"The organic law of a great commonwealth": the framing of the South Dakota Constitution.

AuthorLauck, Jon

[ILLUSTRATION OMITTED]

Legal scholars have criticized the "poverty of state constitutional discourse" caused by its limited historical depth and by the absence of historical research into the people and events surrounding the framing of state constitutions. (1) James Gardner has found a "general unwillingness among state supreme courts to engage in any kind of analysis of the state constitution at all." (2) A better understanding of the origins of state constitutions, according to Gardner, would advance of the "goal of creating in every state a vigorous, independent body of state constitutional law capable of standing by itself as a basis for constitutional rulings by state courts." (3) Studying the unique political history of a state, in other words, will foster the development of state constitutional law. When analyzing a "state's constitutional identity," scholars have focused on the "relationship between a constitution and the corresponding polity," which "must be grounded in an identifiable state community, an entity whose inhabitants share distinctive ideals, customs, and traditions." (4) The analysis of a state's unique political history can shape the development of a state's constitutional law. As Wisconsin Supreme Court Justice Shirley S. Abrahamson once noted, "All the differences in our state constitutions are not accidents of draftsmanship. Some of these differences reflect differences in our tradition." (5)

The importance of historical analysis in the proper interpretation of the South Dakota Constitution has been recognized by the South Dakota Supreme Court. (6) When construing a constitutional provision, the South Dakota Supreme Court has held that "a court may look to the history of the times and examine the state of things existing when the constitution was framed and adopted." (7) Given the importance attached to the origins of state constitutions, this article seeks to promote a more complete understanding of the history and context of the framing of South Dakota's constitution.

  1. INTRODUCTION

    On July 4, 1889, the weather in Sioux Falls was fair and clear. (8) On the 113th anniversary of the Declaration of Independence, Sioux Falls was home to 12,000 people, close to the population of Boston at the time of the American Revolution. (9) During the 1889 Fourth of July celebration, Sioux Falls "entertained the largest crowd of people ever assembled at any one place in Dakota." The railroads ran special trains which transported an additional 9,000 people into the city and horse-drawn carriages rolled into the city carrying another 6,000 people. (10) At sunrise, the city woke to the thunder of a forty-two gun salute fired by the Sioux Falls Light Artillery company, the clang of the city's church bells, and the wail of steam whistles. At 10:00 a.m., a holiday ceremony commenced which featured speeches, music, an invocation by the Episcopalian Bishop, the reading of the Declaration of Independence, and the singing of "Hail Columbia." The festivities also included a parade, a baseball game at Base Ball Park, a band contest, tub races on the Big Sioux River, a greased pole climbing contest, sack races, a greased pig contest, a three-legged race, bicycle races, wheel-barrow races, horse races, and a grand balloon ascension featuring a man who would leap from the balloon basket in a parachute, all part of what the St. Paul Pioneer Press called a "monster celebration." (11) During the day, the balloon ascension had to be delayed due to high Dakota winds. When finally attempted, the wind caused an errant spark which caused the $450 balloon to go up in smoke, "a kind of ascension not fully satisfactory to the 5,000 spectators." (12)

    At noon, after they had marched in the parade, the seventy-five delegates of the South Dakota Constitutional Convention gathered at Germania Hall, which was built in 1880 by the local Germania Verein (meaning "unite") to "foster art, to awaken the mind to liberty, to create a love for all that is good and beautiful, to encourage social intercourse and to aid in preserving the fruits of German culture." The hall was festooned with American flags and red, white, and blue bunting and the delegates' names and home counties were printed on a piece of white board in front of their designated desks. County maps were posted on the walls and parliamentary rules, statistical data, and volumes of Dakota history were available on every delegate's desk. (13) Four large stars hung on the walls designating the four new states, including South Dakota, which were on the verge of entering the Union. The prayer which opened the convention was given by Reverend Stratton of the First Congregational Church in Sioux Falls. The blessing of the Congregational Church, the original Puritan church in the new world, symbolized the transmigration of New England institutions and culture, often after a period of evolution in the Midwest, to Dakota Territory. Judge Alonzo Edgerton, who was elected president of the convention, thanked the convention for the honor and "expressed the joy which all felt that the rights so long denied and due the people of this great commonwealth were about to be realized." After they adjourned, many of the delegates proceeded to the baseball games, the various races, and a prohibition meeting. (14)

