On This Date in Minnesota History (Shakopee, Northfield: crimes, construction, live)
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On this date forty years ago, an American hockey team comprised mostly of young college players defeated a Soviet team that stood as the best in the world.
It's hard to convey the significance of this event in the context of the Cold War. Unless you were alive and old enough to possess the awareness of the bipolar world conflict of the time, or were at least old enough to remember the Cold War itself - even if not this game - before the thaw came in the late '80s, understanding is impossible.
The Soviets ruled international hockey. Through a combination of ideological contrivance and blatant deceit, the Soviet roster comprised professionals being passed off as amateurs. While there were only three members of the 20-man American roster over the age of 22 (the oldest being 25), half the roster of the team from the USSR was 26 years old or older. Only four of the 20 Americans had even as much as minor league experience. The sole (former) pro on the team was Buzz Schneider, whose professional career consisted of four games with the Birmingham Bulls of the WHA* in 1977. Schneider would subsequently regain his amateur status in time for the 1980 Olympics.
*The World Hockey Association was the rival professional league to the NHL in the 1970s; in 1979 it would partially merge with the older league.
This game did not win the gold for the United States. They still had to defeat Finland, which they did 4-2, rallying from down 2-1 after the second period in that game. But that was almost anticlimactic. Beating the USSR was everything.
Many would go on to have professional careers. Names such as Neal Broten, Dave Christian, Mike Ramsey, Steve Christoff, and others will be familiar to those who watched the North Stars in the 1980s; they wore either green and gold or the colors of opposing teams.
And the local angle? 12 of those 20 Americans - including all five players mentioned above - were Minnesotans.
It was a great day for MN and a great day for Gopher fans. I was just talking about this with a buddy of mine over the weekend. When we were kids no one in any school in MN would dream of skating for anyone but the Gophers. Now they go all over the country and they have lots of choices. Kids from Hibbing, Greenway, Roseau, Warroad, I Falls, Eveleth, all dreamed, me included, of playing for the maroon and gold.
With an innocuous-sounding name, the Minnesota Commission of Public Safety is created with the signature of Governor J.A.A. Burnquist.
Spoiler: the MCPS wasn't innocuous.
The commission was created just ten days after the U.S. enntry into what was then called the Great War, to facilitate the war effort and to ensure security at the state level. It was given sweeping powers. While the commission did much to coordinate state and local services with an eye towards supporting the national wartime footing, it soon came to focus on rooting out 'enemies', loosely defined as both those who were perceived as suspect for traits such as being of German descent or speaking a language other than English as well as those who weren't properly enthusiastic in their support of the conflict.
[Note: At the time, there were over 100 non-English newspapers circulating in Minnesota. Election instructions were available in more languages then than now. A far larger percentage of the state's population were either immigrant or first-generation compared to today.]
To these ends, the commission created a surveillance network to spy on the citizenry. Meetings of unions, of groups opposing the U.S. entry into the war, and entities such as the Nonpartisan League (a particular boogeyman of the MCPS) were infiltrated. The commission also created an armed force, the Home Guard, a militia force of more than 8000, primarily with an eye towards putting down anticipated violent strikes (which never materialized) - unions were another obsession of the commission.
One stated goal of the commission was 'Americanization', in part to counter, and I quote the MCPS itself, 'foreign-born civic slackers'. One of the commission's orders was a de jure prohibition on any non-English instruction in schools. At the time, there were many schools - mostly private but some public - which used German as a medium of instruction (not study of, but instruction) for all courses. Other languages of primary instruction in Minnesota schools included Norwegian, Polish, French, Danish, Czech, and Dutch. However, the commission - in an uncharacteristic moment of practicality - did decline to enforce this order. A list of objectionable German-language books was removed from schools at the commission's orders. Elsewhere, teachers were fired under pressure of the commission for war opposition.
The commission had the power to overturn election results. In New Ulm, several elected officials who had urged changes to the military draft were suspended from office on grounds of insufficient loyalty. New Ulm, unsurprisingly, drew a lot of the MCPS's attention, being a city so immersed in German culture and language. A local newspaper editor was arrested for penning opinion pieces opposing the war.
