Minnesota 

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Anderson, David D. Ignatius Donnelly. 129 p. Boston: Twayne, 1980.  

Chrislock, Carl H. "A Cycle in the History of Minnesota Republicanism." Minnesota History. 39:93-110, illus. Fall 1964.   

_____. "Sidney M. Owen: An Editor in Politics." Minnesota History. 36(4):109-26. December 1958.  Important Minnesota Alliance member and Populist opponent to leadership of Donnelly.   

_____. "The Alliance Party and the Minnesota Legislature of 1891." Minnesota History. 35(7):297-312. September 1957.   

_____. "The Politics of Protest in Minnesota, 1890‑1901, from Populism to Progressivism." 365 p. Ph.D. dissertation, U of Minnesota, 1955.  Dissertation Abstracts, 15:1055. June 1955.  

Christie, Jean. "'An Earnest Enthusiasm for Education': Sarah Christie Stevens, Schoolwoman." Minnesota History. 48(6): 245-54. 

Crawford, Paul. "Ignatius Donnelly, Agrarian Agitator." Ph.D. dissertation, Northwestern U, 1950.  

Doermann, Humphrey. "All My Immense Labor for Nothing...." American Heritage 1961 12(4): 60-64 and 104-107.  Biography of Ignatius Donnelly, an noted national figure in the People's Party.  America: History and Life, 0:2813

Gilman, Rhoda R. "Eva McDonald Valesh: Minnesota Populist." Women of Minnesota: Selected Biographical Essays (St. Paul: Minnesota Historical Society Press, 1977): 55-76.  Eva McDonald Valesh was a leading figure in Minnesota's labor and agrarian political movements.   She supported the Knights of Labor, the Farmers' Alliance, and the People's Party as a journalist and lecturer.  She was elected State Lecturer of the Minnesota Alliance, was a national organizer for the People's Party, and worked for William Jennings Bryan in 1896.  That same year, she moved to New York City where she worked as a journalist and became involved with the Women's Trade Union League. America: History and Life, 16A:5403

Hicks, John D. "The Origin and Early History of the Farmers' Alliance in Minnesota." Mississippi Valley Historical Review. 9(3):203-226. December 1922.    

_____. "The People's Party in Minnesota." Minnesota Historical Bulletin. 5(8):531-60. November 1924.   

_____. "The Political Career of Ignatius Donnelly." Mississippi Valley Historical Review. 8(1‑2):80‑132. June‑September 1921.  Donnelly in Minnesota and national politics, 1863-1900.  

Huch, Ronald K. "'Typhoid' Truelsen, Water and Politics in Duluth, 1896-1900." Minnesota History 1981 47(5): 189-199.  Caspar Henry Truelson rose in Democratic and Populist politics from his Danish-German immigrant background to become a two-term mayor on the popular support of his stand against a sudden purchase of Duluth's privately-owned water utility. America: History and Life, 19A:6096

Hudson, Edwin E. "A Comparison of the Farmers' Alliance and the Non‑partisan League in Minnesota." U of Minnesota, 1924.  Unpublished manuscript.  

Jarchow, Merril E. "King Wheat." Minnesota History. 29(1):1‑28. March 1948.  Wheat as it affected the lives and well‑being of Minnesota farmers.  Populists mentioned by inference.  

Keillor, Steven James. "Democratic Coordination in the Marketplace: Minnesota's Rural Cooperatives, 1865-1917." PhD dissertation, University of Minnesota, 1992.  DAI, v. 53-11A, p. 4057, 816 pages. 

Kennedy, Roger G. "Ignatius Donnelly and the Politics of Discontent: An Inquiry into the Career of a Populist." American West 1969 6(2): 10-14, 43, 46-48.  A son of anticlerical Irish immigrants, Ignatius Donnelly moved to Minnesota in 1856.  The Panic of 1857 broke his land-speculation bubble and drove him into farming and politics.  He became Lieutenant Governor, Governor, and a three-term Congressman.  He gradually he assumed the role of the champion of the downtrodden farmer.  He authored the most pungent of the Populist Party's revolt documents. He was a principled man in a remarkably unprincipled age, contending for justice against the hosts of error and indifference. America: History and Life, 6:1981

Kennedy, Roger G. "Ignatius Donnelly and the Politics of Discontent: An Inquiry into the Career of a Populist." American West. 6(2):10-14, 43, 46‑48. March 1969.  

