More than Statehood on Their Minds: South Dakota Joins the Union, 1889

Authors

John E. Miller, South Dakota State University

Date of this Version

1990

Comments

Published in Great Plains Quarterly [GPQ 10 (Fall 1990): 206-2171.Copyright 1990 Center for Great Plains Studies, University of Nebraska—Lincoln.

Abstract

"IT'S A GO," read the jubilant headline in the Huron Daily Huronite on 21 February 1889, one day after Congress passed the Omnibus Bill admitting four new states into the Union South Dakota, North Dakota, Montana, and Washington.¹ The following day, despite speculation that he might veto the legislation, President Grover Cleveland signed the bill into law, setting into motion a process that formally conferred statehood on South Dakota on 2 November 1889. For almost a decade momentum had been building in southern Dakota for this day, and people's frustrations with Congressional inaction had grown apace.²