s veto. The veto message was moderate in tone; suggesting that it would be wise to hear from the people on the question, that there should be no haste about a final location of the capital, and that it was no time to expend a great sum of money on buildings.
Two years later a final proposal to remove the capital from St. Paul to the imagined city of Stanton met with a prompt indefinite postponement.
Horace Austin was inaugurated governor January 9, 1870. A native of Connecticut, who had lived and married in Maine, he had come to Minnesota in 1855 at the age of twenty-five and settled at St. Peter. He had studied law and taught school, but had taken no college course. In the campaign of 1863 against the Sioux he commanded a company of Minnesota Mounted Rangers and gave a good account of himself on the march and battlefield. His neighbors had elected him a district judge and were more than content with his wise and fearless conduct on the bench. It was a piece of good fortune for the state that the warring Ramsey and Donnelly factions of the Republican party in the convention of 1869 compromised upon a candidate unobjectionable to both, but no especial favorite with either. His majority was less than two thousand over the popular candidate of the Democrats, George L. Otis. Ingenious, hopeful, independent, Mr. Austin in successive messages showered upon the legislatures projects of reform and development. In many of them he was doomed to disappointment because he relied entirely on the merit of propositions, and was not politician enough to understand that it is only by timely and happy combination of interests that measures can be carried in legislative bodies. Among these abortive recommendations may be mentioned the one in his second message, urging a revision of the state constitution, which he declared to be a motley of inconsistencies. His desire was that a revised constitution should contain such provisions as these: (1) Restriction of special legislation; (2) prohibition of exclusive franchises; (3) limitation of local taxation; (4) restriction of municipal debts; (5) ample power to regulate railroads; and (6) abolition of the grand jury. Neither the legislature to which the recommendation was addressed nor any subsequent one has been willing to propose to the people a revision of the constitution. Casual amendments have been frequent, but a late amendment to the amending article, requiring an affirmative vote of a majority of all the electors to adopt a proposed amendment, will certainly render it difficult, and it may be impossible, to make further casual changes in the state’s organic law. A happy illustration of Mr. Austin’s independence may be found in his action on the disposition of the so-called “internal improvement lands” of the state. An almost forgotten statute of the United States, passed in 1841, authorized the gift to any new state of five hundred thousand acres of public lands for “internal improvements.” The claim of Minnesota to this grant had been tardily conceded by the Secretary of the Interior. In his inaugural address Governor Austin recommended that the disposition of the lands should be submitted to popular vote. The legislature then opening (1870) was of a different mind, and listened to suggestions that the end of the law would be served if the lands should be bestowed on certain railroad corporations willing to accept them. When the legislature of 1871 convened that proposition seemed much in favor, and a bill to divide the whole grant, then possibly worth ten millions of dollars, in eleven parcels among seven corporations was passed in so summary a manner as to suggest a careful rehearsal for the purely formal proceedings. The support of the bill was so evenly derived from the two political parties that neither of them could claim the greater credit for guarding the public interest.