November 2, 1889: North Dakota and South Dakota Are Admitted to the Union

November 2, 1889: North Dakota and South Dakota are admitted to the Union, as the 39th State and the 40th State.

Both States were in what would now be called the Midwest, and had been acquired as part of the Louisiana Purchase in 1803. The Dakota Territory was created in 1861, out of the Nebraska Territory, and included all of the present-day States of North and South Dakota, plus most of what would become Montana, and the northern half of what would become Wyoming. In 1863, the Montana and Wyoming portions were carved out, as part of the new Idaho Territory.

Why did it become 2 separate States? Regionalist tensions between the Northern and the Southern parts of the territory were present since the beginning. The Southern part was always more populated: In the 1880 Census, the Southern part had a population of 98,268, two and a half times the Northern part's 36,909.

The Southern part also considered the North to be somewhat disreputable. According to Kimberly Porter, a history professor at the University of North Dakota, "The south half did not like the north half." In a 2016 article for Time magazine, she said that the South thought the North was "too much controlled by the wild folks, cattle ranchers, fur traders."

The coming of the railroads meant that the Northern and Southern parts were connected to different hubs: The northern part, via Fargo, which became North Dakota's largest city, and Bismarck, which became its State Capitol, became more closely tied to the "Twin Cities" of Minneapolis and St. Paul; while the Southern part became more closely tied to Sioux City, Iowa, and from there to Omaha, Nebraska. (Both Minneapolis and Omaha were major rail hubs by the standards of the time, due to the kinds of goods there, and the need to ship them out quickly.)

The Southern part was anxious for Statehood so they could have their own capital, and wouldn't have to deal with the politicians in Bismarck. They had already crossed the 60,000 population necessary for Statehood; so, they held a convention in September of 1883, drafted a State Constitution, and submitted it to the voters. It was approved by the electors and submitted to Congress.

A bill providing for Statehood of the Dakota Territory south of the 46th parallel of latitude was passed by the U.S. Senate in December 1884, but it failed to pass the U.S. House. A 2nd Constitutional Convention for South Dakota was held in September 1885, framing a new Constitution, and the people ratified it with an overwhelming vote.

By 1889, and the accession of Benjamin Harrison to the Presidency, North Dakota had 150,000 people, and South Dakota had 340,000 -- about a 2.2-to-1 ratio. Harrison was a Republican, and Congressional Republicans thought that accepting the North and the South as 2 separate States would mean 4 new Republican Senators. More often than not, that has been the case: With occasional exceptions, such as George McGovern and Tom Daschle, even the Democrats sent to the Senate by the Dakotas have tended to be centrist or even conservative.

North Dakota and South Dakota became States simultaneously on November 2, 1889. Harrison had the papers shuffled to obscure which one was signed first, and the order went unrecorded, although the U.S. Department of State now recognizes North Dakota as the 39th State and South Dakota as the 40th State. There would quickly be more States, as Montana was added 6 days later, Washington 3 days after that, and Idaho and Wyoming 6 months later.

While Rapid City turned out to be South Dakota's largest city, its Capitol became Pierre -- and that's pronounced like "Peer," not "Pee-YAIR," like the French version of "Peter."

According to the 2020 Census, North Dakota has about 780,000 people, fewer than any State except Alaska, Vermont and Wyoming. In contrast, South Dakota has about 880,000, so the gap between them is smaller than ever.

What is a far wider gap is in tourism. South Dakota, near Rapid City, has Mount Rushmore, with its giant faces of 4 Presidents: George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, Abraham Lincoln, and Theodore Roosevelt. TR was chosen because he was the 1st President to have spent any time in the American West, and greatly extolled its virtues. North Dakota's biggest tourist attraction is TR's cattle ranch, outside Medora. These attractions also exemplify the topography: North, a ranch, full of flat land; South, a mountain, in the Black Hills, sacred to the native Sioux people.

The highest-ranking politician ever to come from North Dakota has been Warren Christopher, the Secretary of State in President Bill Clinton's 1st term, 1993 to 1997. The highest-ranker born in South Dakota has been Hubert Humphrey, Vice President under Lyndon Johnson, 1965 to 1969, and narrowly missing being elected President himself in 1968. Since Humphrey lived his adult life in Minnesota, and represented it in the Senate, the closest any politician representing South Dakota has come to becoming President is Senator George McGovern, who was the Democratic nominee in 1972. But where Richard Nixon beat Humphrey in a squeaker, he beat McGovern in a landslide.

Both States are known for their wide-open rural space, and neither has a city large enough for major league sports. Their people tend to root for the Minnesota teams, except in the westernmost parts of the States, where they are closer to Denver and its teams.

In North Dakota, Fargo is home to the Fargo-Moorhead RedHawks of baseball's American Association, an independent league roughly equivalent to Class A ball, 3 levels below the major leagues; the Fargo Force of the United States Hockey League; and North Dakota State University, who have the only NCAA Football Bowl Subdivision (FBS, formerly known as Division I-A) team in the State.

The University of North Dakota, in Grand Forks, have one of the great college hockey programs, having won 8 National Championships. But their football team is in the Football Championship Subdivision (FCS, formerly named Division I-AA), and are thus a step below NDSU.

In South Dakota, Sioux Falls is home to the Sioux Falls Canaries of the American Association, the Sioux Falls Skyforce of the NBA G League, and the Sioux Falls Stampede of the USFL. The University of South Dakota, in Vermillion, and South Dakota State University, in Brookings, compete in NCAA Division I, but their football teams are in the FCS, on the same level as UND and a step below NDSU.

*

November 2, 1889 was a Saturday. Baseball was out of season. Basketball hadn't been invented yet. Hockey barely existed. There were college football games, but not as many as there could have been. The day before, Rutgers had beaten the Ridgefield Athletic Club, 18-0 in New Brunswick, New Jersey. Two days before that, Yale beat Penn, 20-10 in Philadelphia; and Lehigh had beaten Lafayette, 16-10 in Bethlehem, Pennsylvania.

Harvard beat a clearly exhausted Penn team, 35-0 in Cambridge, Massachusetts. Cornell beat Stevens Institute of Hoboken, New Jersey, 39-4 at Ithaca, New York. Lehigh came right back from their defeat of arch-rival Lafayette, and clobbered Columbia, 51-6 in Bethlehem.

And Princeton beat Wesleyan University by a whopping 98-0 in Middletown, Connecticut; and, in a Thanksgiving Day season-finale battle of unbeatens, 10-0 at the Berkeley Oval in The Bronx.

And in English soccer, Royal Arsenal Football Club, the team that would become Arsenal, played a London Senior Cup match, at home at Manor Field in Plumstead, Kent, now a part of South-East London, and beat Unity Football Club, 4-1.