widely circulated. The
newspapers had no facilities for printing cartoons at that time. They
had to be printed on a hand press and folded into the papers. It was
proposed, by the terms of this amendment to the constitution, to
donate to four different railroad companies $10,000 per mile for every
mile of road graded and ready to iron. Work Was commenced soon after
the passage of the law, and in a short time a demand was made by the
railroad companies upon Gov. Sibley for the issuance of the bonds, in
accordance with their idea of the terms of the contract made by the
state. Gov. Sibley declined to issue the bonds until the rights of
the state had been fully protected. The railroad companies would not
accept the restrictions placed upon them by the governor, and they
obtained a peremptory writ from the supreme court directing that they
be issued. The governor held that the supreme court had no authority
to coerce the executive branch of the state government, but on the
advice of the attorney general, and rather than have any friction
between the two branches of the government, he, in accordance with the
mandate of the court, reluctantly signed the bonds. Judge Flandrau
dissented from the opinion of his colleagues, and had his ideas
prevailed the state's financial reputation would have been vastly
improved. Dr. Foster did not believe Gov. Sibley was sincere in his
efforts to protect the interests of the state, and denounced him with
the same persistence he had during the campaign of the previous fall.
The doctor would never acknowledge that Gov. Sibley was the legal
governor of Minnesota, and Tie contended that he had no right to sign
the bonds: that their issuance was illegal, and that neither the
principal nor the interest would ever be paid. The Minnesotian carried
at the head of its columns the words "Official Paper of the City," and
it was feared that its malignant attacks upon the state officials,
denouncing the issuance of the bonds as fraudulent and illegal, would
be construed abroad as reflecting the sentiment of the majority of the
people in the the community in which it was printed, and would have a
bad effect in the East when the time came to negotiate the bonds. An
effort was made to induce the city council to deprive that paper of
its official patronage, but that body could not see its way clear to
abrogate its contract. Threats were made to throw the office into the
river, but they did not materialize. When