Doane Robinson

"Statehood was welcomed by the people with real rejoicing. As a territory the people had no part in the election of a President, nor in the legislation by Congress, and all of the conditions of territorial life tended to make a people dependent rather than self-reliant. The chief concern of the people of Dakota, however, during the ten years' fight for statehood, had been for the division of the territory into two states. In this they were moved by motives of the highest patriotism. The leaders of that period believed that it would be a crime for them to sit idly by and permit the great territory to become one state, with but two members of the United States Senate, thus entailing to posterity forever a sort of political vassalage to the small states of the eastern seaboard."