There were more pegs than there were holes to put them in. In the southern part of the Territory was the city or town of Yankton. filled with adventurous politicians. who had been sent there by the Federal Government to hold Territorial offices. Fargo sprang up under the wheat emigration to the Red River of the North and became the rival to Yankton. and it became the nucleus of another set of ambitious politicians sent there to hold office in that portion of the Territory. The actual influx of emigration had not filled up the intermediate space between the projected North Pacific Railroad and the territory around Yankton and the Black Hills. and the result was that men ambitious to locate the government upon conjectural town sites. men who were rivals of each other both in the race for political power and wealth. men who were anxious to cut each others throats politically and physically. in order to reach their own ambitious and personal ends. clutched each other by the throat. and they have been struggling and fighting from 1870 down to this hour as to whether one or the other faction should control that Territory and hold the offices. General Grant is credited with a remark in regard to Dakota which I have from a gentleman who heard it from his own lips. When the secretary of state of Dakota was killed by a rival politician in a contest over a State or Territorial office.
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emigration