    The 1889 constitutional convention in Sioux Falls represented the culmination of a decade's work toward statehood for Dakotans. As the Great Dakota Boom unfolded during the 1880s and farmers filled the prairies of eastern Dakota, the territory became ever more ripe for statehood and self-rule. A long tradition of American republicanism undergirded the movement for statehood. For a decade, the advocates of statehood had been frustrated by a national political environment which stymied statehood and by the defects in the territorial system of governance. At long last, after constitutions written in 1883 and 1885 failed to spur Congressional action, in 1889 they were able to frame a constitution and join the Union as a state.

  2. A MACHIAVELLIAN MOMENT ON THE MIDDLE BORDER

    The pioneers who settled Dakota Territory during the Great Dakota Boom of the 1880s tapped a deep well of republican social thought and practice. (15) They drew, in particular, upon the political culture of the Midwest and New England from which many of them came, the symbols of American democracy, and old world antecedents. The intense memories and political battles of the Civil War provided another source of political meaning and another stream of republican ideology. The settlers' embrace of republican ideals involved a commitment to personal virtue and patriotism, praise for agrarian life, the development of independent and educated citizens who would wrestle with political questions in the public square, and criticism of corruption.

    In recent decades, historians have intensely studied republicanism. In a classic treatment, J.G.A. Pocock described the revival of classical republican ideas in early modern Europe as a "Machiavellian moment," a designation which highlighted the role of the famous Florentine Niccolo Machiavelli in the resurgence of republican thought. (16) After this revival, republicanism was embraced by reformers in England and by English colonists in America. (17) Although the definition of republicanism is not always precise in these studies, certain elements are well-established and are discernible in Dakota Territory. Generally, republicans worried about promoting the moral virtues necessary to produce citizens who could preserve and wisely govern a republic. True republican citizens would overcome simple self-interest and an attraction to extravagance and luxury and instead promote the "common good" and the interests of the "commonwealth." By promoting personal virtue, dedication to the commonwealth, and the maintenance of a stable social order, republicans would avoid the corruption which undermined previous republics. Although republicanism became more intertwined with the workings of the market after the American Revolution and therefore distinct from its classical forms, it remained a powerful influence in American political culture throughout the 19th century. (18)

    The intensity of the civic spirit among the settlers of the Great Dakota Boom drew on the republicanism of the American Revolution and its subsequent nineteenth century manifestations. The Civil War intensified the meaning of republicanism, especially for Northerners who fought to preserve the American commonwealth and who made up the bulk of Dakota settlers. By the 1880s, public frustration with political corruption and concerns about the changes wrought by industrialization increased public consciousness of the need to pursue republican ideals. Aggravation at the absence of local control inherent in the territorial system and the corruption of territorial officials made adherence to republican principles even stronger in Dakota Territory. As Donald Pickens and John Patrick Diggins have noted of the nineteenth century American West in general, the settlers' political "activities did vaguely resemble the formulation of the polis, 'confirming a kind of Machiavellian moment with the opening of each new territory.'" (19)

    The republicanism extant during the American Revolution evolved in certain ways throughout the nineteenth century to become the republicanism prominent during the settlement of Dakota Territory. Even if classical republican references were not as common in nineteenth century rhetoric as that examined by intellectual historians during the Revolutionary period, Jean Baker has noted, "there were other ways to preserve beliefs." She notes, in particular, that "republican behavior" was promoted through schools and political parties and that "[w]hite male Americans who never gave speeches, framed resolutions or wrote pamphlets daily practiced and through their public behavior, observed its tenets." Baker...

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