For all this disregard for basic civil rights, it might have been much worse. The seven-member commission was dominated by attorney John F. McGee, who was unwavering in his stance that to criticize the government was treachery. In testifying before a United States Senate committee in 1918, McGee stated "Where we made our mistake was in not establishing a firing squad in the first days of the war. We should now get busy and have that firing squad working overtime." McGee didn't get his wish, but he was later appointed to the federal judiciary by President Warren Harding.
Predictably, this atmosphere encouraged the populace to take matters into their own hands. For example, a Rock County farmer was whipped and tarred & feathered by a mob - led by the Luverne mayor - suspecting him of disloyalty. He was then dragged to the South Dakota border and warned that he'd be lynched if he returned to the state.
In the end, the Minnesota Commission of Public disbanded in 1920. Though the state senate declined to support a state house vote to abolish it, the sunset clause inserted at its establishment eventually put an end to it.
The observation by William Shakespeare that the past is prologue comes to mind.
On this date, the Minneapolis Lakers defeated the Syracuse Nationals (today's Philadelphia 76ers) by a score of 110-95 to win the NBA Finals four games to two.
The merger of the BAA (Basketball Association of America) and the NBL (National Basketball League) in 1949 created the NBA that still exists today. The Lakers had begun play in the NBL in 1947, going on to win that season's championship (in 1948) over the Rochester Royals (now the Sacramento Kings). The team moved to the BAA the next season, again winning a title - this time against the Washington Capitols (a now-defunct franshise).
In the spring of 1950 the Lakers finished atop the Central Division in the new league, then proceeded to dispatch the Chicago Stags (now defunct), the Fort Wayne Pistons (now playing in Detroit) and the Anderson Packers (now defunct) in 2-0 sweeps, setting up their Finals match with the Nats.
That Lakers team included four future Hall of Famers. George Mikan, Vern Mikkelsen, and Jim Pollard are now members of the Basketball Hall of Fame. Another player, the teams's fourth-leading scoring in the Finals, is also a Hall of Famer, but not in quite the same way - that player is enshrined in both the Pro Football Hall of Fame and the Canadian Football Hall of Fame.
On this date, the United States Congress passed and President James Buchanan signed into law the Act for Admission of Minnesota to the Union, creating the 32nd state.
Minnesota's state constitution was drafted and approved by voters in 1857, then sent to Congress for ratification. The next year came the statehood votes, passing the House 157-39 and the Senate 49-3. There was a delay of several months related to the status of slavery in the Kansas Territory and whether or not Minnesota's future Congressional delegation was likely to support slavery in Kansas. This also devolved into bickering over whether Minnesota should be given one or two members of the House until the 1860 Census and apportionment could take place. Ultimately, Minnesota received two Representatives, along with statehood.
The Territory of Minnesota had been created in 1849, out of land that had previously been part of the Territory of Iowa - but which since 1846, after the creation of the State of Iowa, had been unorganized - and land that had similarly been part of the Territory of Wisconsin but which had been unorganized since 1848, when Wisconsin attained statehood. The Minnesota Territory included not only all of the present-day state, but land east of the Missouri River in what are now the Dakotas.
A major player in shaping what Minnesota was to become was none other than Senator Stephen Douglas of Illinois - yes, he of the famous Lincoln-Douglas debates. Douglas understood that the northern border area between the U.S. and British Canada was remote and unlikely to have a significant white population for many decades to come. Yet he also realized the future importance of the western reaches of the Great Lakes as a far-inland deepwater port. To that end, he blocked respective attempts to extend both Iowa and Wisconsin borders to encompass St. Anthony Falls in those states in the 1840s, for that would leave the border region uncontrolled by any state and without hope of gaining sufficient settlement to justify a state further north for many years. That area would this not only be underdeveloped but indefinitely vulnerable to British encroachment.
Telegraph service did not extent to Minnesota in 1858. News of statehood was wired to Prairie du Chien in Wisconsin, on the Misissippi across from Iowa. From there, it would take another two days for the news to be carried by steamboat up-river to St. Paul, now the capital of a state. On May 24, state officers were sworn in and Minnesota began to function as a governing entity.
In April of 1861 the 1st Minnesota Volunteer Infantry Regiment was mustered, for a term of three years.
Within a mere three months it would suffer a 20% casualty rate at the First Battle of Bull Run. In 1862, 28% of its ranks would be felled at Antietam. But neither of those battles would approach the suffering the 1st Minnesota would see at Gettysburg.
