The First Minnesota wintered in Camp Stone, near Edward's Ferry, Maryland, from fall 1861 to February 1862. Willis Gorman served as colonel and eventually brigadier general of the First Minnesota. He also had an eventful political career. He was Minnesota's second territorial governor (where he favored an ill-fated bill that would have moved the territory's capital to St. Peter), participated in Minnesota's 1857 constitutional convention (where he allegedly broke his cane over a rival's head), and in 1860, he was a lawyer for Ann Bilansky, the only Minnesota woman to be executed.