The Ancestry, Life, and Times of Hon. Henry Hastings Sibley, LL.D.; Ex-Member of U. S. Congress; Member of the American Geographical Society; First Delegate from the Territory, and First Governor of the State, of Minnesota. Brevet Major General, U.S.V.; Commander of the Loyal Legion of Minnesota; President of Board of Regents of the State University; of the State Historical Society, of the State Normal School Board, Etc.

Saint Paul, Minnesota: Pioneer Press Publishing Company, 1889. Presumed First Edition, First printing. Hardcover. Fair. x, 596, [2] pages. Footnotes. Index. Errata. Decorative endpapers. Frontispiece. Some cover staining and soiling. Some page discoloration, staining and foxing. Some hinge weakness. The author wrote: To secure the utmost accuracy, the following narrative, so far as relates to events under his immediate observation, has been submitted to the criticism of Mr. Sibley himself. The statements made can be relied upon as historically just. Authentic documents vouch for the rest." Henry Hastings Sibley (February 20, 1811 - February 18, 1891) was a fur trader with the American Fur Company, the first U.S. Congressional representative for Minnesota Territory, the first governor of the state of Minnesota, and a U.S. military leader in the Dakota War of 1862 and a subsequent expedition into Dakota Territory in 1863. The Wisconsin Territory's At-large congressional district was eliminated with the creation of the Territory of Minnesota on March 3, 1849. He was subsequently elected as the first representative of the Minnesota Territory's At-large congressional district, serving in the 31st and 32nd congresses from July 7, 1849 - March 3, 1853. Sibley was elected to the Minnesota Territorial House of Representatives, convened from January to March 1855, as the representative of Dakota County. He was a member of the Democratic Party wing of the first Minnesota Constitutional Convention, of which he eventually became president. Assembled July 13, 1857, the convention resulted in adoption of the constitution as framed on October 13, 1857.
In 1858 Sibley was elected as the first governor of the state, and is one of just four Minnesota Democrats to win a gubernatorial election with a Democrat in the White House. He served from May 24, 1858, until January 2, 1860. After narrowly defeating Republican Alexander Ramsey in the first state gubernatorial contest, Sibley declared in his inaugural address, "I have no object and no interests which are not inseparably bound up with the welfare of the state." He did not seek reelection. Sibley and General Alfred Sully led enormous and brutal campaigns to pursue Dakota Indians as far west as the Yellowstone River. In 1863, Sibley led what was then-considered a successful expedition against the Sioux in Dakota Territory. This campaign included the battles of Big Mound (July 24), Dead Buffalo Lake (July 26), and Stony Lake (July 28). This period would become the start of bloody wars between the U.S. government and Dakota that lasted until nearly twenty years. On November 29, 1865, he was brevetted as major-general of the volunteers for "efficient and meritorious services." He was honorably mustered out on April 30, 1866.