Before the American Civil War, the U.S. Army supported slavery at the fort by allowing its soldiers to bring their personal enslaved people.

It also was the site of the concentration camp[4] where eastern Dakota and Ho-Chunk non-combatants awaited riverboat transport in their forced removal from Minnesota when hostilities ceased.

[7] A Dakota-English Dictionary (1852) edited by missionary Stephen Return Riggs originally recorded the word as mdóte, noting that it was also "a name commonly applied to the country about Fort Snelling, or mouth of the Saint Peters,"[8] now known as the Minnesota River.

According to Riggs, "The Mdewakantonwan think that the mouth of the Minnesota River is precisely over the center of the Earth and that they occupy the gate that opens into the western world.".

There were seven Dakota members present, with only two signing the treaty: Cetan Wakuwa Mani (Petit Corbeau) and Way Aga Enogee (Waynyaga Inaźin).

[14] Payment for the ceded lands only arrived in 1819, when the United States Department of War sent Major Thomas Forsyth to distribute approximately $2,000 worth of goods.

These forts were intended to extend the United States presence into the northwest territories following the Treaty of Ghent and the demarcation of the 49th parallel.

[22] The Anglo-Europeans called the Minnesota River the St. Peter's and the Indian Agency would be a part of Fort Snelling from 1820 to 1853.Lieutenant Colonel Henry Leavenworth commanded the expedition of 5th Infantry that built the initial outpost in 1819.

Col. Leavenworth lost 40 men to scurvy that winter and moved his encampment to Camp Coldwater because he felt the riverside location contributed to the outbreak.

[41] His skill was such that he was commissioned by Congress to illustrate the six-volume study of Indian Tribes of the United States by Henry Rowe Schoolcraft.

[43] As the towns of Minneapolis and St. Paul grew and with Minnesota statehood before Congress, the need for a forward frontier military post had ceased.

[56] The fort surgeon, Dr. John Emerson, purchased Dred Scott at a slave market in Saint Louis, Missouri, where slavery was legal.

Dred Scott v. Sandford was a landmark case that held that neither enslaved nor free Africans were meant to hold the privileges or constitutional rights of United States citizens.

In Dred Scott v. Sandford (1857), Chief Justice Taney ruled that the Missouri Compromise was unconstitutional and that enslaved Africans had no standing under the constitution, so could not sue for freedom.

[44] When Governor Ramsey offered President Lincoln 1000 troops to fight the South the volunteers he got were organized at Fort Snelling into a regiment, the 1st Minnesota.

[44] On 19 August 1862, after hearing of attacks at the Lower Sioux Agency the day before, Governor Alexander Ramsey immediately went from St. Paul to Fort Snelling to assess military preparedness.

On the same day, he asked his long-time friend and political rival, former Governor Henry Hastings Sibley, to lead an expedition up the Minnesota River to end the siege at Fort Ridgely.

Ramsey gave him a commission as colonel and turned over four companies of the newly organized 6th Minnesota Volunteer Infantry Regiment to Sibley at Fort Snelling.

The 25th Wisconsin Infantry Regiment arrived at Fort Snelling on 22 September, the day before the decisive Battle of Wood Lake, and were sent immediately to Mankato and Paynesville.

[65]In November 1862, 1,658 Dakota, all innocent non-combatants, were moved from the Lower Sioux Agency to Fort Snelling, escorted by 300 soldiers under Lieutenant Colonel William Rainey Marshall.

[67] The military leaders had a palisade erected around the encampment to protect the Dakota from angry settlers, some of whom had attacked the women and children as they passed through Henderson en route to Fort Snelling.

[74] The next year four companies of the 30th Wisconsin Infantry Regiment arrived at Fort Snelling with three of them moving forward to Camp Ridgely en route to Alfred Sully's Dakota campaign.

Oscar Burkard would receive the last Medal of Honor awarded during the Indian wars for his action on 5 October 1898 at Leech Lake with the 3rd Infantry.

To provide border security Minnesota's entire National Guard was activated at Fort Snelling, comprising three Infantry Regiments and one Artillery.

The War Department chose the base to be the site of the army's Military Railroad Service(MRS) HQ in 1942 and a winter warfare program later.

In 1960, the fort itself was listed as a National Historic Landmark, citing its importance as the first major military post in the region, and its later history in the development of the United States Army.

More fort land was lost when an Interstate 494 interchange was added as well as access roads to the International Airport, National Cemetery, VA Hospital and bridge into St. Paul.

Although restoring the original fort assured its survival, many of the buildings constructed later, composing the "Upper Post", suffered serious disrepair and neglect.

In May 2006, the National Trust for Historic Preservation added Upper Post of Fort Snelling to its list of "America's Most Endangered Places".

She was named for Fort Snelling at the confluence of the Minnesota and Mississippi Rivers, for many years the northernmost military post in the land of the Dakota and Ojibwe.