the territory. Dr. Randall did not carry out his
intention, but was caught in the California vortex, and did not return
to Minnesota.

James M. Goodhue of Lancaster, Wis., who was editing the _Wisconsin
Herald_, when he heard of the organization of the new territory,
immediately decided to start a paper in St. Paul, and as soon as
navigation opened in the spring of 1849, he came up with his press and
type. He met with many difficulties and obstructions, necessarily
incident to a new place in a venture such as was his, but he succeeded
in issuing the first number of his paper on the twenty-eighth day of
April, 1849. His first inclination was to call his paper the "_Epistle
of St. Paul_," but on sober reflection he was convinced that the name
might shock the religious sensibilities of the community, especially as
he did not possess many of the attributes of our patron saint, and he
decided to call his paper "_The Minnesota Pioneer_."

In his first issue he speaks of his establishment of that day, as
follows:

"We print and issue this number of the _Pioneer_ in a building
through which out-of-doors is visible by more than five hundred
apertures; and as for our type, it is not safe from being _pied_
on the galleys by the wind." The rest can be imagined.

Mr. Goodhue was just the man to be the editor of the first paper of a
frontier territory. He was energetic, enterprising, brilliant, bold and
belligerent. He conducted the _Pioneer_ with great success and advantage
to the territory until the year 1851, when he published an article on
Judge Cooper, censuring him for absenteeism, which is a very good
specimen of the editorial style of that day. He called the judge "a
sot," "a brute," "an ass," "a profligate vagabond," and closed his
article in the following language:

"Feeling some resentment for the wrongs our territory has so
long suffered by these men, pressing upon us like a dispensation
of wrath,--a judgment--a curse--a plague, unequalled since Egypt
went lousy,--we sat down to write this article with some
bitterness, but our very gall is honey to what they deserve."

In those fighting days, such an article could not fail to produce a
personal collision. A brother of Judge Cooper resented the attack, and
in the encounter between them, Goodhue was badly stabbed and Cooper was
shot. Neither wound proved fatal at the time, but it was always asserted
by the friends of each combatan