Depleted by many battles, the regiment's strength stood at 262 soldiers on July 2, 1863. It was held in reserve, a veteran unit that could be relied upon to stand firm when less experienced troops broke under the pressure of combat. When a tactical error by General Sickles created a gap in the Union lines, the Confederates attacked to exploit it. In response, corps commander Winfield Scott called for reinforcements, but the only unit at hand was the 1st Minnesota. He despaired at its diminished ranks, but had no other option. Scott ordered the 1st Minnesota to charge into the gap and engage an entire Confederate brigade with five times as many troops. It was a suicidal move made out of desperation. The regiment was being sacrificed.
Scott had needed the 1st Minnesota to hold the line for five minutes while other units were assembled. It fought for fifteen minutes, by which time 215 of its soldiers - 82% - had fallen. The scattered survivors were reassembled, and the following day fate would decree that they had to again rush to fill gaps in the Union line in the face of Pickett's charge. Some of the men who had beaten the long odds of July 2 did not survive July 3.
Despite the carnage, the 1st Minnesota was not destroyed. No surviving United States regiment has ever suffered such a high single-day rate of casualties. The outcome of Gettysburg, particularly the political boost it gave to the Union cause and to President Lincoln in general, is widely considered pivotal to the outcome of the war itself. It is not clear that, but for the 1st Minnesota at Gettysburg, the Civil War would have ended in the decisive Union victory that it did.
The monument to the 1st Minnesota on the Gettysburg Battlefield:
Twenty-nine years after Minnesota's most recent pro franchise ceased operations - the Minneapolis Red Jackets, which folded in 1930 after a six-game losing streak during which they were outscored 138-7 - the state found out it was getting another professional football team. However, that team wouldn't play for another years, and would switch leagues before taking the field.
The founding of the league had been announced in July without details. When the league met for the first time in Chicago in August, it still didn't even have a name (the 'American Football League' would be revealed on August 22) but it had six nascent franchises: Dallas, Denver, Houston, Los Angeles, New York... and Minneapolis-St. Paul. Max Winter (yes, that's from where 'Winter Park' comes) had been a co-owner of the Minneapolis Lakers. When his attempts to secure an NFL expansion team were unsuccessful, he turned to Lamar Hunt and his new league. The AFL would round out its roster of franchises with the addition of teams in Boston and Buffalo two months later.
However, the Vikings (whose nickname was not bestowed upon them until September 1960) would never play a game in the AFL. The National Football League, alarmed by the emergence of a rival, soon began attempting to undermine it. In addition to hurriedly awarding an expansion team to Dallas (meant to undermine Hunt's own Dallas Texans - it worked; that team moved to Kansas City in 1963), it lured Winter to abandon the AFL in order to begin play in the NFL in 1961.
Fun fact #1:
When Ole Haugsrud had sold his team - the Duluth Eskimos, after the 1927 season - back to the NFL, part of the deal was that Haugsrud would retain the right to a stake in any future NFL franchise to be located in Minnesota. He'd declined to be a part of the Minneapolis Red Jackets when in began play in 1929, but he exercised his option in 1960 when the Minnesota franchise officially joined the NFL and was awarded 10% of the team.
Fun fact #2:
Down to seven teams after Winter and his franchise bolted to the NFL, the AFL needed an eighth team. Thus, the Oakland Raiders (briefly, the Oakland Señors before ownership came to its senses) were born.
In April of 1861 the 1st Minnesota Volunteer Infantry Regiment was mustered, for a term of three years.
Within a mere three months it would suffer a 20% casualty rate at the First Battle of Bull Run. In 1862, 28% of its ranks would be felled at Antietam. But neither of those battles would approach the suffering the 1st Minnesota would see at Gettysburg.
Depleted by many battles, the regiment's strength stood at 262 soldiers on July 2, 1863. It was held in reserve, a veteran unit that could be relied upon to stand firm when less experienced troops broke under the pressure of combat. When a tactical error by General Sickles created a gap in the Union lines, the Confederates attacked to exploit it. In response, corps commander Winfield Scott called for reinforcements, but the only unit at hand was the 1st Minnesota. He despaired at its diminished ranks, but had no other option. Scott ordered the 1st Minnesota to charge into the gap and engage an entire Confederate brigade with five times as many troops. It was a suicidal move made out of desperation. The regiment was being sacrificed.