Kimmel, Bruce Ira. "The Political Sociology of Third Parties in the United States: A Comparative Study of the People's Party in North Carolina, Georgia and Minnesota." Ph.D. Dissertation (Sociology), Columbia University, 1981.  Focuses on the reactions of major parties to the instability created by a third party.  In North Carolina, Minnesota, and Georgia, the instability is attributed to the social strains generated by rapid industrialization.   

Kolnick, Jeffrey. "Rural-Urban Conflict and Farmer-Labor Politics: Blue Earth County, 1885-1886." Minnesota History 1994 54(1): 32-45.  Blue Earth County's Farmer-Labor Party, in conjunction with the Farmers' Alliance and the Knights of Labor, had remarkable success in rallying voters and in influencing the major parties on local and state issues during 1885-86. This tradition of radicalism reemerged in the 20th century when, during the height of Franklin D. Roosevelt's popularity, the Minnesota Farmer-Labor Party was able to overshadow the state's Democratic Party. America: History and Life, 32:8471

Kolnick, Jeffrey David, "A Producer's Commonwealth: Populism and the Knights of Labor in Blue Earth County, Minnesota, 1880-1892." Ph.D. dissertation, University of California, Davis, 1996.  DAI, 57, no. 04A, (1996).  Blue Earth farmers and workers formed one of the first Farmer-Labor parties in the nation in 1886.  Farmers and workers were drawn together by their common experience fighting to survive in the intensely competitive economy of the Gilded Age.  Knights and Populists spoke the same language of reform politics and shared the same vision of a cooperative commonwealth.   

Kremenak, Nellie Wilson. "Urban Workers in the Agricultural Middle West, 1856-1893: With A Case Study of Fort Dodge and Webster County, Iowa." Ph.D. dissertation, University of Iowa, 1995.  DAI, 56, no. 07A, (1995): 2838.  The Great Railroad Strike of 1877 signaled the close of a period of more open opportunity and generated a reappraisal of community values by both working people and local elites.  For many working people, that reevaluation led to affiliation with the Knights of Labor, which challenged economic and political power structures.  The Knights forged political alliances with reform-minded middle class neighbors.  Working class political activism contributed to the great political realignment of the late nineteenth century. 

Kreuter, Gretchen. "Kate Donnelly Versus the Cult of True Womanhood." Women of Minnesota: Selected Biographical Essays (St. Paul: Minnesota Historical Society Pr., 1977): 20-33.  Traces the life of Katharine McCaffrey Donnelly (1833-94), the wife of Ignatius Donnelly.  Her letters to her husband reveal her political acumen, concern for their family, events in their daily lives, and their financial circumstances. America: History and Life, 16A:3579

Lampere, George N. "History of Wheat Raising in the Red River Valley." Collections of the Minnesota Historical Society. 10(1):1‑33.  

Lawson, Victor E. "The Farmers' Alliance in Kandiyohi County." Minnesota History Bulletin. 4(7‑8):337‑39. August‑November 1922.  

LeSueur, Meridel. Crusaders: The Radical Legacy of Marian and Arthur LeSueur. 109 p. Reprint of 1955 ed. St. Paul: Minnesota Historical Society, 1984. 

