It was still a mere spot in the forest marked by a few log huts when, on October 24, 1820, it was made the capital of the territory. On the 4th of July of that year the Rev. Cephas Washburn had preached the first sermon ever heard there, and in the rude cabin there were gathered to listen to him only fourteen men,--no women,--probably all the inhabitants of the place. Yet no one doubted that they were standing upon the site of a future city, or questioned the wisdom of the Legislature when it established the capital in the remote wilderness, far from the Mississippi in whose neighborhood the scanty population of the territory was chiefly gathered. The town grew slowly. It was far from the centers of population, and the means of travel were slight and precarious. It was made a post office town on April 10, 1820, but the inhabitants in 1830 numbered only four hundred and fifty, and it was not incorporated until Nov. 7, 1831. [Illustration: OLD STATE HOUSE.] In 1860, the population was only about five thousand. Between 1833 and 1846 the State House was built, a handsome edifice for the time and place; but generally the buildings were constructed of wood, not infrequently of logs, and were wholly unpretentious. Yet it is probable that there has never been in the city so much ability, certainly never so many striking personalities, as in those early days. It was a time when the nation was in its lusty youth, when the spirit of adventure and the love of independence were strong in the breasts of men. It was an age of great orators, when men felt strongly and expressed themselves in words that burned. It was an age when the romantic movement in literature was at its best, and when the sad smallness of the realistic school had not cast its blight on every lofty enthusiasm. It was a time of buoyancy, of expansion,--when the love of change and adventure, the weariness of the conventionalities of civilized life, the attractions of a future of unknown possibilities, were drawing many of the ablest and most ambitious of the nation’s youth to the distant West. Their hopes were often chimerical; but of their abilities and their energy there can be no doubt. They sought the West, conscious of their strength, burning with ambition, each dreaming that he would be the master-spirit of the new empire that was springing from the wilderness. When they found that instead of being unquestioned leaders among ignorant frontiersmen they were pitted against foemen worthy of their steel, and equally determined to rule the destinies of the infant commonwealth, the rivalries were fierce, the animosities bitter, the struggle intense. Politics ran high, and conflicting ambitions led to a degree of personal virulence in writing and in speech surpassing anything that we have to-day. When these young men first met, fire flashed as when flint and steel are struck together, and in the territorial days their quarrels were too often solved by the duel.