Scott had needed the 1st Minnesota to hold the line for five minutes while other units were assembled. It fought for fifteen minutes, by which time 215 of its soldiers - 82% - had fallen. The scattered survivors were reassembled, and the following day fate would decree that they had to again rush to fill gaps in the Union line in the face of Pickett's charge. Some of the men who had beaten the long odds of July 2 did not survive July 3.
Despite the carnage, the 1st Minnesota was not destroyed. No surviving United States regiment has ever suffered such a high single-day rate of casualties. The outcome of Gettysburg, particularly the political boost it gave to the Union cause and to President Lincoln in general, is widely considered pivotal to the outcome of the war itself. It is not clear that, but for the 1st Minnesota at Gettysburg, the Civil War would have ended in the decisive Union victory that it did.
The monument to the 1st Minnesota on the Gettysburg Battlefield:
I've been there a couple of times, and it's an awesome sight. To stand there and imagine 1000 whooping rebs charging at you and you look behind you see nothing but baggage trains and unorganized troops.
Turn, affix bayonets and charge.
Couple of things, Sickles did not make an error. He intentionally engaged the enemy, without orders, in a vainglorious attempt to influence the battle. Also, the 20th Maine gets all the credit for their stand on Roundtop, but had the First MN not charged on to the field to stop the 9th Alabama they and their reinforcing units they would have split the Union lines and rolled them up.
The deviation from orders cost Sickles his leg, but it gave him the remainder of his life to write letters and try and take as much glory for the win at Gettysburg as he could, despite his actions nearly costing the Union the victory.
The second-deadliest wildfire in American history, the Cloquet Fire, began when sparks from a passing train ignited track-side brush in conditions that were seasonally hot, very dry, and quite windy. Compounding the problem, timber practices of the time entailed abandoning massive piles of useless wood - basically kindling - in the wake of their cuts. It was a recipe for disaster, and disaster ensued. After smoldering for two days, the fire roared into a conflagration on the twelfth day of the month.
The official death toll is 453, though it is widely understood to have been higher. In those days there were undocumented homesteads in the northern forests, as well as independent lumberjacks working in small operations. Presumably, many fatalities went unnoticed. Thousands of homes were destroyed, as were forty schools. Hundreds of square miles burned.
NOTE:
Interestingly, the deadliest and the third-deadliest wildfires in the United States occurred on the same day, October 8 (again, October) in 1871. The Peshtigo Fire burned in northeastern Wisconsin and the western Upper Peninsula of Michigan. At least a thousand people, and perhaps over two thousand, lost their lives in that blaze. At the same time, the Great Michigan Fire (actually, a series of fires) killed hundreds of people in Lower Michigan. Neither of those fires got much coverage in the media of the time, elbowed out of the news by the Great Chicago Fire, an urban inferno which occurred on the same day, killing hundreds more and devastating several square miles of the city.
The second-deadliest wildfire in American history, the Cloquet Fire, began when sparks from a passing train ignited track-side brush in conditions that were seasonally hot, very dry, and quite windy. Compounding the problem, timber practices of the time entailed abandoning massive piles of useless wood - basically kindling - in the wake of their cuts. It was a recipe for disaster, and disaster ensued. After smoldering for two days, the fire roared into a conflagration on the twelfth day of the month.
The official death toll is 453, though it is widely understood to have been higher. In those days there were undocumented homesteads in the northern forests, as well as independent lumberjacks working in small operations. Presumably, many fatalities went unnoticed. Thousands of homes were destroyed, as were forty schools. Hundreds of square miles burned.
NOTE:
Interestingly, the deadliest and the third-deadliest wildfires in the United States occurred on the same day, October 8 (again, October) in 1871. The Peshtigo Fire burned in northeastern Wisconsin and the western Upper Peninsula of Michigan. At least a thousand people, and perhaps over two thousand, lost their lives in that blaze. At the same time, the Great Michigan Fire (actually, a series of fires) killed hundreds of people in Lower Michigan. Neither of those fires got much coverage in the media of the time, elbowed out of the news by the Great Chicago Fire, an urban inferno which occurred on the same day, killing hundreds more and devastating several square miles of the city.
The Fire Museum is worth a visit, if they are not closed.
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