Lief, Julia Wiech. "A Woman of Purpose: Julia B. Nelson." Minnesota History 1981 47(8): 302-314.  After 19 years teaching in black schools in Texas and Tennessee, she returned to Minnesota in 1888.  She became a Women's Christian Temperance Union (WCTU) organizer, a National Woman Suffrage Association lecturer, and then editor of the state WCTU monthly paper.  She also participated in the local affairs of Red Wing.  She was the Populist candidate for superintendent of schools in 1896.  She bequeathed her estate to a black former student. America: History and Life, 20A:5706

Mickelson, Peter. "Nationalism in Minnesota During the Spanish-American War." Minnesota History 1968 41(1): 1-12.  Older traditionalists as well as the business community were, at first, strongly opposed to the war.  Populists, on the other hand (as exemplified by Ignatius Donnelly), were willing to fight for "human liberty" and to thwart the Spanish "moneyed interests."  Once the war actually began, most opposition evaporated in a wave of newly discovered patriotism. America: History and Life, 6:514

Nelsen, Jane Taylor. ed. A Prairie Populist: The Memoirs of Luna Kellie. Iowa City: University of Iowa Press, 1992. 

Nielsen, Kim E. "'We All Leaguers By Our House': Women, Suffrage, and Red-Baiting in the National Nonpartisan League." Journal of Women's History 1994 6(1): 31-50.  The National Nonpartisan League, a strongly populistic farmers' organization in North Dakota and Minnesota between 1915 and 1922, attracted accusations of socialism, disloyalty, and sexual immorality. Its women were often involved in public protests and organizing activities, pushing the gender boundaries they simultaneously used for their own protection. America: History and Life, 34:7861

Nydahl, Theodore L. "The Diary of Ignatius Donnelly, 1859-1884." Ph.D. dissertation, U of Minnesota, 1942.  

Parsons, E. Dudley. "Ignatius Donnelly, Novelist Scholar." Farmer. 47:16-17. March 16, 1929.  

Peterson, John M. "From Yeoman to Beast: Images of Blackness in Caesar's Column." American Studies 1971 12(2): 21-31.  Examines the place of prejudice in Ignatius Donnelly's Caesar's Column, his attitudes toward rapid change in the United States, and his place in American literary history. An early opponent of slavery, Donnelly long remained interested in possibilities for black-white cooperation amid continued repression.  His images of black revolt connect the book with the appeals of southern white supremacists in the Gilded Age. 

Peterson, Larry. Ignatius Donnelly: A Psychohistorical Study in Moral Development Psychology. Dissertation in American Biography. Ayer, 1981. 

Ridge, Martin. "Ignatius Donnelly and the Granger Movement in Minnesota." Mississippi Valley Historical Review. 42(2):693-709. March 1956.   

_____. "Ignatius Donnelly and the Greenback Movement." Mid-America 1957 39(3): 156-168.  Greenbackism in Minnesota, and probably elsewhere, was not radical.  It simply served as a vehicle of social criticism. 

_____. "Ignatius Donnelly, Minnesota Congressman, 1863-1869." Minnesota History. 36:173‑83. March 1959.   

_____. Ignatius Donnelly: The Portrait of a Politician. 427 p. Chicago, U of Chicago P, 1962. Derived from Ridge's 1951 Ph.D. Northwestern University dissertation, "Ignatius Donnelly: The Making of a Tribune."  

Pollack, Norman. "Ignatius Donnelly on Human Rights: A Study of Two Novels." Mid-America 1965 47(2): 99-112.  Donnelly's novels, Doctor Huguet (1891) and The Golden Bottle (1892) were affirmations of man irregardless of race, religion, or ethnicity. 

Schlup, Leonard. "Charles A. Towne and the Vice-Presidential Question of 1900." North Dakota History 1977 44(1): 14-20.  Populist Towne was William Jennings Bryan's choice for running mate on the Democratic ticket in 1900. Following the Populists' nomination the conservative eastern wing of the Democratic Party successfully pushed for Adlai E. Stevenson.   

Soike, Lowell Jerome. "The People's Party in Minnesota: A Midwestern Populist Aberration?" Master's thesis, St. Cloud State College, 1970. 274 pp. 

Warner, Donald F. "Prelude to Populism." Minnesota History. 32(3):129-46. September 1951. 

Warren, Sidney. "Ignatius Donnelly and the Populists." Current History 1955 28(166): 336-342.  Populists were political realists, rather than radicals or revolutionaries.  They understood that repudiation of laissez-faire principles was essential to agrarian economic interests.